Monday Morning Vermont Storm Update: Horrible Winds Lots Of Blowing Snow, Frigid

Digging out continues at my house in St. Albans,
Vermont and it will go on for quite awhile yet.
We had 14 inches of new snow with the weekend
storm, bringing the depth on the ground
to around two feet. No place left to put the snow
so I'm glad it stopped falling. 

 The bulk of the snow is finally over after parts of northern Vermont got buried on Sunday. 

Now the cleanup, with is going to be made really difficult by a lot of wind today. And frigid temperatures. 

The wind is the worst part. 

The departing storm is powerful. So is huge, Arctic high pressure well to our west and northwest. We're in the squeeze play between the two of those, and the result will be a terribly windy day. 

Power outages, huge snow drifts and blinding blowing snow in spots will make this perhaps a more trying weather day than Sunday was. 

THE WIND

There was already one big gush of wind in some areas overnight when the first blast of chilly air behind the storm came in.  There was an unofficial report of a gust to 76 in Whitingham.  People in Rutland estimated gusts to at least 50 mph. 

The wind will get worse today. Or at least more widespread. 

High wind warnings in Vermont continue in Bennington, Windham, Windsor and eastern Rutland counties for gusts in the 60 to 65 mph range  Most of eastern New York - and much of the Northeast for that matter - is also under high wind warnings today.

We've already seen a gust to 56 mph this morning in Mendon.

For the rest of Vermont, the wind won't quite make high wind warning criteria, but it will be close. Many of us will see gusts in the 50 to 55 mph  range.

The wind hadn't reached peak strength as of early morning. I saw a lot of reports of gusts in the 30 to 35 range around dawn. 

Map showing expected strongest wind gusts today.
Red areas are 60 mph or more. It's rare to see gusts
in the 45 to 55 mph range predicted in such a wide area 

As the atmosphere mixes better this afternoon, stronger gusts will be brought down from a couple or few thousand feet overhead, and that's when we'll see the strongest gusts. 

Eastern slopes of the Green Mountains might have it the worst, but we'll feel it everywhere. 

Outages

The main result from all this wind will be power outages. After escaping much in the way of downed power lines on Sunday, we've run out of luck.

 As of 8 a.m.  about 1,500 Vermont homes and businesses were without power, almost all of them in southern Vermont.  

The wind was a bit stronger there, and ice is also coating the trees a little, so that makes things more vulnerable. 

I have a feeling we'll see an increase in outages today as winds increase.

SNOW

We won't have much in the way of new snow today, with a dusting in the valleys and a few inches in the northern and central Green Mountains. And parts of the Northeast Kingdom. Those areas are still under a winter weather advisory for two to five inches of new snow today. 

Good luck measuring the snow with all this wind.  Which brings us to the snow that's already on the ground. The winds will blow is around mercilessly, especially in northern Vermont where the snow is especially deep and powdery. 

If you're driving in open areas away from the trees, you might run into ground blizzards, That's when there's really no snow falling, but the blowing snow is so thick you can't see in front of you. 

This can be dangerous because one second everything's fine, and the next you can't see anything because of the blowing snow. 

Traffic cam grab from Route 2 in Alburgh this morning
showing snow blowing across the road. If you look
carefully you can barely see a car amidst 
the snow blowing across the road 

Drifts will be a huge problem, too. As I mentioned yesterday, north/south oriented roads in particular will drift in quickly. A plow might come through to remove the drifts, and within an hour, you might have drifts several feet deep back on the road. 

Given the at the cleanup for yesterday's storm is still ongoing and the snow is blowing around, I'm seeing some school closures in Vermont today and a TON of delayed openings. Check your local listings. 

The wind will continue tonight, and to some extent on Tuesday, so expect blowing and drifting snow to last awhile. 

THE COLD

You'll be lucky to see temperatures rise out of the low teens today which is bad enough. But the strong gusts  will make the wind chill ridiculous. The National Weather Service in South Burlington has issued a cold weather advisory for north central and northeast Vermont. Wind chills there should get down as low as 25 below, so you don't want to mess with that. 

Another cold weather advisory goes into effect tonight in far southern Vermont. 

Those of you lucky enough not to be in an official cold weather alert shouldn't relax.  Wind chills across the state will be in the teens below zero today and tonight. That doesn't quite meet the advisory criteria, but it comes close. 

It'll stay quite cold for a couple more days after today.  Highs Tuesday and Wednesday will be in the teens to around 20, with lows with a few degrees either side of zero.

