Nice Snowy Part Of Vermont Storm Ending. Now For The Ice

Latest National Weather Service/South Burlington ice
forecast. Any shaded area can expect ice. Orange
represents at least a tenth of an inch of ice. Red
areas get a quarter inch of ice. A quarter inch of
ice accumulation is usually where you begin to
see some problems with tree branches and power lines.

 Just as expected, most of Vermont received one to three inches of snow overnight and early today, freshening things up and making it all look properly bright and wintry. 

Now for the extended messy part. I hope you like either freezing rain or a cold rain with temperatures in the 30s, because that's what we've got coming up for the next couple of days.

As I write this around 8 a.m. Wednesday, a lull was developing in the snow.  We'll just have flurries or maybe a patch or two of drizzle or freezing drizzle this afternoon, but nothing really to worry about.

ICY NIGHT

Then the next surge of precipitation comes in this evening and overnight. That's where the trouble begins. 

It looks like it will be just warm enough for a cold rain west of the Green Mountains except for maybe the far northern Champlain Valley.

But given the fact it's been nippy recently, that cold rain will still freeze on some surfaces, like back roads, driveways and sidewalks. So it won't necessarily be easy going in the "banana belt" either.

Along and east of the Green Mountains, and maybe the northern Champlain Valley from perhaps Georgia or St. Albans north, there will be freezing rain overnight. 

For the most part, it will not be heavy enough to weigh down trees and power lines so much that the electricity goes out. There might be an isolated issue with that here and there, but it won't be anything terrible.

What will be terrible are the roads overnight and early Thursday. It doesn't take much freezing rain at all to make the roads really hazardous. All it takes is a sprinkle of freezing rain. In the ice areas of Vermont, it's best to stay home overnight and Thursday morning if at all possible. 

It's no wonder there's a winter weather advisory up for the entire state. For western Vermont it expires by early afternoon today since most of the precipitation tonight should be rain. East of the Greens, the advisory goes to 7 a.m. Thursday. 

The hope is temperatures go above freezing for everybody Thursday afternoon to melt what's coming next. 

THURSDAY NIGHT/FRIDAY

It looks like a system similar to the one we're seeing tonight will come through Thursday night and Friday. 

Again, it looks like western Vermont will have another round of cold rain while eastern Vermont could see more freezing rain. 

I'm sure the National Weather Service in South Burlington will hoist another winter weather advisory for Thursday night. The won't' until the initial round tonight ends so as to avoid confusion. 

Not only will the roads be awful in the icy areas Thursday night and Friday, I'd begin to worry about power outages.

If tonight's ice doesn't melt off the trees and power lines Thursday afternoon, then a new dose of ice could start to cause somewhat more widespread issues with fallen branches and power lines.

That's by no means guaranteed, but it's something we'll have to watch.

Overall, that "fire hose" of moisture I described yesterday is more powerful further north than first thought. That plume of wet air is indeed causing a lot of flooding along the Gulf Coast.

Up here in Vermont, instead of a total of a quarter inch of melted snow, ice and rain between last night and Friday, most of us will see well over a half inch of melted precipitation, with many spots going to near an inch. 

Beyond that, a shot of colder air comes in Sunday.  There's wildly varying forecasts on whether one more storm near the East Coast will come close enough to Vermont to bring us another round of snow to start next week.

The good news is if we do see anything from that Sunday/Monday system, it would be snow, not ice.