April Snow Over-Performed In Vermont Today, Oddly Frigid Night Tonight Before Spring Returns

Back to the middle of winter early this evening in 
St. Albans, Vermont after a day-long snowfall. Small
dark splotches on ground in foreground are 
daffodil shoots coming up. 

As expected, it was a snowy one in much of Vermont today. It seemed the most persistent snow was over the Champlain Valley and the central and northern Green Mountains. 

Had this snow come through at night, several areas in the Champlain Valley and elsewhere in northern as Vermont would have had perhaps two to five inches of snow.  

Almost all the snow today hit during daylight hours. Though it was below freezing out there when it was snowing, enough heat came through the clouds from the high angled April sun that some of the snow melted as more while was falling from the sky. 

If you measured on pavement or bare ground, there was little if any snow, because of that solar radiation. This was good, because main roads, especially in low elevations, stayed pretty much just wet. Roads today weren't as bad as they could have been, but I did see some slick spots out there.

On grassy services and elevated decks, the snow piled up. On Facebook, people in such disparate places in Vermont as Milton and Jamaica reported to the National Weather Service they had two or three inches of fresh snow on their decks. 

Still, this snow turned out to be a bit on an over-performer, especially for this time of year.  Some mid and high elevations really got some serious accumulation. Walden, Vermont reports 4.9 inches of new snow. About 3.5 inches of new snow graced Camels Hump State Park. 

Here in St. Albans, I measured 1.4 inches of new snow on my deck as of 6 p.m. It was still snowing a little at the time, but it was tapering off and I don't anticipate much additional accumulation. Either here or anywhere else in Vermont. 

In Burlington, the National Weather Service reported 1.6 inches of new snow so far today. That's nowhere near the record, because a large snowstorm hit on this date in 1974, dumping 7.3 inches of snow on Burlington. 

We escaped anything like that, so I guess we were lucky, but it still looks like the middle of winter out there. At least in the Champlain Valley and northern Greens. 

Southern Vermont got their inch or so of snow early this morning, and ended up getting very little during the day. I noticed areas east of the Green Mountains south of Route 2 appear to have gotten little or no snow, too.

 TONIGHT

Now, there's snow on the ground in most of northern Vermont and New York, It's really unlikely to melt before sunset. Satellite imagery early this evening showed the disturbance causing the snow is moving out and clearing skies were moving in from the north and west. 

Those skies should be pretty clear by a few hours after sunset. Winds will go light and variable, so the stag is set for one of the coldest April nights in a decade, or more than a generation, depending on how things work out. 

The last time Burlington had an April temperature as cold or colder than what's anticipated tonight was in 2016 when it hit 14 degrees.  The last time it was colder than that was 10 degrees in April, 1995. 

It doesn't look like much snow accumulated around Montpelier today, but they still have an excellent shot of reaching a record low of 14 by morning. 

I'll  have updates, of course, tomorrow morning.