Sunday Evening Vermont Storm Update: Some Of Us To Have An Exciting Round 2

Some of the snow that fell last night and this morning
melted away during the day's thawing temperatures
Sunday in St. Albans, but it looks like we're in for a 
few inches of replacement snow tonight. 

 Round 1 of our big storm ended by late morning today on schedule, leaving behind lots of downed power lines, trees, branches and wet, heavy snow.  

Pretty much as advertised.

Power outages peaked at a little over 28,000 in Vermont at around 10:30 a.m. today and have been declining as crews got right to work fixing them.

 I do think they'll start to rise again tonight and I'll get into why below in the forecast update.

So far, the deepest snow I saw from Round 1 was 14 inches in Rochester. There were several other reports of around a foot of snow. This is all in high elevations. Lower elevations saw about one to four inches. 

I said last night that forecasts had a very high bust potential. But in the end, those forecasts turned out to be very accurate. 

The water content of the snow - not surprisingly - was really high.  Quite a few towns in Vermont reported the water equivalent in the snow was over an inch.  That stores up water for possible snow melt floods later in the spring, though I don't see any signs of that happening soon. 

The National Weather Service office in South Burlington
mapped out snowfall totals from overnight and this
morning. Areas in orange had eight or more inches of snow.

In the valleys, above freezing temperatures and drizzle melted some of the snow, but as of 4 p.m. Round 2 was moving in

ROUND 2

Drizzle changed to a wet snow in St. Albans around 3 p.m. It was still warm, so it wasn't accumulating much yet as temperatures remained just above freezing.

But a cold front embedded in the northwest flow behind the storm was coming in from New York, and that promises to change any remaining rain to snow this evening. 

Wind 

Some of us are going to get absolutely dumped on. A few mountain locations should have near blizzard conditions at times overnight and for at least part of Monday. 

That's because the winds that were pretty light this morning will start to howl overnight and especially on Monday. . West of the Green Mountains, they'll gust to around 40 mph at times.

East of the Greens, the winds will gain a little momentum heading downhill. That has prompted a wind advisory for these spots as expected winds will gust to 50 mph starting early Monday and lasting through the day.  

 Places east of the Green Mountains won't see as much additional snow as those lucky enough to be in the Green Mountains or the western slopes.  But a little additional snow, plus the heavy, wet stuff from this morning still glued to some of the trees will combine with the wind to create additional power outages.

An exception to the not much snow east of Greens outlooks is the Northeast Kingdom. A number of places out that way could easily see an additional six inches of snow. 

Even as the snow becomes lighter, spottier and more confined toward the mountains as Monday afternoon wears on, the winds could actually increase to their peak in those hours. The atmosphere will allow high winds aloft to mix down toward the surface.

Snow

We're still look at a LOT of snow in the Green Mountains starting now and going to about Monday evening. Higher mountain slopes and the summits can expect another 12 to 18 inches on top of whatever they got last night and this morning. 

National Weather Service forecast snow map through 
8 a.m. Tuesday shows tons of additional snow in the
Green Mountains and Adirondacks. Towns in the
western slopes of the Greens can expect 6 to 12 inches
of new snow, while close to 18 inches new is
a good bet near the summits. 

Towns along the western slopes the Green Mountains - especially the eastern halves of Addison, Chittenden and Franklin counties, can expect another six to 12 inches.  All these places are under a winter storm warning until Monday evening, for obvious reasons. 

Once you get really close to the lake, amounts will decrease to near an inch. Judging from traffic cameras, any snow that fell near Lake Champlain this morning has melted completely away, so they're not sharing in the winter wonderland. 

Combined with water that will have frozen onto roads, more snow, and blowing and drifting snow, the morning commute should be lousy for a lot of us Monday morning. That's especially true east of Route 7 and areas well west of Interstate 91. 

Interstate 89 between about Brookfield and Williston ought to be extremely interesting Monday morning. Route 100 looks fun, too.   

For the ski areas, this is the snowstorm they wanted in January, or at least February. The cement like stuff from last night laid down a base. The stuff coming overnight and Monday will be much more powdery.  Skiers and riders and finally going to have a blast for the next couple of days. 

It is March, and it's warmer. And we are going to have another balmier than average week after we get past Monday. The next storm due at the end of the week or weekend looks smaller than the one we just got, and will probably be mostly rain, as it looks now.

But winter isn't done. After a months of a weather pattern that gave us such a record breaking warm winter, it's going to trend colder after next weekend, possibly for the rest of the month. We'll have several snow chances in that colder regime as well.