A Brief New Year's Eve Early Eveing Vermont Forecast

Updated National Weather Service snow accumulation
map for tonight and early tomorrow. Most of us get
two or three windblown inches. More than that in
the mountains, a little less in the immediate
Champlain Valley. Roads iffy most of overnight. 

Darkness has fallen as of 5 p.m. as we ride out the last few hours of 2025. 

There's been minor updates to the weather forecast for our celebrations, but the overall prediction remains the same as I outlined this morning. 

As we go through the evening, there will be a rising chance of light snow as what is now a small storm develops over western New York and then drifts over northern Vermont overnight and into the wee hours of tomorrow. 

Southern Vermont, especially Bennington County, is in a position in relation to the storm to have better moisture and dynamics in the atmosphere than other sections of Vermont. 

So in the southwest corner of the state, we've got a winter weather advisory overnight for three to six inches of snow. The higher amounts will fall in the southern Green Mountains. 

Winds will pick up overnight and into the morning. That sets the stage for blowing snow. It'll be a light and fluffy snow, which blows around easily. It'll also be falling on a hard crust of snow, thanks to the freezing rain we had the other day. 

That solid crust means there won't be much friction to keep the new snow in place when the wind blows. We'll end up with more visibility problems and snow drifts than usual from a snowfall this size.

On the roads, it won't be the end of the world as far as their conditions. But it's cold enough so the snow will stick, and conditions will get slick pretty much statewide. Add in the risk of the occasional New Year's Eve drunk driver and it gets a little more dangerous. If you're out partying tonight, drive defensively, slowly and sober tonight, folks!

Aside from the Green Mountain mountain chain and parts of southern Vermont, most of us should still expect two or three inches of snow by the time it mostly stops by the time you're having your Bloody Marys late in the morning tomorrow.  There might only be one to two inches in the immediate Champlain Valley and parts of the lower Connecticut River valley. 

The ski areas should get a decent four to six inches of new snow, with locally higher amounts. Good luck measuring the damn snow, since it will be blowing around so much. 

Which leads us to the other problem. The cold. High temperatures New Year's Day will hit just after midnight tonight, when you're all out there screaming in the New Year. Those temperatures will be in the 20s at midnight, then fall through the teens into the single numbers by tomorrow evening. 

Winds gusting in the 25 to 35 mph range will keep wind chills below zero all day.  It'll stay cold until our next desperate chance of warmup of sort by around next Tuesday. 

Mysterious Tiny Vermont Snowstorm Defies Explanation

While most of Vermont got virtually no snow
on New Year's Eve, a small pocket near
Stowe and Waterbury mysteriously 
received several inches. Photo via
Facebook, Scott Brazen/NWS Burlington

 File this under "The weather always surprises."

Remember how I told you on the afternoon of New Year's Eve that things would be great on Vermont roads?  All we had to worry about was a few flurries and a low overcast. 

That forecast proved true for probably 99 percent of Vermont. 

But a small area along the lower reaches of Route 108 in Stowe, part of Route 100 between Waterbury and Stowe, and a small section of Interstate 89 in Waterbury got a snowstorm New Year's Eve. 

During the day and into the night, that tiny area received up to six, seven, eight inches of snow. The snow just kept falling all afternoon and most of the night.  

The roads in this little zone were snow covered and slippery. Meanwhile, just a few miles up the road in any direction from this snow zone, it was just flurries with pretty much bare ground. 

So what happened?

I have no idea. This tiny little snowstorm has Vermont meteorologists scratching their heads.  This was a weird one.

On New Year's Eve, there was a northwest flow of air, which had a bit of moisture in it. Often in the winter, that situation unloads a few inches of snow on the western slopes of the Green Mountains. The slopes force the air to rise. The rising air cools, moisture condenses and that can lead to that snow on the western slopes. It's very common in Vermont. 

But on New Year's Eve, the condition were not quite right for western slope snow. Those areas all received just a half inch of snow or less.  

