Getting a late start this morning, as I decided to sleep in. Sue me.
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| The storm is over, but the snow remains on the roads this morning. This traffic cam grab shows Willliston Road in the Burlington area as it crosses over Interstate 89. The Interstate looked pretty good, but other, secondary roads statewide will continue to have snow and ice on them, possibly all week. |
Anyway, snow amounts ended up being pretty impressive from the storm that just departed. And the most impressive amounts weren't where they were supposed to be.
Southern Vermont was going to be the big winner, with some spots expected to get up to two feet. But I had trouble finding anyone in the far south that had more than a foot.
The big snows were in central and northern Vermont, where almost everybody except the far northern Champlain Valley had a foot or more of snow. The biggest totals I saw were 21 inches in Roxbury, 20.5 inches in East Randolph, and 20 inches in Northfield, Moretown and Cavendish.
"DRY" SNOW
The snow to water ratio in the snow was very low. It was quite a fluffy storm, I guess you could say. In that sense, it wasn't as impressive of a storm as it looked on paper. There have been storms with this much snow with a much greater water content than the snowfall we just got.
This snow is relatively easy to clear. Since there's so much air in it, you'll see the snow depth on the ground decline quite a bit, despite the fact there's nothing close to a thaw in the forecast.
The snow will just settle as some of the air escapes from it.
I am puzzled by data from the National Weather Service office in Burlington. According to them, there was 8.6 inches of snow in Burlington Monday for a storm total of 15.6 inches.
That 8.6 inches of snow yesterday supposedly only amounted to 0.05 water equivalent. Either something is off, or maybe Burlington set some sort of record for "driest" snow.
Most snowstorms have very roughly a 10 to one snow to water equivalent. In other words, ten inches of snow would equal an inch of rain. A storm like yesterday's with its fluffy snow I imagine would have a 20 to one or even 30 to one ratio.
I would have expected 8.6 inches of snow to have at least a quarter inch of rain in it if not more. I messaged the National Weather Service office for an explanation. They replied that they have an automated system that collects snow and water measurements. When the snow is particularly light and fluffy, the automated systems has a hard time catching the snow, so it under-reports the amount of "water" that fell.
Actual human observers measure the snow, so that 8.6 inches that was measured is reliable.
FRIGID WEATHER
When there's deep fresh snow, nights can get colder than they otherwise would be.
We saw that last night, as it was even colder than forecast. For instance, Burlington got down to minus 2. Montpelier and Middlebury were minus 7.
If you like wearing Hawaiian shirts and flip flops outdoors, you've got a looonnnng wait before you can do it.
It's going to stay colder than normal for the foreseeable future.
We're still looking at highs in the teens all week and lows near or below zero. They've actually cut a couple degrees off of daily temperatures compared to previous forecasts. It looks especially cold around Friday, when highs might not get out of the single numbers and lows could be well below zero.
It still looks like we'll have very little snow to add to what we got the past couple days. Some light snow showers might pass through today but they wont amount to much.
Note that road conditions might not be great today. It's so cold that our limited supply of salt is not doing a good job melting away any snow or black ice from the pavement. Traffic cams show Interstates 89 and 91 weren't too bad, as of 9 a.m. but some places still had snow in the passing lanes.
But between the cold and the salt shortage, assume local roads and streets will be snow covered, possibly icy and slippery. That problem, frankly could last most of the week in some spots.
The computer models are still generating a strong nor'easter off the East Coast Sunday. The storm has the potential to cause real trouble right along the coast. But for us in Vermont, it still looks unlikely we'll get anything from it other than an increase in cold north winds.
We'll see if the forecasts take a northwestward shift like the last storm did, but so far, there's no signs of that happening.
Remember how I've been telling you it looks like it will remain mostly quite cold until mid-February? It's beginning to look like that deep winter chill will go past that, possibly until the end of next month.
We'll wait and see if that turns out to be accurate. But I hope you have money saved for your heating bills!
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