Wednesday Evening Vermont Update: Rather Dramatic Storm Overnight, Early Thursday. Snow, Ice, Rain, Wind, Thunder

Skies darkening over St. Albans, Vermont late this
afternoon as we brace for a relatively short but
dramatic storm of snow, ice, wind, rain and probably
thunder. Things get better tomorrow late morning. 

The tornado warnings are popping like crazy in the Midwest and South as our anticipated big twister outbreak gets underway, followed by the epic, record flood event in parts of the nation's middle that we talked about this morning. 

Unfortunately, I think it's going to be a deadly and destructive few days, so our hearts go out to the many people who are going to be victims of this. 

I don't have much more to say about that right now as the those huge storms develop, so I'll focus this evening on our own little drama setting up in Vermont. 

It won't necessarily be deadly or super damaging, but it will be noticeable. 

VERMONT TONIGHT

In short, expect a relatively short lived, but rather dramatic storm in Vermont tonight and early Thursday. 

I hope you weren't planning on getting much sleep in the early morning hours between midnight and dawn. 

An impressive meteorological moment is setting the stage for a burst of snow, then a period of perhaps heavy sleet to rattle against your windows, then freezing rain in the eastern half of Vermont and finally rain. Some of that rain would come in the form of downpours that would roar on your roof.

In northwestern Vermont, high winds will howl with gusts in some areas pushing or exceeding 50 mph.

The pièce de rèsistance could well be loud thunder we might hear during all this weather chaos.  If it does thunder - and there's a decent chance of it - those rumbles and peals would be louder than you'd expect in a normal storm. 

The temperature inversion that will help create the sleet and freezing rain would  also deflect noise from thunder back down to the ground, onto us. 

The snow should arrive this evening, but quickly go over to a mix.  The atmosphere a few thousand feet overhead should warm remarkably quickly, gaining about 25 degrees - from subfreezing levels to well above freezing - with six or so hours. 

That'll drive the quick changeover from snow to ice. Especially since down here near the ground, things won't be able to warm quite as fast.

We're also starting from a somewhat colder temperature than what we thought earlier, so almost everybody gets a quick slug of snow. 

That will be followed by a period of sleet, which will also come down hard at times. Then, in western Vermont, we'll see a quick switch to freezing rain then rain. 

Over on the eastern half of the state, the freezing rain should hang on longer  Forecasters have actually increased the areas expecting near a quarter inch of ice. That's because the freezing rain will come down pretty torrentially at times, allowing for a quick accumulation. 

A few places might accumulate enough ice to create some power outages, but it won't be widespread. Northwest Vermont can expect a few outages as well, because of the strong winds overnight, and not so much the ice. 

There's plenty of lightning upstream with this system in Michigan, which is why the thinking is we'll have some thunderstorms, too. 

Like I said, this should be a quick hitter, so we're basically done with it by mid morning, maybe a bit later in the Northeast Kingdom.

Since the bulk of this mess is going by so fast, it won't have time to put down a tremendous amount of precipitation. Which means there's no flooding threat. 

THURSDAY

On paper, the storm shouldn't be over in the morning. You might expect a round of more showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon as a cold front approaches. But the air aloft will be too dry to really support that kind of thing, and there won't be enough instability to create the updrafts you need to produce storms. 

So we might end up with a few scattered showers, but not much else in the mild air that will engulf us tomorrow.  After a chilly Wednesday and our wintry, stormy night, it's back to spring tomorrow.  It'll get into the upper 50s to mid 60s. 

Winds will pick up again in the afternoon, this time from the west. Northwest Vermont, and some of the eastern slopes of the Green Mountains, could see gusts to 50 mph again for a few hours. 

FRIDAY/WEEKEND

Friday is still looking nice enough, with highs in the , but the weekend still looks wet.  Most of us will just see rain Saturday and Sunday, but a few places in the mountains and Northeast Kingdom might see a little mixed precipitation.