A Little Vermont Snow Today In Advance Of The Next Powerful Storm

Trees and branches rest on the roof of a St. Albans,
Vermont house Wednesday after the severe wind
storm blew through. 

 It appears crews are out today, trying to get as much power restored to homes and businesses in Vermont before the next storm Friday night and early Saturday undoes all their work.  

As of 8 a.m. today, about 7,500 customers, mostly in Addison, Chittenden and Franklin counties, still had no power. 

That's down from a peak of nearly 30,000 yesterday morning. There's a lot of people out trying to fix things. I just saw a couple Green Mountain Power trucks head up the hill by my house, probably headed toward power outages near Fairfield or Bakersfield.

Damage reports continue to come in. Three planes flipped over in the wind at Middlebury State Airport, and there was some damage at the airport in Rutland, too. Given the extent of the damage, I'm very pleasantly surprised that I haven't heard of any serious injuries.

The highest wind gust I've heard of so far in the storm early Wednesday was 83 mph near Hinesburg.  Given the widespread damage I saw here in St. Albans, I'd say top gusts here reached to 70 mph or perhaps a little more. 

Video of significant storm damage in St. Albans is at the bottom of this post. 

Today will be a slightly snowy calm before the next storm.  Light snow and snow showers should fill in this afternoon and evening for most of us.  Accumulations look like they'll barely make it to an inch in most spots, except two or three inches in the central and northern Green Mountains.

Then trouble starts:

BIG STORM, PART 2

Green Mountain Power crews repair lines in St.
Albans, Vermont Wednesday next to a large
spruce tree felled by the severe wind storm. 

I'm impressed by what a twin to the first storm the upcoming one is turning out to be.  A burst of snow, then the high winds, ending in a period of rain and lighter winds. 

 Even the timing starting Friday is the same as the last one, with snow starting in the late afternoon, picking up in the evening. Then a late night blast of wind, diminishing by dawn or so. 

Big Storm #2 thankfully looks a little weaker than Big Storm #1, but it'll still cause some real trouble. 

Already, a high wind watch is in effect from Friday evening to Saturday morning with gusts up to 60 mph. The high wind watch for now is limited to the immediate western slopes of the Green Mountains and doesn't cover an area as big as the last storm did.  

However, I imagine high wind watches or warnings or wind advisories will go out to other parts of Vermont as well. Most of us will have quite a windy Friday night - but not as bad as early Wednesday was.

I expect additional problems with trees and power lines, but not as much as we saw yesterday. There should be less structural damage to homes, businesses and barns, too. At least let's hope so.

At this point, snowfall Friday and overnight should be roughly the same as the storm we just had, or maybe a little less. The National Weather Service office in South Burlington is taking an initial shot, telling us there might be a couple inches in the Champlain Valley and three to seven further east.

Just like in this past storm, this one will create a bit of a net gain in snow depth in mid and high elevations of the Green Mountain State 

It still looks like it'll go over to rain in most of Vermont overnight. But it won't be a terrible amount. Despite how soggy things got yesterday with a drenching morning rain, we're not primed for any real flooding with this. That's despite the fact Vermont rivers are running sort of high now. We simply won't get enough rain to trigger trouble. 

WINTER FINALLY ARRIVES

Big Storm #2 is going to trigger quite a weather pattern change. The weather in Vermont has been like November since, well, November.  We really haven't had any hard core winter weather.

This will change, as it will turn seasonably cold after the storm, then probably even colder. We haven't had more than two or three days in a row that stay below freezing this season, as of yet. That will change starting Sunday, when we should have at least a week - and probably more - of such weather. 

We haven't had any truly cold nights yet, either. The coldest it's been all winter in Burlington is 13 degrees, which is insane for this late in the season. I'm expecting by the middle or end of next week, we'll at least get into the single digits at night, and maybe below zero.

That's not odd for January, but it's a real switch from what we've had. 

There's a possible storm about Wednesday, but don't hang your hat on that just yet. The computer models are all over the place with that one, and many take the possible system out to sea to far south to affect Vermont much. 

We'll just get through Friday night's storm and work from there. 

Video: 

It started as a gusty snowstorm, Tuesday evening, but got intense overnight. On Wednesday, I toured around St. Albans, Vermont looking at the damage. It kept getting worse and worse the more I looked.

Click on this link to view, or, if you see image below, click on that.