Sunday Evening Vermont Snow Update: Not Much Accumulation, But Roads Slick

Just a tiny bit of snow was making Route 36 on 
Fairfield Hill in St. Albans pretty slick late this afternoon.

The light snow we've been seeing in Vermont is the type that's pretty deceptive.  

There's not much of it, with pretty much everyone having an inch or less of accumulation so far. But the snow consists of small, icy snowflakes, that tend to compact into ice beneath car tires. Even though it's cold, road temperatures were still close to the freezing mark

The ground is still warmish from the balmy opening week of this month. This is causing the snow to melt a little bit, then re-freeze. Then a dusting of snow accumulates on that ice, making it even more slick.  

The roads are nasty. I've seen cars sliding a bit on the steep hill along Route 36 in front of my house in St. Albans. Traffic cams across much of the state are showing highways that don't look that great, to be honest. There was already one crash on Interstate 89 in Colchester this afternoon, but I'm not 100 percent sure yet whether it was weather related.

Since it's such a small storm, we also don't really take this seriously. I haven't seen many salt trucks out yet, as of 4:30 p.m. The fact that this seems like a nothingburger snowfall gives us a false sense of security. It's worse out than you'd think. 

Light snow will continue into the evening, so if you have travel plans, keep that in mind.  If anything, the snow might intensify a little for awhile early this evening, say before 8 or 9 p.m. before starting to diminish.

Snow accumulations  might over-perform compared to forecasts just a little. Early forecasts of a dusting to two inches seem pretty sound, but I suspect a few more places will come close to two inches than at least I previously thought.

Even so, it's not accumulating fast in northern Vermont. Here in St. Albans, it started snowing at around 2:15 p.m, and as of 5 p.m. we managed only 0.3 inches of new snow. 

Roads should be pretty good by tomorrow morning's commute, but expect some slick spots as temperatures stay well below freezing. It IS December after all. 

People are talking about the end of the week storm that meteorologists are monitoring.  The most recent forecasts seem to be upping the chances of us getting a substantial snow. That said, it's still super iffy and I'm not totally buying it yet. More on that in tomorrow morning's post.