A slow warming trend will start to kick in Thursday and last through the weekend and probably into next week. Highs in the low 20s Thursday should creep up to near 30 by Sunday. 

That's not exactly warm for late February, but better. 

SOME STATS

The biggest dump of snow I've seen so far in Vermont is 15 inches in Fletcher and Northfield, followed by a handful of 14 inch reports in places like Johnson, Hyde Park and Greensboro. 

Also St, Albans, I ended up with a final total of 14 inches in my yard . There was at least a foot of snow in the ground here before this one started, so the snow is deeper than I've seen in years,

Some places in the Northeast Kingdom now have more than three feet of snow on the ground. 

After a slow start to winter snows, Burlington is now at least temporarily ahead of normal for snowfall this winter.

Burlington collected 11.6 inches of snow from this storm. That brings the total so far this season to 60.9 inches, which is a good three inches above normal for this point in the season. 

Snowfall in Burlington for the month of February so far is 29.7 inches. If no more snow falls in Burlington this month, that will still put February, 2025 in a tie for ninth snowiest February on record. 

Burlington has now had a wee bit more snow this winter than all of last season from October through April, 2024.

If you're in the mood to break all time records, though, you're out of luck. Very little snow is in the forecast for Burlington for the next week, and possibly for the rest of the month.  

Winter Hype Vs Reality: Yes It Will Get Cold, But No Storm Of The Century

On December 30, the American computer models
depicted an intense storm over the Northeast on
January 11. This won't happen, but this type of 
thing doesn't stop the people hyping extremes
on social media from highlighting it for clicks
and revenue. Then the update.......

With the forces of Arctic air gearing up for an invasion into the United States, the social media hype on the weather corners of social media are gearing up for maximum clicks and hoped-for revenue.  

You know the drill

Worst Cold Wave Ever, Millions Will Die Of Hypothermia!!

Entire East Coast To Be Buried In Worst Blizzard Ever!

Huge Florida Snowstorm! Blizzard To Hit Cuba!!

OK, I'm exaggerating, the hype isn't quite that extreme, but you get the point.  

The social media weather weenie click addicts are taking advantage of an upcoming cold wave to really drum up the revenue efforts by telling you the End Of The World Is Nigh, and it's in the form of extreme winter weather. 

If you believe any of this crap, Me and Jackson the Weather Dog are here to calm you down.  The Storm Of The Century is not looming, so we can all take a chill pill.

The weather hype gang is cherry picking some of the more exciting computer model images. Every day, there are dozens and dozens of models and model runs forecasting what might happen a week or more down the road.

These long range models are useful in telling us overall trends. Will it be generally stormy or calm 10 days down the road? More than a week from now, will it be generally warm or generally cold? The long range models can help with those questions.  

What those models can't do is tell us specifically where a storm will be say, ten days from now, how intense it would be and what type of weather it would bring. 

The maps in this post illustrate how both the hype and reality work. 

This morning's American model for the same date as
above, January 11, shows benign weather over
New England. If this came true, we'd have a 
chilly northwest breeze and mountain snow showers.
It's too soon for either map on this page to fully,
accurately predict what will actually happen Jan. 11.

 For fun, I cherry picked one version of  the American model, issued December 30, which shows a super intense, probably destructive storm in the Northeast on January 11. 

If this came true, which it almost certainly won't, New England would face damaging winds, coastal flooding, inland flooding and deep, disruptive snow and ice inland. 

This is precisely the type of image the click bait people jump on. Stuff like this was all over social media. 

Then I took a look at one run of the latest American model, issued this morning, to see what they have planned for January 11. 

The answer? Not much. It shows a moderate, cold northwest wind over New England with some mountain snow showers and a nippy high pressure system approaching. 

Since January 11 is still more than a week away, we probably won't exactly have either of these scenarios, though the calmer version of the two is more likely.  This long range forecasts indicate it  will probably be cold, and a perhaps a bit unsettled on January 11, but it can't give us more details than that. 

What follows is the bottom line. 

Here's what we know:

 It's going to get cold here in Vermont, and in most of the eastern two-thirds of the nation sooner rather than later.  In most places, the cold won't be extreme for the middle of winter, but might intensify some once we get into the second week of the month. 

This won't be the tropical type winter month that we've seen too often in recent years. But it won't be the coldest ever. Not by a long shot. 

