Wednesday Evening Storm Update: A "Meh" Storm, But At Least Vermont Gets Some Snow

Total snowfall predictions from the National Weather 
Service office in South Burlington are down from this
morning's expectations. Also, pardon the sloppiness
of this image. I just bought a new MacBook Air, 
which is great, but the new MacBooks are 
extremely hostile to cropping screen grabs.

 At least for now, forecasters are backing off a bit on expected snow totals from the upcoming storm in Vermont Thursday night and Friday. 

Still, we'll end up with more snow on the ground than we have now. For snow lovers, that's good considering the snow drought we're experiencing so far this winter. 

Since there's still not a lot of cold air to play with, this will be a fairly wet snowfall, and a mix of precipitation will probably work in to this mess, especially in southern Vermont. 

Though I'm not a full-fledged meteorologist and am definitely not up to par with the experts at the National Weather Service office in South Burlington, I have to agree with them that the initial thump of snow or mix Thursday night might under-perform. 

Freezing rain or sleet can mix in, more so the further south you go. Still, snow could come down kind of heavy at times, so travel Thursday night and early Friday could definitely be tricky.

Best guess is the eastern slopes of the south-central Green Mountains (think Mount Holly, Ludlow, Shrewsbury and Killington) will do best with the initial thump of snow. The places that will do worst, in terms of snow accumulation in the first phase of the storm, are valleys in southwest and southeast Vermont due to mixed precipitation. Also, the western slopes of the Green Mountains further north might not do great either. 

At this point, it looks like there might be a lull in precipitation Friday morning. This could be in the form of an ugly freezing drizzle in much of Vermont for awhile during the first half of Friday. 

Then, as an upper level low comes across northern New England during the day Friday, the freezing drizzle is expected to disappear in favor of more snow. It won't snow hard during the day Friday, but it could mess up travel.

For now, the National Weather Service in South Burlington has issued a winter weather advisory for areas of Vermont outside the Champlain Valley. In these areas, a decent snowfall of four to six inches of snow is still in the forecast, with maybe a bit more in some of the mountains.

In the Champlain Valley, the forecast, as of Wednesday evening, has the snow coming in too slow and too light to qualify for a winter weather advisory, but the snow will probably be enough late Thursday through Friday to make you want to take care on the roads. 

As I noted, there's not a lot of cold air available, so the snow will be fairly wet.  Expect a few power outages state wide, but this continues to look like it won't be an extreme event. Which is excellent. 

Note that this forecast can, and probably will change before we get to the event. Stay tuned for updates! 

Also, there seems to be a good chance of more possibly snowstorms on Sunday night and Monday, and the middle of next week. It's too soon to deal with those, so we'll just concentrate on this upcoming storm Thursday night and Friday.