Saturday Evening Update: Storm Subsides, Winter Finally Arrives

The downdrafts that caused the intense gusts this morning
along the western slopes of the Green Mountains opened
up some breaks in the clouds. This allowed a rainbow
to form as trees tossed back and forth in the gales
around Janesville, Vermont. 

 Well, that was exciting. 

As noted earlier this afternoon, the storm was intense, but now it's over, and the electric utilities are picking up the pieces. 

At around 5:15 p.m. about 13,800 Vermont homes and businesses were still without power, says VTOutages.org. That's down from a peak of nearly 29,000 this morning. 

Here's the fun piece: Extreme weather will continue for the next few days in much of the nation. Here in Vermont, we'll just have unpleasant, but not particularly scary weather. 

I'll have more on that piece tomorrow morning.

Just a heads up, though. Roads are wet around Vermont, so they'll freeze up this evening. There will be the usual slick spots, so be careful.

On Sunday, the chances of snow showers have gone up. In fact, we could easily see a few snow squalls mixed in. Those can reduce visibility on the roads from fine to zero in an instant. It can also turn dry pavement into an ice rink almost instantaneously. 

You'll want to be careful if you head out during the day tomorrow. 

Accumulations won't be impressive. New snowfall for most of us in Vermont look to be in the one to three inch range, with maybe a little less right near Lake Champlain.

The Jay Cloud looks active, so there could be six inch totals up around Jay Peak,

Some of the moisture for our expected somewhat snowy Sunday is coming from Lake Ontario. A near-blizzard amounting to two or more feet of snow is on the table for the snow belts near that lake. 

Once the temperature gets below freezing this evening, it will stay there at least through next Sunday.  We'll finally start to manufacture some ice on the lakes, which must make some ice fishing enthusiasts at least a little happy  I don't see them getting very safe yet, though. It will take awhile. I wouldn't trust the ice on even small lakes for awhile. 

There are chances of decent snowfall on Tuesday night and Friday. The chances of a larger snowstorm seemed to be dimming as of this evening. If current trends continue, we'll get snow, but nothing in the blockbuster category.

As for Friday, who the hell knows?

For those of you without electricity, I hope you get it back soon!  For those of you sick of gonzo big storms, cross your fingers, you might be getting a break,