Vermont Sunday Morning: Back To The Slowly Deepening Snow Pack Amid Cold December

The next round of snow this afternoon and tonight
looks light and fluffy, but will add to the deep snow
in the mountains. As you can see in this National
Weather Service map, many places in northern
Vermont can expect a good two inches of new
snow by tomorrow morning, while southern
Vermont valleys get very little. 

It snowed a little again last night in much of northern Vermont, part of a slowly deepening snowpack that has been really piling up in the Green Mountains since early November. 

Most places got an inch or less last night, with a few places receiving nothing at all. But a couple more inches hit the central and northern ski areas.

The difference between valley and mountain in terms of snow cover is always wide. This year, it's extreme. 

In the Champlain Valley, Burlington has had 13.3 inches of snow this season as of yesterday, which is 4.4 inches above normal. Respectable enough, but some of the Green Mountains are absolutely bonkers with snow.   

Jay Peak is always basically a snow globe, but this year it's ridiculous. The ski resort there reports 22 inches of new snow in the first week of December for a total so far of 141 inches. 

Even if you factor in ski resort snow report inflation, they've had an impressive early winter so far. Jay Peak has  definitely dropped the warning, "early season conditions exist" from their snow report, since conditions are more like midwinter.

Up on Mount Mansfield, there was four feet of snow at the measuring stake just below the summit. That's close to a record depth for this time of year. On average, snow cover at the Mount Mansfield stake does't reach four feet until late January. 

Between the persistent cold weather that's been great for snowmaking and the manna from the snow gods, this is Vermont's best start to ski season in years, maybe even decades. 

NEXT UP

Coming up: A, little more snow. 

This afternoon will only make it into the 20s - maybe upper teens in the high elevations north. If you saw glimpses of sun this morning, that's it for bright skies today as that next wave of light snow moves in this afternoon.  

This will be another mostly northern Vermont thing, with two to as much as four inches of fluff overnight. Even northern valleys should get at least two inches of snow. Amounts will taper off once you get into the valleys in southern parts of the state. Those places will get a dusting at best.

The cold regime we've been enduring will continue big time as we start the week, too. Burlington - and numerous other valley towns - managed to sneak above freezing briefly Saturday. That was our big thaw, I guess.

The snow should pretty much end before dawn in most spots. But that new snow, and blowing snow, and temperatures plummeting into the single digits means we'll once again deal with a crappy morning commute on the roads Monday morning. I know. Sigh. 

Monday itself will be another frigid day as we only make it into the teens during the afternoon. That's about 20 degrees colder than average for this time of year.  Then, tomorrow night, it's back below zero for many of us. 

Tuesday looks quiet and cold, as temperatures recover into the 20s. 

The next storm comes along Wednesday. Again, it'll be a not-that-big affair. And since it's going by to our west, it'll push another brief squirt of warmer air into the region. By "warm" I mean near normal for this time of year. 

Since the warmer valleys might get into the 30s, some rain might mix in during the day. But the mountains will pretty much remain snow through the entire storm.

Starting Wednesday, a gigantic blast of Arctic air will come into the U.S., eventually affecting everyone north and east of a line from Montana to Georgia. 

Yesterday I mentioned we might get a second storm on Friday. It's beginning to look possible that the g huge gush of frigid air might be so strong that it would suppress that second storm to our south, and we'd miss out. It's a little soon to tell for sure. 

We do know that temperatures will be heading downhill later in the week once again. Plus, there will be disturbances in that icy air flow that will trigger more snow from time to time, especially in the northern Green Mountains. So the snow will continue to deepen in those mountains through the entire upcoming week. 

 

Tuesday Morning Storm Update: Havoc Nationwide; In Vermont Icy Mix To Canadian Border

People try to free cars stuck on ice and snow amid subzero
wind chills in (checking notes) Waco, Texas.