It's definitely going to snow in a lot of places, but for the most part it's too soon to say who will really get nailed with deep snow.  Places prone to lake affects snows near the Great Lakes are getting hammered, as you'd expect in this type of weather pattern.

It looks like some sort of storm will spread snow, ice and rain from Kansas to the Middle Atlantic States Sunday and Monday.  Exactly who gets the worst weather and how much they get is still TBA. It looks like it might end up being  a rather disruptive storm in those areas, but, hey, it's winter in the Grand Old U.S. of A.

Here's what we don't know: 

There will be other storms in the next couple weeks, and some places will get nasty amounts of snow, ice, schmutz, wind and cold.   But unlike some breathless things I've seen on YouTube and elsewhere, nobody's getting a repeat or worse of the Blizzard of 1993.

Computer models are also all over the place beyond a few days from now as to how intense the cold will get, where it will be at its worst and how long it will last.  True, the eastern  half of the nation will be nippy for sure..

But it remains to be seen whether this will be a run of the mill January wave or something worse. Winters have generally gotten milder, so even a moderately intense cold snap might feel pretty bad.

Here in Vermont, aside from persistent mountain snow showers, we seem safe from any big winter storms for awhile. The one I mentioned above for Sunday and Monday should pass by well to the south. 

Beyond about five days, it's virtually impossible to tell whether anything will come by to bring us substantial snow.  For what it's worth, the computer models aren't pretty much not showing anything dire for awhile, other than it'll be cold.  

Bottom line: The next time you see somebody tell you that a week from ten days from now, we will have some sort of dire, once in a lifetime weather event, ignore it, and move on. These people don't need the attention. 

The National Weather Service and your reputable local television meteorologists, or people like the Eye on the Sky folks in St. Johnsbury will have a much better handle on things. 

Cold Waves And EVs Don't Mix; Need Better Technology

EVs don't work that great in frigid weather, as many
frustrated Midwesterners saw this week during a cold snap.

Arctic cold blasts and EVs still don't mix.

At least if you want to get somewhere in that Tesla, or whatever EV you prefer. The problem: They don't hold charges very well in frigid temperatures. And it's hard to re-charge them when it's bitterly cold.  

That's a problem for everyone trying to wean us off fossil fuels, which are causing climate change. 

I can see the irony of Arctic cold messing up devices and inventions meant to blunt global warming. I'm sure the climate change deniers are gloating. 

However, climate change does not prevent winter. It can still get damn cold in the winter, especially for those of us in the northern tier of states.  Cold waves are becoming somewhat less frequent, generally not as long lasting and for the most part less intense than they used to be. 

Anyway, back to the EVs. As Axios reports:

"Not only does charging take longer in freezing temperatures, some electric vehicles owners are surprised to find out how much their car's driving range is compromised by winter weather."

So you have EVs that are taking forever to charge, and they have to be charged more frequently because colder than a Karen's glare out there. 

Around Chicago, Tesla supercharging stations were littered with dead cars and people waiting hours to at least attempt to plug in the vehicles. One man quoted by Fox32 Chicago said, "We got a bunch of dead robots out here."

Once car owners waited out the line and finally got their EV to a charger, it took hours to charge in the frigid temperatures. The temperature fluctuated in Chicago between just 3 above zero to 10 below continuously from late Saturday night through 6 a.m. this past Wednesday. Chicago temperatures are forecast to stay below normal until about Monday.

Experts say EV owners should pre-condition their batteries in cold weather, meaning you have to get the battery up to an optimal temperature to accept the right charge.

Good luck with that. Many people don't have garages. And how many heated public parking garages are there for EVs?

There are a lot of reasons that need to be fixed to make EVs better in cold weather. The chemical and physical processes in batteries slow down when it's cold, which is part of the reason why their range doesn't last and it takes longer to charge

Gasoline powered cars also use the heat from the engine to warm the passenger compartment on frigid days.  That engine heat is not available in EVs. Manufacturers are installing heat pumps in some of these vehicles to help, but it's not a cure-all.

It's true that internal combustion cars have their own problems in cold weather. Batteries die in those vehicles, too. Plus belts and such get brittle and can break.  But EVs still have a technological and public relations problem in the winter. 

Clearly, that EV technology has to get better before we can fully embrace EVs. They need a bigger range, there needs to be faster charging, and the problems with cold weather need to be addressed. 

I'm sure people are working on these fixes. I noticed last summer a Chinese company said it had developed materials and technology that would improve charging capacity for EV batteries, especially in frigid weather. We'll see if that helps. 

