Another Over-Performing Snow In (Most) Of Vermont, With Little Dustings Yet To Come

Looking clean and snowy in St. Albans, Vermont
this morning.

 For all but the northwestern corner of Vermont, Tuesday snowstorm either lived up to expectations, or in many cases over-performed.  

The forecast called for four to six inches of snow, generally statewide, with perhaps a bit less in the northwestern tip of the state.

That happened, but there were also many reports of snow in the seven, eight or nine inch range. 

The big winner so far in the Vermont snow sweepstakes is West Rutland, of all places, with 11 inches. Not sure what's going on there, as that town is not usually a snowbelt town. West Rutland was among the hardest hit by Sunday's snow squalls, too,

Elsewhere, big winners were Shrewsbury and Orange, each reporting 10 inches of new snow.

Far northwestern Vermont missed out. In the Champlain Islands, roughly three inches of snow was forecast. Up in Alburgh, they only saw 1.5 inches. Here at my perch in St. Albans, I saw 3.2 inches, roughly an inch less than forecast, but still within the range offered by forecasters in advance of the storm.

The official storm total in Burlington was 5.0 inches. Believe it or not, that brings the month's total to 16.2 inches so far. That's actually about five inches above normal for the month to date, which is surprising.

The month has also been much warmer than normal, so the snow that fell in Burlington tended to melt. Yesterday was the first cooler than average day this January. Even then, it was only a half a degree below normal.

LOOKING AHEAD

Chances are, Burlington will end January with near to slightly below average snowfall for the month, since very little snow is forecast for quite awhile.

That doesn't mean it won't snow in Vermont. Another epic round of lake effect snow squalls is gathering force in northwest New York, on the shores of Lake Ontario. 

Visible satellite photo from this morning shows fresh
snow cover northwest of a sharp line from western North
Carolina to eastern New Jersey. 

The famous Tug Hill Plateau snow belt out there expects about three feet of new snow, on top of the three feet or so they got over the weekend. 

Much like Sunday morning, the snow band coming off of Lake Ontario will be so strong at times that it will deposit a little snow on the central and northern Green Mountains. 

 It won't amount to much. Except the remnants of those snow squalls will probably enhance the famous Jay Cloud and dump a little extra snow on them. 

We're still up for the first Arctic blast, mostly Thursday night through Sunday morning. It's still not looking extreme, but it will be a fairly windy one. That means wind chills will be an issue, especially Friday through Saturday. 

A little bit of super light snow might mix in with the chill in spots Saturday. There might also be some small accumulations from lake effect snow on the eastern shores of Lake Champlain, probably in areas south of Burlington.

That big warmup that's been in the forecast for next week will probably get delayed by a day or two. A fast moving, cold high pressure system zipping eastward across northern Quebec roughly around next Tuesday will keep cold-ish, but not frigid air over us for an extra day or so.