The mad, mad, mad weather of February continues, with widespread power outages in the South affecting millions, a growing death toll,  tornadoes, every kind of precipitation in the book, and finally, a glimmer of hope that this will all end. 

Meanwhile, here in Vermont, the latest winter storm turned into a sleety mess all the way to the Canadian border, and we're watching the next storm for Thursday night. More on that in a minute.

First, as usual, we need to summarize the awfulness going out in much of the nation right now.  5 million people had no electricity across the nation, 4 million of them in Texas. 

CNN is reporting at least 15 deaths so far, mostly due to crashes on icy highways.

The famous phrase, "Houston, we have a problem," has never been more true than today, and it applies to all of Texas, really. 

The crisis involving the power grid in Texas worsened overnight.  Intense cold has frozen equipment at gas generated power stations, shutting at least 30 of them down.   Despite the current narrative, frozen out wind turbines are not the main issue.  Reports are probably 2 percent of the state's wind turbines went offline because of the extreme weather. 

With record temperatures statewide, demand is through the roof. So practically the entire electrical system in Texas shut down.  The result is roughly 4 million homes and businesses in Texas without power. Some people have had no power since yesterday morning. 

Homes now have interior temperatures below freezing and frozen pipes are bursting all over.  I greatly fear that news will emerge of many deaths from exposure to the cold due to this situation. This is especially true among the elderly and the poor, who don't have the resources to move to a toastier refuge or buy supplies to keep them warm. 

So, watch this space. 

The extreme weather is causing all kinds of weirdness. One instance: Arctic sea smoke was seen off of Galveston. That's steam coming off the warm waters and condensing in the frigid air. Arctic sea smoke is common in places like New England.  In coastal Texas, not so much.  

Lake effect snow flurries were reported downwind from small lakes and bayous around Houston.  Such activity is often seen coming off lakes here in the Great White North - including off of Lake Champlain. But Houston?

The high temperature in Oklahoma City Monday was just 4 degrees.   And OKC managed to do that despite sunny skies! At last report early this morning, it was 10 below in OKC, and the temperature was still dropping. If it makes it to 12 below, it will be the second coldest reading on record there. 

Ahead of the cold front, a deadly tornado struck coastal North Carolina, killing three and injuring 10, NPR reports this morning. 

Elsewhere,  at least three tornadoes touched down in northwest Florida and southwest Georgia, injuring at least one person  More tornadoes are possible today and tomorrow ahead of the second winter storm coming through the South.

That second storm will produce another wave of snow, sleet and freezing rain on top of what is already there in Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana.  This second storm will add another stripe of snow and destructive ice up the Appalachian chain in the coming two days. 

At least there are signs the end of the winter siege is coming.  Grand Forks, North Dakota went above zero last evening for the first time since February 5. 

Next Monday, the forecast high temperatures are 52 in Oklahoma City, 60 in Dallas and 66 in Houston

VERMONT IMPACTS

That trend toward mixed precipitation moving more and more north continued overnight, and as of this morning, sleet was falling all the way north to the Canadian border.

Traffic on snow packed Fairfield Hill Road in St.
Albans, Vermont Tuesday morning as sleet
made things even a bit more slippery. 

This is cutting down on snow accumulation totals, but will make cleaning up the accumulation heavier and harder. So far, it seems like accumulations are in the two to six inch range across most of Vermont.  

As of 5:30 a.m., my place at St. Albans had accumulated just 3.2 inches of snow and sleet and sleet was falling at the time.  Light sleet continued on after that, and it was still coming down as sleet as of 8:30 a.m around here. 

All this is a lot less than expected, at least in the northern half of the state. 

Warm air really moved in aloft over southern Vermont.  A temperature inversion is keeping most areas down there as freezing rain. But to give you an idea of how warm it is aloft, strong downslope winds are pulling the warm air up high down to the surface in Bennington, where it was 41 degrees early this morning. 

