New Year's Eve Is Here: What To Expect In Vermont Tonight, Tomorrow

Yet another day of thick overcast kept Vermont dreary on
New Year's Eve, but at least there's no ice or snow to mess
up the roads tonight. The low clouds might interfere a 
bit with midnight fireworks shows, though. 

 It's been a day of low, dark overcast as a temperature inversion - common for this time of year - has kept clouds trapped below a lid of slightly warmer air several thousand feet above us. 

This continues our long streak of bleak days, but at least we don't have the dense fog that pestered us Vermonters for days this past week.  

The weather forecast continues to look pretty safe, though not gorgeous for any outdoor New Year's Eve festivities tonight. 

A few snowflakes might flutter down from time to time this evening, but they won't amount to anything.  Roads should be in good shape, with no surprise icing like we saw Saturday afternoon.

Temperatures under the thick clouds held in the 20s all day today, as they prevented any weak December sun from boosting readings just a bit.

Those same thick clouds will keep the temperature from falling much tonight.  It should be somewhere between 18 and 25 degrees at midnight, which isn't bad for the season.

We do see one problem with tonight's weather: Fireworks and the low clouds. The overcast is so low that it might interfere with viewing midnight fireworks. Especially in towns that launch them from relatively high elevations, or if they involve fireworks that go way up into the sky before exploding. 

Another problem is the same temperature inversion that's keeping the low clouds locked in place will probably also trap smoke from the fireworks beneath the clouds. The smoke won't disperse all that easily, so we could see some local air pollution problems with this. 

New Year's Day still looks pretty good, fingers crossed. A very weak cold front early in the day should touch off more snow flurries, especially in the mountains and along the south and east shores of Lake Champlain early in the day. 

The cold front doesn't really have much in the way of cold air behind it, but it does have drier air. That could set us up for some - YAYYY! --- sun in the afternoon. No promises, the inversion could hold, but let's be optimistic. If the sun does come out, that would be the first time most of us have seen any sun since Tuesday. 

Temperatures will still be OK tomorrow with highs in the 25-32 range for most of us. 

Happy New Year, everyone!