Quiet New Year's Eve Vermont Weather To Aid Any Noisy Celebrations

Another reason to cheer this New Years. Weather in
Vermont on New Years Eve and Day is going to
be quiet and not especially cold. 

 If you were out on the Vermont roads over the Christmas holiday, there really wasn't any travel trouble to speak of, aside from that ever-present fog. 

Now we have kind of a happy two-fer. If you're going out on New Year's or New Year's Day, it's clear sailing. And I mean clear, because the fog will finally be gone.

This Saturday morning, the rain finally turned to snow, at least in some parts of Vermont. A few of us have a dusting of snow on the ground. 

The northern Green Mountains should be in the light snow most of the day, so they'll pick up a couple inches of powder. Not much, but I'm sure they'll take it.

For us valley dwellers, you won't see much of anything at all 

The big bonus is the fog is clearing up.  As of 8 a.m. it was still a little murky out there in spots, but it's much better.

That takes us to New Year's Eve.

And.... there will be no weather, really to report. The day Sunday will be dry, except maybe a few morning flurries up in the mountains. It'll be colder, too, with many of us not getting above freezing for the first time in over a week. 

Cold is a relative term, though. A high within a few degrees of 32 is still pretty good for this time of year. 

As the festivities ramp up tomorrow night and before midnight, temperatures should gradually fall through the 20s. Again, not bad for this time of year, especially since there isn't going to be much wind to add to any chill.

For comparison, the normal high on New Years is 30, with a low of 12. Average precipitation is 0.1 inches for the day, which average snowfall of 0.8 inches. So overall, this New Years will be vaguely warmer, but also drier than normal,

No snow, no ice, no rain, no fog this year on New Year's Eve.  Just the usual dangerous drunk drivers. So please be careful on the roads and make sure you have a designated driver if you indulge. 

PAST NEW YEARS WEATHER 

This will be Vermont's coldest New Years since 2018, but that's not saying much. It's been really warm at the start of each of the past five years. Last January 1, we had the warmest minimum temperature for the opening day of the year - 38 degrees. The previous evening, as Vermont approached midnight, people enjoyed outdoor temperatures at about 40 degrees, give or take. Pretty damn mild.

That probably wasn't the warmest New Year's Eve, though. On December 31, 1965, temperatures were in the 50s well into the night. And it was still in the 50s in the early morning hours of January 1, 1966. (The rest of January, 1966 was quite cold and snowy, however).

We've had a lot of cold New Years in the past, the most recent one being 2018.  It was 15 below in Burlington hat morning, so surely below zero hours earlier at the stroke of midnight

Digging deeper into stats from the National Weather Service office in South Burlington, the New Year's holiday has had many weather extremes in Vermont compared to other holidays,  The coldest, snowiest most wintry January 1 in Burlington was 17 below in 1970. (Most record lows this time of year are in the 20s below zero).

Of course that 1970 January 1 chill set the stage for what would become by far the coldest month on record. There was 28 inches of snow on the ground that 1970 New Years Day, the calling card of a tremendous post-Christmas storm in 1969. 

New Year's 1918 is also in the running for coldest New Years. We'd been in the ice box for days. Temperatures had crashed on Christmas Day, 1917, with temperatures in the teens and 20s below zero daily from December 29 through January 3. That included 94 consecutive hours below zero in Burlington, ending at noon January 1, 1918,

Yeah, I would have just huddled by the fire and forgotten about any celebrations that year. 

The stormiest New Years Day had to be in 1945. That year, 1.46 inches of rain and melted snow fell. That day also featured 1.2 inches of snow. So it was probably pretty messy out there. That's just Burlington, though. 

Overall, for Vermont the wettest end to the year was in 1948. The last couple of days of December, 1948 featured significant flooding in southern Vermont with as much as seven inches of rain falling in Bennington County on December 30 and 31 that year. 

Burlington's snowiest New Year's Eve was in 2000, with 8.2 inches of new snow. New Years Day, 1961 started the year with 14.5 inches of fluff. 

We're had a tumultuous weather year in 2023. Let's hope the quiet start to 2024 portends an equally docile weather year in Vermont. We deserve it!