Christmas Day In Vermont Is Wintry, Will Get Even More So

Henry the Weather Dog is seen here wishing 
everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
He's staying inside as temperatures plunge'
through the teens today. 

Merry Christmas, Vermont!!

As you're opening your presents this morning, the landscape outside is nicely covered in snow. In some areas of the Green Mountain State, more light snow is drifting down. 

The white Christmas we're experiencing is mostly due to that storm we had Tuesday and Tuesday night, which behaved pretty much as expected, at least here in Vermont. 

Almost everyone in Vermont got three to six inches of snow, so it was a pretty uniform distribution. Everybody had a piece of the snow party. There were a couple exceptions, both on the high and low end of the tally.

The most snow I could find out of the storm was nine inches in Northfield and eight inches in both Woodbury and Moretown.  Parts of southwestern Vermont got cheated a little. Western Rutland and Bennington counties, along with the extreme southeastern corner of the state only got 1 to 2.5 inches of snow.

TODAY

It's wintry out there, and it's going to get more even more wintry.   

Map showing total snowfall from the storm that 
ended yesterday. Click on the map to make it
bigger and easier to see. Most of the state 
received three to six inches of snow. 

The scattered snow this morning is due to an Arctic cold front pressing down on us from the north. As the frigid air starts to blast in this afternoon, the temperature will plunge and the winds will pick up.

Temperatures in most of the Green Mountain State are in the 20s this morning and will fall through the teens this afternoon. 

Winds will pick up and gust to 35 mph tor so his afternoon. If you're doing anything outside today, like taking a walk, or a quick ski or snowshoe, it's best to do it this morning. 

The snow will stop by this afternoon in most of the state but there will be a few exceptions. The mountains could continue to get flurries, that's not weird. 

The weird part is some lake effect snows. Parts of the Champlain Valley and adjacent hills to the east could get some lake effect snow off of Lake Champlain. This could affect road conditions a little in southern Chittenden, Addison and maybe northwestern Rutland County. 

Tonight, the wind will eventually die off,  and skies will clear out. The combination will help cause temperatures to plunge to zero or below in most of the state.

SATURDAY

Skies will tend to cloud up on Saturday due to a weird storm passing by to our west, and there might be some weird wrinkles to it. Most storms travel from southwest to northeast, or sometimes just west to east. Sometimes, Alberta clippers, those small, quick moving storms with light precipitation, do move southeastward to some extent.

The next storm in the pipeline is heading toward the southeast. Current projection have it in Michigan tomorrow morning, and somewhere around New Jersey early Saturday. The difference is this storm has more oomph to it than most Alberta clippers.

Most of Pennsylvania and New Jersey are under winter storm watches because several inches of snow, -plus dangerous amounts of freezing rain are likely to assault those areas Friday into early Saturday. 

I'm bringing all this up because this might affect at least parts of Vermont. Earlier forecasts indicated we would only see some light flurries south. Now, the computer models have edged the projected path of the storm northward a bit. 

At this point, the forecast has a little snow falling Friday night south and west of Interstate 89. Areas down around Bennington County would get one to three inches of snow. 

But if the trend continues with a more and more northward path for this storm, more of Vermont might get more snow. Stay tuned.

There's still yet another storm for later on Sunday, and this one looks like it will probably consist of a messy mix of snow, sleet, freezing rain and rain. We'll have more details as we get close to that icky, icy storm.