Plus, there are advantages to EVs in addition to the important work of reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. 

The last longer, are generally cheaper to fix, and there are some pretty good federal tax credits if you buy one. 

But like it or not, the public will not fully embrace EVs unless they become almost as convenient as gasoline powered cars.  Unfortunately, people aren't thinking about climate change when they're late for work. Or freezing in a parking lot with a dead car. 

 

As Expected, We Have A Very Winter Morning, Then, Yo-Yo Weather

Screen grab from the WCAX Sky Watch 3 ECHO Cam
just after sunrise this morning looking out over Lake
Champlain from Burlington, Vermont. I can't tell
from the image whether the entire lake froze over in 
last night's subzero temperatures.

 Sure enough, it was below zero over almost all of Vermont and northern New York this morning.

The usual cold spots were in the upper teens to near 20 below. Island Pond was at least 20 below this morning. Lake Eden was at 17 below.  

In Burlington, it was 3 below this morning. That's the coldest it's been in March since March 6, 2015, when it got down to 10 below.  

We're nowhere near any record lows, though.  The record for the date, and the month was set on March 4, 1938 when it was 24 below in Burlington.

It will be interesting to see if Lake Champlain froze over completely last night. It was close going in, with just a small patch of open water visible on Thursday.  I, and the National Weather Service office in South Burlington were hoping for a clear view of the lake from satellites this morning after sunup and before expected clouds come in. 

I've been looking at web cams on the shore of Lake Champlain and I can't tell if there's open water out there or not. A satellite image would help. 

If it turns out Lake Champlain did freeze over completely, that will be only the fourth time it has done so in the past 14 years. 

Those clouds will come in fairly quickly today but don't expect anything out of them except a few snow flurries. No biggie. 

It'll stay on the cold side for this time of year through Saturday, but not as bad as this morning.  We're talking highs in the 20s today, lows mostly in the single numbers above zero tonight, and readings just below freezing Saturday.

Frost pattern on my truck window in St. Albans, Vermont 
this morning amid what might be the last subzero 
morning of this winter. 

We're still expecting a period of mixed precipitation Saturday night.  Sunday brings us a brief "heat wave" amid rain showers as temperatures pop up into the 50s.

The mild burst won't last.  

Sunday's rain showers won't be all that heavy, and a cold front will sweep through later in the day.  The National Weather Service is still expecting that front to stall to our south and at least two waves of low pressure to move along it.

That means we're in for some periods of cold rain or snow, depending on where you are.  Southern valleys have the highest chance of rain, the north the best chance of snow.  But it also looks like whatever precipitation falls will be fairly light up north. Southern areas will get more. 

 This storminess in Vermont over the weekend and early next week will be, as usual, milder and less disruptive than in other parts of the nation.

NOAA's Storm Prediction Center is still expecting severe storms and perhaps a few tornadoes in Iowa Saturday, which is pretty far north for so early in the season. 

Repeating a pattern we've seen so often this winter, severe storms and tornadoes seem like a good bet in the Deep South Sunday and Monday; the risk of flooding is returning for the umpteenth time in parts of Arkansas, Missouri and Kentucky, and seemingly ever-present rangeland fire risk in the southern and central Plains is back with us today and tomorrow. 

"Diamond Dust" Graced Vermont's Air On Frigid Tuesday, Maybe Again Saturday?

As large swaths of Lake Champlain froze in Tuesday's 
frigid temperatures, "diamond dust" or ice crystals forming
in the clear Arctic air created a hazy, otherworldly quality.
This is a view of the lake from South Hero, Vermont. 

 The National Weather Service in South Burlington released a nice explainer on social media about that icy haze you might have seen in the air Tuesday.  It's definitely worth it to check it out.

To summarize it, when it gets really cold, it's hard for snowflakes to form. Snowflakes like to form when the temperature aloft a bit is between minus 5 and 15 above. 

When it gets colder than that, ice crystals form instead.  That's especially true if there's some moisture coming from relatively warm ground or open water.    

The ice crystals, or diamond dust in the air can do some cool things.  First off, I actually liked that "hazy" quality the diamond dust created in the blue sky on Tuesday. It softened the sharpness of that cold look. 

Even better, the icy crystals can create something called light pillars. These pillars consist of pillars of light on either side of the sun.  Or, at night, they can be beautiful pillars of light emanating from street lamps and other outdoor lighting. 