Now, the theory of what happened around Stowe  needs you to imagine a submerged boulder in a fast-flowing river. The rushing water goes up and over the boulder.  And then there's a series of waves below the boulder, sort of echoes of the initial wave.  The waves all stay in one place, so they're called standing waves.

Mount Mansfield and the rest of the Green Mountains were doing the same thing as that submerged boulder in the river.  

The air having reached the summit, flowed down the eastern slopes of the Green Mountains. Sinking air usually helps prevent rain or snow, so it's not surprising the immediate eastern slopes of the mountains weren't getting much snow. The ski runs at Mount Mansfield Resort were barely dusted.

Once past those eastern slopes, the air began rising again, the first of those downstream waves.  Remember, rising air helps create snow. 

But, if the northwest wind's first encounter with the western slopes of the Green Mountains manufactured almost no snow, how did the snow develop at the down stream wave in the air?  And why just in that spot and not elsewhere?

My best guess - and it's only a guess - is convergence.  Perhaps the terrain in that spot squeezed the air from either side, funneling it into a narrow space.  Maybe the combination of rising air, and that rising air being compressed from either side was enough to produce snow?  

Under the right conditions, convergence can really boost snow totals. Burlington's greatest snowstorm, 33.1 inches, on January 3, 2010.  Most of Vermont just had a moderate snowstorm that day, the usual six to 12 inches in most areas.

But in Burlington, moist north winds coming from Quebec got squeezed between the Adirondacks and the Green Mountains. That added to lift in the atmosphere so it snowed like hell. (Also, moisture off of Lake Champlain helped boost the snow that day, too). 

By the way, the Stowe-area mini-storm might not have been the only one in Vermont on New Year's Eve. There was a report from Victory, in the Northeast Kingdom, of a local spot with up to six inches of snow, with nothing just two miles away from that location. 

New Year's Eve Is Here: What To Expect In Vermont Tonight, Tomorrow

Yet another day of thick overcast kept Vermont dreary on
New Year's Eve, but at least there's no ice or snow to mess
up the roads tonight. The low clouds might interfere a 
bit with midnight fireworks shows, though. 

 It's been a day of low, dark overcast as a temperature inversion - common for this time of year - has kept clouds trapped below a lid of slightly warmer air several thousand feet above us. 

This continues our long streak of bleak days, but at least we don't have the dense fog that pestered us Vermonters for days this past week.  

The weather forecast continues to look pretty safe, though not gorgeous for any outdoor New Year's Eve festivities tonight. 

A few snowflakes might flutter down from time to time this evening, but they won't amount to anything.  Roads should be in good shape, with no surprise icing like we saw Saturday afternoon.

Temperatures under the thick clouds held in the 20s all day today, as they prevented any weak December sun from boosting readings just a bit.

Those same thick clouds will keep the temperature from falling much tonight.  It should be somewhere between 18 and 25 degrees at midnight, which isn't bad for the season.

We do see one problem with tonight's weather: Fireworks and the low clouds. The overcast is so low that it might interfere with viewing midnight fireworks. Especially in towns that launch them from relatively high elevations, or if they involve fireworks that go way up into the sky before exploding. 

Another problem is the same temperature inversion that's keeping the low clouds locked in place will probably also trap smoke from the fireworks beneath the clouds. The smoke won't disperse all that easily, so we could see some local air pollution problems with this. 

New Year's Day still looks pretty good, fingers crossed. A very weak cold front early in the day should touch off more snow flurries, especially in the mountains and along the south and east shores of Lake Champlain early in the day. 

The cold front doesn't really have much in the way of cold air behind it, but it does have drier air. That could set us up for some - YAYYY! --- sun in the afternoon. No promises, the inversion could hold, but let's be optimistic. If the sun does come out, that would be the first time most of us have seen any sun since Tuesday. 

Temperatures will still be OK tomorrow with highs in the 25-32 range for most of us. 

Happy New Year, everyone!