Heavy Vermont Snow Mostly Over, Period Of Mess, Then More Snow This Afternoon

Definitely looking like winter after 5.3 inches of snow in
St. Albans, Vermont last night. There's now about nine
inches of snow on the ground. Just eight days ago, 
there was none.

 Last night's big, quick thump of snow has long gone by and early this morning Vermont is in a soup of fog, light freezing rain, a little sleet, some wet snowflakes and even a little rain and drizzle in the warmer valleys. 

The warm air raced in pretty quickly in southern and central Vermont. Snow fairly quickly changed to a mix, so accumulations there were generally two to locally as much as five inches there.

 Northern Vermont - especially the northwest corner of the state - hung on to the cold air better, so they received a little more snow than the south. That's the opposite of the last two storms 

The most I've seen so far is 8 inches in Isle La Motte,  6 inches in Alburgh and Walden, 5.5 inches in Morrisville and 5.3 inches in Orleans. I also measured 5.3 inches at my hacienda in St. Albans.

Some of us weather geeks were hoping for some thundersnow last night, as the dynamic nature of the storm made that possible. I'm only aware of one lightning strike, somewhere near Lyon Mountain, New York west of Plattsburgh and Dannemora. 

As I feared, the conditions at rush hour last evening quickly turned atrocious as the snow dump turned on just as people were heading home from work. There were a bunch of slide offs, crashes and things like that, and they actually had to close part of Interstate 89 near Burlington for a time. Two people had to be taken to the hospital. 

What a mess!

As many of you have figured out by now, there's a ton of school closing and delays for the second time this week. If this keeps up, the kiddos will be going to school in July to make up for the time lost. Just kidding, kids!!!! 

Power outages developed as expected. The problems peaked at 4,300 Vermont customers out of electricity at around 4 a.m. Most of that has been fixed. Expect a few more power outages as a little snow and freezing rain continues to fall, and winds pick up pretty substantially this afternoon. It won't be a massive gale, but 25 to 30 mph gusts can do a number on some ice and snow loaded trees. 

Road conditions range from "meh" on the many of the main highways to "ugh" on the more back roads with still a lot of snow and ice on them.  Roads should remain tricky all day. Not the worst ever, but still, you'll need to keep on your toes if you're driving. 

While road conditions have improved somewhat this
morning, there's still snow and ice out there. This is
Route 78 in Alburgh around 8 a.m. this morning,
as viewed via a screen grab of a AOT traffic cam.

We're stuck in the schmutzy weather of mixed precipitation, wet snow and minor thawing until mid to late morning.

But a new storm forming in southeastern New England will start to pull in some cooler air from the north. At first, the colder air will only be aloft. That'll be enough to ensure the patchy freezing rain and sleet and stuff goes over to a wet snow.

Then, as the colder air becomes more entrenched, temperatures will fall and winds will pick up this afternoon.  Falling snow and re-freezing roads will make the trip back home from work less than lovely later today. 

The new snow won't be any kind of blockbuster, though. It'll just be a dusting to an inch on valley floors in most of central and southern Vermont, an inch or two in northern Vermont valleys, and maybe an extra few inches of fluff to cover the slightly icy stuff from last night up in the mountains. 

We're heading into that colder weather pattern we've been talking about. Friday will be average, Saturday might be just a bit warmer than average. Then it looks like we get a little more snow on Sunday. At this point, Sunday's system doesn't look like a biggie, maybe two to four inches. Or five or so in favored mountain or ski area spots. 

Frigid arctic air will be poised just to our northwest Sunday. That's the first time anything that cold has been in our neck of the woods since Christmas. I'm not sure how much of that nasty air will bleed south into Vermont early next week. 

It's possible, if enough cold blasts southward, places that have wildly managed to not have any below zero weather this winter could be out of luck. That's a big if, but check your fuel supply just in case.