Since there was much more sleet than freezing rain in Vermont, so ice didn't cling to trees much. So power failures aren't a big issue. Some ice is clinging to trees in far southern Vermont, but there's only a few isolated outages down there. 

An intrusion of dry air into the storm system was starting to make precipitation come down at a lighter pace as of mid-morning across Vermont.  This state of affairs will continue through the day. However, that warm air aloft will start to erode, so precipitation should turn back to snow. In the north especially, we are in for another one to possibly as much as three inches of additional snow once things switch back. Maybe a little more in the mountains. 

Needless to say, the roads are crappy through the region. Though crews are out, the roads will never get perfect until the snow and stuff ends tonight. 

The next storm down the pike continues to look snowier and snowier, the opposite trend this current storm ran. The projected path of the storm Thursday and Friday keeps going more and more east, so we'll stay in the cold air on the western flank of the storm.

There's even a low chance the next storm's projected path could go so far to the east that some of us miss out on the heavier snow.

Everyone expects plenty more adjustments to the forecast for the next storm after today, so we should sit back, relax and see how it plays out. 

Cold, Ice, Snow Grind On For U.S.; Vermont Cold, Could Still Turn Snowy

A huge 75 car pileup near Fort Worth Texas this morning is
yet another result of the winter storms causing problems
pretty much coast to coast. 

The devilishly cold, icy, snowy weather across the nation is grinding on, with no stop to the rough weather for the next several days. 

This isn't necessarily the most intense winter weather the nation has ever seen. What's making it notable is how long it's lasting.  This is no quick shot for many places. 

There are sure signs things will start to ease in the coldest places next week, but the storminess seems set to continue.

It's hard to keep track of each storm, there's so many, but here goes.

The first one is still bringing ice and snow in a stripe through the Tennessee Valley on up to the Mid-Atlantic States.  There's a wide swath of traffic accidents, and in some cases downed trees and power lines from Texas to Tennessee and Kentucky. (There was one particularly nasty 75-vehicle pileup on an icy highway near Fort Worth, Texas this morning, for instance).

This icy storm will zip out to sea well south of us later today and tonight, with no effects on us here in Vermont. 

The jet stream, which guides storms across the Unites States (and all over the world for that matter) is fairly flat in the eastern half of the United States. So the cold air comes down from Canada and then heads east. That makes us cold here in Vermont, but at least the air is modifying as it comes in. 

We end up with wind chill advisories, a few nights between now and Monday below zero, and daytimes that won't get much warmer than the low teens until Sunday, when we start to flirt with 20 degrees. The weather for the next several days will otherwise be pretty quiet in northern New England for the next few days.

Meanwhile, storms keep coming in off the Pacific Ocean, causing episodes of rain and snow there, and through the Rockies. These storms eventually head east, and over the past week or so have been zipping out to sea south of New England, so we in Vermont only get little bouts of light snow, nothing special. 

That jet stream, which has been pretty much west to east once it gets past the middle of the nation, shows signs of changing.  

It will start to aim southward toward Texas and the Gulf Coast, giving those areas a better chance of snow and ice over the weekend and early next week. 

That jet stream will then start to gradually bend more and more toward the northeast, eventually aiming from near the Gulf Coast to near us.  

If this change really does happen,  we become more prone to storminess here in Vermont. The storms would have a better chance of coming closer to us, and will have more moisture with them, having scooped up water from the Gulf of Mexico.  

The beginning of this shift in the jet stream will begin late this weekend, but will come too late for the next storm on Sunday. That one will bring a bunch of freezing rain, sleet and some snow and to much of the East Coast from probably New Jersey south to parts of the Carolinas.

This storm, like a few of the recent ones, will also  go out to sea too far south to give us anything.  (Some earlier forecasts had this storm coming further north and giving us more snow, but it turns out that's not happening).

Instead, a weaker system will probably dust us with an inch or two of snow Saturday night and Sunday. No biggie. 

Getting into the longer range gets iffy. The trend is for the next storm to be able to make it further north as the jet stream in the East keeps developing more of its south to north orientation. If that happens, we could get a larger snowstorm Tuesday. No promises, as the computer models are still all over the place with this one. Some forecast give us a bunch of snow others take it out to sea for another whiff. 

Yet another storm seems like it might follow on its heels later next week, but who knows what that will do. Just count on an active weather pattern for the next couple weeks. There will be a constant spray of storms coming across the nation. Lots of places will continue to get snow and ice through the end of the month.

Even as the cold eases somewhat, people from coast to coast will surely be battling snow and ice for the rest of the month. 

How many of these storms actually hit us in Vermont later in the month, and precisely how they hit us remains an open question. 

Intense Cold; Harsh Winter Storms Continue Much Of U.S.; Vermont Stays On Fringes

Not in the mood for a nice al fresco breakfast out on the
deck this morning, St. Albans, Vermont. Too snowy,
chilly for outdoor dining, and it will stay like this for awhile.

 Some pretty nasty winter weather - some of the roughest in  years in some parts of the nation are ongoing. If anything, things are about to get worse.  

Think deep freeze, lots of ice in places, and of course, snow. 

Meanwhile, here in Vermont, we'll see some effects of this, but not to the extreme other places will see. More on that in a bit. 

The Northern Plains in particular have been locked in some brutal Arctic air for a few days now and that will only intensify.  And spread south and east. 

An example of the persistent cold comes from our friends in Grand Forks, North Dakota, who by next Monday will have spend 11 consecutive days below zero. 

 Lucky them! Similar chill is widespread from Montana and Upper Michigan and south to Nebraska.

This Arctic air is going to ooze southward toward Texas and spread east to an extent over the next few days. Some forecasts have parts of northern Texas as much as 50 degrees below normal. For instance, normal afternoon highs in Amarillo are in the upper 50s this time of year, but they'll be lucky to make it to 10 above zero by Sunday afternoon.

Meanwhile, warmer, wetter air over the Southeast is fighting tough against this Arctic invasion. The result has been, over the past few days, a series of winter storms along the battle zone between the Arctic chill and the southern warmth. 

This winter weather battle zone has mostly extended from the places like Arkansas east-northeastward to the Middle Atlantic States on up to southern New England.

Another storm is going by with a stripe of snow today out of the Ohio Valley and into southern New England with several inches of snow 

The warm air from the Southeast keeps trying to glide north but is forced to rise up and over the cold, dense air to the north and west.  This sets the stage for a lot of freezing rain in the coming days in parts of the Tennessee and Ohio valleys and - once again  - parts of the Mid-Atlantic states tomorrow and Thursday. 

Yet another storm in the east is possible over the weekend. 

VERMONT EFFECTS

We've definitely got cold weather coming up in the Green Mountain State, and some chances for snow here and there, but for now, the worst of the weather seems to want to stay to our west and south. 

Remember that battle zone I just described? We're north of it. Some snow does manage to sneak into Vermont from time to time, but we're escaping much of it. 

Today's little system isn't a blockbuster, but will provide another three to seven inches of snow to a good chunk of southern New England.  Far southern Vermont should share in that mini-dump.

Northern Vermont is further away from the storm and will only get light snow. The National Weather Service in South Burlington is going for one to as many as three inches north and east of Interstate 90 and two to four inches south and west of that line. 

The snow will be very fluffy and easy to shovel. However, roads are slick in spots for this morning's commute and the same can be said for the trip home late this afternoon.

Next up: The cold.  Remember how I said that huge blob of Arctic air over the middle of the nation was being blocked in its southward progress by stubborn warm, humid-ish air over the Southeast.

Well that cold air has to go somewhere, so some of it is heading east - towards us.  Luckily, it'll get modified on its trip toward Vermont. Which means it will get very cold, but we won't exactly be East Grand Forks (see above).

