Early Saturday Afternoon Update: Power Outages Rampant In Vermont With Today's Windstorm, New Areas Hit

A fallen tree blocks Cochran Road in Jonesville/Richmond
this morning. Jonesville and Bolton were apparently
among the hardest hit areas of Vermont with this
windstorm. Gust have since diminished. 

 As expected, this morning's windstorm caused a new round of big havoc across much of Vermont, downing tons of trees and powerlines. 

Power outages peaked at just under 29,000, which is impressive for sure and more than the number who lost electricity in Wednesday's storm.

The storm slammed some areas that were not so badly hit. Orange County, was hit hard, as were Addison, Chittenden and Rutland counties.

A whopping wind gust of 86 mph was reported by the WPTZ mobile weather unit near Middlebury.

In Rutland County, damaging winds extended well west of the Green Mountains, something that was hinted at in prior forecasts.

My sister Lynn reported strong winds and tree damage near her West Rutland home. Trees and wires were down even further west in Castleton. 

The area around Jonesville, Bolton and Jericho were hard hit by downslope winds. I was in Jonesville this morning and saw numerous trees down.  This was also an example of how localized these downslope winds can be.

Just three miles to the west of Jonesville in Richmond Village, winds were much lighter and I saw no damage there. 

High wind warnings should expire early this afternoon as winds have diminished. It looks like repair crews are taking advantage of the lighter winds, as the number out outages had declined to about 23,600 as of 12:30 p.m., says VTOutages.org 

Rain was falling across most of Vermont this afternoon, so it's not the most pleasant storm clean up in the world. Temperatures will slowly fall for the rest of the afternoon, so I think we'll see more and more instances of snow mixing in.

However, the precipitation will also be getting more showery, so any snow that does accumulate toward evening will be no big deal. And mostly limited to the mountains. 

By the way, snowfall during the storm last night was pretty unimpressive. I've seen a few reports of three or four inches in some mid and higher elevations, but that's about it.  

Sunday is going to be a gusty, cold, cloudy day with snow showers around, especially north. So it will be another unpleasant day for cleanup, I'm afraid.

I'll have storm updates if warranted later today. Stay safe out there, folks!