Snow Slowly Piling Up, Next Installment Favors Southern Vermont

Big snowflakes in the air in St. Albans, Vermont gave
the landscape a pointillism art vibe on Sunday. 

 Snow showers and snow squalls left a few inches of fluff in many areas across northern Vermont Sunday and Sunday night, slightly deepening what is still a fairly thin snow pack in the state for this time of  year. 

It made for a wintry, but at times pretty Sunday in Vermont, as you can see in the video at the bottom of this post. 

There's chances for more snow this week, especially in the mountains, as usual. 

The next installment of snow will be different from most this winter, favoring southern Vermont instead of northern and central sections, which most of the modest storms we've had this winter have done. 

As expected, a wild storm spawned tornadoes and hurricane force straight line wind gusts that caused a lot of damage to houses and other buildings in Oklahoma. At least 12 people were injured.    An especially damaging tornado struck around Norman, Oklahoma. 

At least seven tornadoes touched down, and more will probably be counted as damage is assessed. This is the most tornadoes Oklahoma has had in February. Yes, it's tornado alley, but Oklahoma usually waits until later in the spring to see their twisters.

Anyway, the storm that caused the Oklahoma tornadoes is, as expected headed toward the Great Lakes. It might spit out a couple more tornadoes over Ohio today. That would be the second time Ohio has faced a tornado threat this month. Again, that's really weird for that far north in February.

As we mentioned yesterday, the storm will move across the Great Lakes and into Canada while weakening. A new storm will take over near the Mid-Atlantic states and then zip out due eastward out to sea. 

That's close enough to give a decent dump of snow to far southern Vermont, where a winter storm warning is up for our two southernmost counties. 

In that region, they're expecting four to nine inches of new snow, mostly above 1,500 feet. The valleys should get a few inches, though. 

The heaviest snow in far southern Vermont would come just in time for tomorrow morning's commute. Oh joy! 

Further north in south central Vermont, a winter weather advisory is up for three to six inches of snow with this system. 

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The latest snowfall prediction map from the National
Weather Service office in South Burlington. More than
six inches might fall in the higher elevations of 
southern Vermont. Much less north. 

In northern Vermont, the storm scooting off the coast will be too far south to give us much of anything. The dying storm heading into Canada will be too far north and west to contribute all that much snow. 

So, most of us in the northern half of the state should only see a measly one to three inches of new snow.  There might be just a touch more than that in the northern and central Green Mountains. 

In the Champlain Valley, it looks like it will probably get warm enough in the late morning and afternoon for the snow to mix with rain. That would further cut down accumulations. 

A smaller storm Wednesday night and Thursday looks destined to give us a rain/snow mix, with not that much accumulation. But at least the Wednesday night thing will add a little to the snow cover up in the mountains.

Friday and Saturday could get pretty damn interesting. There's the potential for a bigger snowstorm then. However, it's still five days away. So we don't quite know yet if it will go too far south to give us much snow, or come too far north and force mixed precipitation on us. 

For now, just keep an eye out for the end of the week. 

And wouldn't you know, the weather pattern that kept us weirdly toasty all winter is breaking down. Signs are still point toward a potential rather cold March. We shall see! 

Video: Scenes from around St. Albans, Vermont on a blustery February Sunday filled with snow showers. Click on this link to view if you don't see the image below, otherwise click on that image: