Saturday Morning Update: Snow Ending, Freezing Rain Looms Sunday Night/Monday

The latest National Weather Service forecast for
ice accumulation from freezing rain Sunday night
and Monday. Areas in red could get a quarter inch
of ice or more. A quarter inch is where you start to
get some scattered tree and power line damage. 

As expected, it snowed overnight in most of Vermont.

I'm writing this early, so I don't have much in the way of accumulation reports. Here in St. Albans, we received an inch of fluff. There's probably at least a few inches of new snow on the ground in southwest Vermont. 

As of 6:30 a.m. I could hear the snowplows circulating around Franklin County and I'm sure the same is true all across the state. Except maybe in parts of the Northeast Kingdom where it didn't snow. 

It'll be a quiet, cold weekend, but we're already gearing up for our next storm. Skies might be a little slow to clear today, but the sun is expected to come out at some point. Tonight will be clear, and that means cold. Lows should once again be within a few degrees either side of zero for most of us. 

Light winds Sunday mean that warm air moving in aloft won't be able to mix down into the valleys easily, which sets us up for our icy weather Sunday night and early Monday.  As we've been advertising, we have a bunch of freezing rain to deal with to deal with.

FREEZING RAIN ALERT

 If you have anywhere to drive around Vermont, try to be home by 7 p.m. Sunday. Light bits of freezing rain could start by that hour, and it doesn't take much to make a mess of the roads. The bulk of the ice will start a bit later, maybe 10 or 11 p.m.  Keep an eye on forecast, though. The timing might change with  updated information. 

Freezing rain should hit everywhere in Vermont Sunday night. But some places will warm up faster than others as we get into the early morning hours Monday. 

At this point, I'd count on icy, dangerous driving conditions pretty much everywhere when it's time to go to work or school or wherever you're going Monday morning. If you can work from home, definitely do that. 

Places like the valleys of southwest Vermont and the Champlain Valley will get above freezing first. At this point, those areas could poke above freezing at around dawn. But it's been cold, so even if it's 33 or 34 degrees or something like that, rain will probably still freeze on contact with roads and sidewalks. If it's above freezing where you are Monday morning, don't take that as an all clear. It'll still be a mess out there. 

I have a feeling emergency rooms will be busy Monday treating people for injuries from falls on the ice. Best to be careful, or stay in, especially if - no offense - you're older and have more brittle bones 

Eastern Vermont is an even bigger problem with this storm. The freezing rain will last further into the morning. And rainfall rates might be a little higher on the eastern slopes of the Green Mountains than in the west. 

That means more ice that will last longer. In addition to the atrocious road conditions, there's a chance of some tree damage and power outages east of the Greens. 

This will by no means be anywhere close to the scale of the Great Ice Storm of 1998. But the eastern half for Vermont especially might have a few scattered problems with ice-laden branches sagging into power lines, or branches breaking off trees entirely. 

I'll also throw in a note saying that forecasting freezing rain ice accumulation is a tricky business. There could easily be less or more ice accumulating than the current forecast for your area. It all depends om when the slightly warmer air can mix down to the ground where you live.

Eventually, everybody gets into the "warm" air for a little while Monday afternoon. We should get into the 30s to low 40s. But the storm's cold front is scheduled to come in during the late afternoon or early evening. 

That'll drop temperatures back below 32 degrees really quickly. Remaining ice from the morning will harden up, and any puddles will freeze too. It won't get above freezing again for a long time after Monday. So we'll be stuck with the ice underfoot for a long time. 

We'll get some snow on the back side of the storm, too as we go through Monday night. Not much in the valleys. but the mountains could pick up several inches. A reinforcing shot of Arctic air from Canada on New Year's Day will probably add a bit more light snow to the landscape.