At sunset, the diamond dust can enhance alpenglow, which is that orange hue snow encrusted mountains often have at or just after sunset. 

Equipment at the many automated weather stations scattered through Vermont and the rest of the nation have a little trouble discerning what it is in the air when there we have those diamond dust ice crystals.  Yesterday, I saw a number of false reports of haze or blowing snow, when the real issue was diamond dust.

In really cold Arctic climates, like in Siberia or interior Alaska, the ice crystals can thicken into a dense ice fog. Usually steam exhaust from cars and buildings create this thick ice fog in cities like Fairbanks, Alaska when it's super cold and an inversion traps the moisture. 

It's forecast to be quite cold and probably mostly clear again Saturday.  That means we could easily have another encounter with diamond dust.  Too bad it's not real diamonds, though.  

Halfway Point Of Winter In Vermont Brings First Real Introduction To Winter

After an almost nonexistent start to winter, it's definitely,
finally looking like the season around my 
hacienda in St. Albans, Vermont today.

Yes, the headline is a bit confusing, but it is accurate!  

Meteorologically speaking, we're at the halfway point of winter right around today. If you average everything out, today (or the days surrounding it) are the nadir of winter. 

It's the point of the season at which we should have endured half the subzero cold spells and winter storms Ma Nature will give us, and we have the other half to go. 

I'm talking about meteorological winter, I'll remind you. Astronomical winter started on December 20 and doesn't end until March 20.

By March 20, though, we should be warming up toward spring and by then, sugaring season I hope will be off to a rip-roaring start. 

This winter in Vermont, as we all know, has been an odd duck. Weather wise, it pretty much didn't even start until the past week or so, with several snowfalls and a turn toward colder weather. 

The forecast really does make it clear this winter starts now. The season will be back-ended, meaning the more intense part of the winter will be today and afterwards. "Intense" is a relative word here.  

It's going to get cold, as the chilliest air of the winter descends upon us in the next few days, but the frigid air will fall well short of the rock bottom chill we've seen in most past winters. 

Today, an Arctic cold front will bring what is forecast to be an intensifying line of snow squalls across Vermont. They'll sweep through starting near noon in the northwest and exiting out of Vermont in th south and east toward evening. 

You'll want to watch out for these, especially if you have to drive anyway.  If one heads you're way, everything will be fine on the roads, but an instant later, you're in heavy, blinding snow and the road ices up in an instant.   

My driveway in St. Albans, Vermont doesn't exactly look
like a snow canyon like it does in some winters, but
respectable snow banks are starting to take shape. 

If you know a snow squall is approaching, or you get an alert from the National Weather Service or other meteorologists,  it's best to stay put and not drive anywhere until after the squall passes and the salt shakers subsequently clear the roads. 

The snow squalls give us the chance of another one to three inches of accumulation today 

Then, it's on to the deeper chill, something we're not used to this winter. Snow showers will continue, especially along the western slopes through Saturday, but that won't be the main issue. 

The big story will be some long-lasting cold, which starts tonight and goes at least through next Thursday. 

High temperatures will be in the teens to maybe low 20s through the period, with lows a few degrees either side of zero.

This is only a little colder than normal, frankly, but we're not used to it, so the chill will come as a shock. Saturday will be especially nasty because of gusty northwest winds that will drive wind chills down into the minus teens. 

If you love big snowstorms during cold weather, it seems like you're out of luck.  A series of snowstorms will cross the nation roughly west to east over the next week or so. However, the cold high pressure from Canada that is lowering our temperatures in Vermont looks like it will shove the storms too far south to affect us. 

There's always a chance one of these storms could make a detour and give us some snow, but it's unlikely for sure.

Beyond next week, who knows?

However, as the weeks go by, you'll perhaps find that winter is losing some of its punch as the sun angle rises.

At the northern tip of Alaska, in the city of Utqiagvik, formerly Barrow, the sun will rise above the horizon today for the first time since November 18.  This hints at the rising sun angle. 

Eventually, not yet, but eventually, this increasing sun in the Arctic will damage the ability of the top of the world to generate ferocious Arctic outbreaks down where we live.

Vermont's second half of winter will almost certainly be colder than the first half, because it almost can't be any warmer than the first half. Early signs continue to point away from anything extreme heading into early February. 

Even if we do get some 20 below blasts in February, the rising sun angle will make the daytimes almost seem tolerable. 

The midway point of winter means, right now, you should be checking your seed catalogs and putting in your orders.  Spring is closer than you think.