Northern Vermont Snow Over-Performed, But It's Essentially Done Now; Cold Weekend

Trees started getting dusted with snow and ice in St. Albans,
Vermont this morning after rain changed to snow a little
earlier than forecast. This allowed snow in much of the 
Champlain Valley to accumulate a little more than predicted. 

 As I kind of thought might happen, the changeover from rain to snow in northwestern Vermont over performed this morning and afternoon, leaving us with more snow on the ground than earlier forecasts projected. 

Central and southern Vermont received little snow, as expected. 

The big snow winners including 4.5 inches at Alburgh Center, 4 inches in Newport Center, and several reports of three inches in Franklin County, including here in St. Albans. The National Weather Service office in South Burlington recorded 2.3 inches of snow. 

That's not much but it's their biggest "snowstorm" since December 23. We're still way below normal for this winter's snowfall, but that's no surprise.

There's still a little light snow and flurries around, and the roads are still slick from the freeze-up and snow will received today. So you'll need to be careful driving around this evening and overnight. 

Forecasts have trended a bit colder for the weekend, so if you want to take advantage of what little snow we got for winter sports, Saturday and Sunday should be fine. 

Highs will only be in the low 20s for a lot of us both days. Cold air draining from  Quebec will probably keep the northern Champlain Valley colder on Sunday with highs possibly not rising above the upper teens

Saturday night will be nippy, with lows in the single digits with a fair number of below zero readings possible. That's especially true in areas that are snow-covered areas.  Snow helps cool the atmosphere during calm, clear nights. 

This will be the strongest "cold wave" since Christmas, but as we Vermonters know, the expected weather this weekend is actually not far from average.

We are still in a warm-ish weather pattern, at least for another 10 days or so.  Part of the reason why it seems to have cooled off is we are in what is normally the coldest part of winter. The "bottom" of winter is on average the last three weeks of January, though that can vary year to year. It's just hard to get us warmed up this time of year.

After this chilly weekend, next week will warm up again, but not to a level you'd consider super warm. Maybe 30s for highs in general. The first part of the week looks fairly quiet, but there's the potential for a large storm toward Thursday and Friday. 

Believe it or not, there's a somewhat decent chance that storm could be mostly snow. There's not much cold air for the storm to play with. But if it goes to our south, we'd still be cold enough in Vermont to see a fair amount of snow.

Some current forecasts have that storm going just to the south of Vermont.  Things could still change radically, so this is not a promise to snow lovers. But if you like snow, it's a glimmer of hope.