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| Map from the National Weather Service in South Burlington shows predicted ice accumulation tonight and Monday. Areas in read could receive a quarter inch or more of ice, which might lead to a few power outages. Roads will be terrible everywhere late tonight and Monday morning. |
As we get ready for our looming icy weather here in Vermont, I have an editor's note. This update might be somewhat scattered and incomplete as I'm staying at a hotel with a malfunctioning router. Hard to get anything done with that situation.
That technological whine out of the way, it's time to whine about the icy weather.
A giant storm is about to cause havoc from Minnesota to Maine, and elsewhere with an incredible variety of dangerous weather. I'll get into how it'll affect other places in a bit, but for my Vermont readers, let's start with the Green Mountain State.
It was another frigid morning here in Vermont this morning, with most of us clocking in below zero at dawn. A couple places near Lake Champlain were just above zero, but that's about it.
This all helps set the stage for our icy storm for tonight and Monday. You'll have the calm before the storm today, with light winds and increasing clouds overhead. It'll be seasonably cold with highs in the 20s.
The steady freezing rain will start between 8 and 10 p.m. in southern Vermont, reach to a point along Interstate 89 between 10 p.m. and midnight and perhaps a little after midnight in the Northeast Kingdom, according to the National Weather Service office in Burlington.
This is an estimate, as the freezing rain could arrive slightly earlier or later than I've outlined here. Just to be safe, if you're headed home to Vermont, or wherever you might be driving in the state, try to be there by 7 or 8 this evening. We're under a winter weather advisory from 7 p.m. today to 4 p.m. Monday.
This is a strong storm with lots of moisture. It's essentially drawing an atmospheric river northward from the Gulf of Mexico into the Great Lakes states and Northeast. For us, that means the freezing rain will come down pretty hard, and accumulate pretty quickly on everything.
In the Champlain Valley, slightly warmer air should come to the rescue, changing the freezing rain to rain around dawn. The pavement will still be cold, so ice will continue to accumulate there after the temperature gets to 33 or 34 or so. But the "warmer" air should limit ice accumulation to less than a quarter inch.
Be prepared for a slow commute amid the freezing rain and rain in the Champlain Valley. Watch your step on untreated sidewalks, driveways, outdoor staircases and such. You can really hurt or even kill yourself in a fall outdoors in an ice storm, A fall that involves banging your head on the ground can lead to permanent disability. I know I'm not exactly being a bundle of laughs here, but ice is serious.
In most of the rest of the state, it will be even worse.
The subfreezing temperatures should hang on well into the morning in much of the rest of Vermont, especially east of the Greens. The horrible road conditions will continue. But there's other dangers.
You begin to get a few isolated problems with broken tree limbs and power lines once ice gets to be a quarter inch thick on everything.
Most places east of the Greens are forecast to receive that magical quarter inch of ice, and a few places might approach a half inch.
So I expect a few power outages there. Some trees and branches will come down. Parts of northern New York, New Hampshire and Maine are in the same boat with that
Eventually, pretty much all of us go to plain rain as afternoon temperatures rise to roughly the 35 to 40 degree range. A few colder pockets northeast might hang on to the freezing rain all day. Rain and melted ice will amount to three quarters of an inch to an inch in most spots, so it's a pretty substantial storm.
We're not done yet.
By later Monday afternoon and Monday evening, the storm's sharp cold front arrives. We'll see a gush of strong west winds and rapidly falling temperatures, and some snow showers. It could briefly snow really hard in some places. That means things will get messy again as everything freezes up and the additional snow makes things worse
We really don't have a perfect bead on when the cold front comes through. Hopefully the worst hits after the Monday afternoon drive time but I'm not sure yet. We'll have more on this with later updates.
STORM HAVOC ELSEWHERE
This is one powerful storm that will be strengthening fast as it moves through the Great Lakes and into southeast Canada over the next day or so.
Several areas are under blizzard warnings. One such blizzard warning goes from eastern North Dakota through western and southern Minnesota into northern Iowa. Winds today into tomorrow morning could gust to 55 mph in this area as four to 10 inches of snow blasts through.
An even more impressive blizzard warning is up for the Upper Pennisula of Michigan, where up to two feet of snow will fall today and tomorrow amid gust to 65 mph. Those intense winds will also push Lake Superior water into shoreline areas of the northern Upper Peninsula.
The storm's winds will be so strong that they are expected to cause a seiche on Lake Eries. A seiche is caused by strong winds that will essentially tilt the lake by pushing water into its eastern end. ,Which means the Lake Erie water will be strangely low near Toledo, Ohio, but flood shorelines in places like Buffalo, Hamburg and Dunkirk, New York.
Western New York is really kind of ground zero for this storm anyway, given all the trouble they'll see from this monster. Heavy rain from tonight into early Monday could cause flooding along streams and rivers in that region.
Once the cold front arrives, strong west winds could gust to 70 mph in parts of western New York, especially near Buffalo and Niagara. Then, Monday and well into the upcoming week, lake effect snows are likely to dump one to two feet of snow, locally more, on the eastern ends of Lakes Erie and Ontario.
Since this storm is so huge and intense, it's generating a lot of wind through an enormous area. Wind advisories and warnings stretch from Texas to the Dakotas, then through the entire Great Lakes region and into much of the Northeast.
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