Snow Gods Are Embracing Vermont Mountains, Ignoring Champlain Valley. But Unexpected Warm Hints On Distant Horizon?

The midweek clipper storm should once again create
only lighter snows in the Champlain and lower
Connecticut River valleys, but the mountains
could easily get more than six inches once again.

 Vermont's Champlain Valley always receives much less snow than the mountains during the winter. 

The moisture skips over the low elevations near the lake and smacks into the Adirondack and Green Mountains instead. Or, the Champlain Valley gets rain while the folks at the ski areas serenely play in the white fluff. 

The contrast over the past several days, though, has been even more extreme than usual.  

Through midnight last night, Burlington has gotten a grand total of 0.2 inches of snow since Thanksgiving. Yep, barely a quarter inch.  

Meanwhile, the snow depth atop Mount Mansfield has gone from 6 inches last Wednesday to 18 inches on Monday.  And Jay Peak has had 30 inches of snow dumped on it since Thanksgiving, and at last report, it was still snowing up there. 

The ski areas are clearly off to a good start after a troublingly dry, warm late autumn.

This trend of mountain dumps and valley "meh" for snow will continue for a few days. 

A weak little weather system overnight and today is producing more mountain snow showers, adding a couple inches of fluff to the mountains while the Champlain Valley barely gets some flurries 

Clipper Storm To Hit

Next up is that well-anticipated strong Alberta clipper we've been watching. It'll come in Wednesday and Thursday with snow for everyone, including the Champlain Valley. 

But the valley should only see one to three inches out of this thing, while the mountains once again see a long-duration snowfall running from Wednesday afternoon to at least Friday morning. 

I wouldn't be at all surprised to see some of Vermont's mountains to see more than eight inches of snow out of this. The lake effect snow machine will get cranking in western New York again with this system, so they'll get buried further. Some of that moisture will make its way to the Green Mountains ,

The core of the lake effect will aim down New York's Mohawk Valley and eventually smack into the southern Green Mountains in Bennington County. That's where the most snow might fall, and a winter storm watch is up for that area. Areas up toward Searsburg, Readsboro and Woodford could see six to as much as a foot of snow out of this.  

By the way, Thursday could be a nasty travel day region wide, as the the storminess will take the form of locally heavy snow showers or squalls, along with gusty winds that would blow the snow around. 

Surprises In Long Range?

We might have a classic example coming up of why long range forecasts can be tricky. It appeared just the other day that this December might turn out to be one of the coldest in recent years. 

A sudden shift in the longer range forecasts for
mid month from frigid in the Northeast to leaning
warm nationwide suggests we're in for highly
variable weather later in December. I'm guessing
some storminess and swings from cold to warm 
to cold to warm, etc 

The forecasts for frigid weather Friday and through the weekend are still in force. 

 But some of those long range forecasts for the middle of the month are now starting to lean toward perhaps a little warmer and a little wetter than average, rather than frigid and dry. 

There's no guarantees here. The forecast could always revert back to cold again.  There's even more uncertainty than usual in the predictions for beyond a week from now.

Winters in the Northeast are always variable, with wide swings in temperature and storminess. 

We might be looking at wider swings between cold and warm later this month, and perhaps the winter as a whole.  It might get kinda stormy, too, so hang on to your hats if that's the case.