Vermont Snow Keeps Coming, But Snow Lovers Will HATE This Forecast

As dawn broke, gusty winds, snow and blowing snow
greeted early risers in St. Albans, Vermont. The state
got another installment of snow overnight. 

As forecast, another round of snow came through Vermont last night and early today, depositing a few inches of additional snow on what has surprisingly turned out to be a good start to the snow season, at least in higher elevations. 

Unfortunately for snow lovers, it won't last. More on that in a moment.  

For now, it's wintertime out there. Enjoy!

The first round of snow finally really whitened what had been the bare central and southern Champlain Valley. 

By Saturday, Burlington had accumulated 4.9 inches of snow. It was pure fluff, with just over a tenth of an inch of water equivalent, so I'm sure that quickly packed down to a couple inches or so by evening. 

The next round of snow last night was marginally richer in moisture content, but stronger winds put much of the Champlain Valley in a "shadow" much like we saw last Wednesday.  Southwest winds blocked moisture for coming down into the Champlain Valley, so probably an inch or less fell in most places south of Milton. 

But the moisture was able to skip over the Burlington area and blanket the rest of Vermont - including the far northern Champlain Valley in a few to several inches of snow.  i 

It was actually rather blizzardy here in St. Albans, Vermont very early Sunday with moderate snow, plenty of blowing snow and winds gusting to roughly 35 mph. I would have hated to be on the roads.

New snow total reports from overnight are sparse so far.  Marshfield reported 5.5 inches of new snow overnight. Five inches was reported in Waterbury Center, West Newbury and Morrisville. Swanton clocked in with four inches.  The snow was difficult to measure here in St. Albans due to the wind, but a close guess would be a little under three inches.

In the mountains, the snow cover is becoming kind of impressive for this early in the season after a very slow start. As of yesterday, there was 35 inches of snow on the ground near the top of Mount Mansfield. On average, about 18 inches of snow would grace that mountain snow stake this time of year.

More snow fell up there  overnight, as we know. Jay Peak says 55 inches of snow fell there in the seven days ending Saturday. 

That catches us up to today. Now what? The spoiler is, no rest for the weary.  Let's take it day by day.

TODAY:

 The snow should exit Vermont soon, if it hasn't already. We'll be left with a mild, cloudy day, and there will probably be a few patches of very light drizzle or sprinkles around. In the valleys, it'll turn the snow into something wetter and better to create ammunition for snowball fights and construction material for snowmen and snow sculptures. 

MONDAY:

The next little system comes at us from the southwest. Not a big storm, but enough to screw things up for us a little. Light snow will break out in the afternoon, and there could be a mix with some freezing rain toward evening and overnight. 

Not great for the evening commute, but that's what we're stuck with.

TUESDAY: 

The relative calm before the main event. It'll be cloudy and mild, with maybe a little rain here and there, no biggie

WEDNESDAY:

Here's the part that will make snow lovers despise the forecast. Don't hate me, I'm just the messenger! 

It still looks like one or two very wet waves of low pressure will move northward along a stalled front in the Northeast, sending boatloads of rain into New England, including Vermont. 

Rain and melted snow forecast for next seven days.
Anything in purple is at least 1.5 inches of rain or'water
equivalent. Much of this will be rain up here in Vermont.

Despite the ongoing drought, flooding is a real possibility. Unless forecasts change, the best chance of any flooding would be in eastern Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine, where up to three inches of rain could come down in a short period of time.

But initial forecasts bring one to two inches of rain to Vermont. Combined with snow melt, this could cause local flooding problems. You might remember we had a similar storm in mid-December last year - heavy rain and melting snow that caused some destructive flooding. 

The early guess is this year won't be another repeat of last December, thank goodness. There's far less soil moisture, so where the ground isn't frozen it can absorb water.  Main rivers wouldn't cause too many problems, as they're running pretty low from this autumn's drought. 

But still, keep an eye on this, because we could have some local problems with small streams, or water flowing into basements. Especially in areas where the ground is frozen so water can't soak in readily. And areas with a lot of snow on the ground that will melt. Plus, we've had a lot of experience lately with storms that tend to "over-achieve" and be more intense than forecast. 

Nature will throw a bone to snow lovers as it does appear the rain will change to snow Wednesday night. It's too soon to say whether anybody will pick up a lot of snow, or just a dusting. But my initial guess is we will end the midweek storm in most of Vermont with less snow than when we started. 

THURSDAY/ONWARD

It will turn seasonably cold after the midweek storm, but of course forecasts are questionable beyond a few days, so I won't get into what will happen late in the week and next weekend. It's just too soon to call, but if I had to guess, I'd say nothing that exciting would happen in the weather department a week from now.