Instead, temperatures will decline as we go through the rest of the week.  Afternoon highs Friday and Saturday will only be in the single numbers and low teens with lows a little below zero. Yes, uncomfortable, but we've seen worse. 

The cold, dry, dense air over us will keep the storm track well to our south Wednesday through Saturday, so very little if any snow will fall during that period. 

The core of the cold air will stay to our west through the weekend, and that warm air will stay to the Southeast, so the winter storm battle line continues.

The weather forecasting computer models are having a terrible time figuring out how storms and precipitation will play out more than a couple days in advance. So anything starting I'd say Saturday is a wild card. 

Originally, a decent storm was suppose to come up our way Friday, but as noted, that will stay way south of us. Now, some of the models give us some sort of decent storm Sunday, but not all of them. The computer models have all been flip-flopping between snow, even mixed precipitation later on Sunday, or just continued dry, cold weather.

So, at this point, flip a coin for Sunday. I have no freakin' clue what will happen then and neither does anybody else.  We'll know more in a couple days. 

A Bit Of Snow After All, Then A Quick Arctic Blast Vermont/New England

Forecast map showing the upper air flow across the
nation early Friday. Click on it to make it bigger
and easier to see. That little swirl with "L" over us
is a fragment of the polar vortex coming that
by then will have come down from Canada, 
giving us a quick shot of Arctic air. 

As always, there's a couple of adjustments to the forecast here in northern New England, as there always is when there's a lot of activity in the atmosphere. 

We ARE off to the expected start this morning, with temperatures for most of us below zero.  

It was 1 above in Burlington at 7 a.m. As of this writing, it's unclear if it got to zero in Burlington, but if it did, it would be the first one this winter.  And a very late first zero indeed! 

Now for those forecast adjustments:

I mentioned yesterday those storms that were forecast to pass by to our south leaving us high and dry in the snow department.  Well, it turns out the first one is now expected to come close enough to us to wring out a little snow. 

For Vermont snow lovers, that's just a little bit of extra glory, right?

This is by no means going to be a block buster. Just a light covering to freshen things up a bit. Plus, there's still some question as to whether all of us will get some snow or not. 

As it stands now, the National Weather Service in South Burlington is going with an expected one to three inches of snow for much of Vermont Tuesday night and early Wednesday.  There could well be less than that in parts of the north, and maybe a bit more than that in some spots south of Route 4. 

That second storm I talked about is still forecast to pass out to sea well, well south of us Thursday, and become that big ocean storm. 

But there's a wrinkle there, too. 

COLD BLAST COMING

Earlier this month I told you about something called a Sudden Stratospheric Warming, which I said would blow to pieces the Polar Vortex up closer to the North Pole. (For review, the Polar Vortex is a big whirl of cold air in the atmosphere wandering up near the North Pole.  Despite the hype in the past, this thing is perfectly normal and is usually around somewhere to our north).

Anyway, as expected, that Sudden Stratospheric Warming earlier this month indeed blow that Polar Vortex into pieces. (Don't worry, it'll re-form up north and return to something in the neighborhood of normal).

One broken piece of that Polar Vortex will be pulled southward Thursday by that future big ocean storm. The piece of Polar Vortex will move northwest to southeast almost right overhead at the end of the week.

Don't worry, the end of the week Polar Vortex fragment for us is most certainly not the end of the world.

It does mean, however, we're in for the biggest Arctic blast of the winter so far. Don't worry about that, either.  By Vermont standards, this cold snap Friday and Saturday is something we see almost every winter and won't break any records. 

It does mean windy and bitterly cold weather Friday and Saturday, with some nasty wind chills, probably in the 20s below zero.  Actual high temperatures will only get to the single numbers above zero, as it stands now, with I'm guessing 5 to 15 below readings at night. 

The cold won't last long. That fragment of the Polar Vortex will keep on going by, ending the quick cold shot by Sunday afternoon. By then it'll be up to at least near 20 degrees, and it will probably get even warmer than that heading into the following week.