Saturday Evening Update: Damage In South Ramping Up In Big Winter Storm. Little Change In Vermont Snow Dump Outlook

Tree damage from freezing rain already starting to show
up in Rolling Fork, Mississippi in this video screen
grab from Meteorologist Jock Williams, via Facebook

Our big winter storm continues to plow on, with varying forms of precipitation falling as of late this afternoon from New Mexico to North Carolina. 

At least 22 states are now under states of emergency due to the storm. About 55 percent of the nation's population, or 190 million people are under weather alerts related to this mess. These warnings and advisories cover 37 states, including here in Vermont. 

Power outages continued to increase through the day, and it will get a lot worse tonight and tomorrow. As of 5 p.m. eastern time, more than 56,000 homes and businesses were without power in Texas. The outages in Louisiana were nearing 48,000

Flight Aware was showing almost 4,300 flights canceled today, and at least 9,200 canceled tomorrow. for a total of about 15,000.

 The previous worst day in the past year for canceled flights was on November 9, when 1,900 flights were scrubbed due to the U.S. government shutdown, CNN reported.

Across the winter storm area, where snow, sleet and freezing rain was falling, cities looked like ghost towns.

For instance, video from Live Storms Media showed snow and ice-covered highways aroundMemphis almost free of traffic. Most of the few vehicles on Memphis area highways were tractor trailers hauling goods to, gawd knows where.

This storm will no doubt disrupt shipping. At the very least, don't be surprised if your Amazon package is late. 

Freezing rain continues to be the biggest danger with this storm, though the heavy snow is no slouch in this either. Parts of the storm are turning out to be pretty electric, so some places in the South are dealing with thunder and lightning combined with the freezing rain and sleet. 

That state of affairs should continue into the night at least. 

An ice storm is really bad news wherever it might hit. The fact that the South is getting the bulk of the freezing rain is even worse. I've mentioned before the region is heavily forested. Because the South has infrequent winter storms, they don't cut tree limbs away from power lines as utilities in the northern United States do.  

Which means it's more likely that falling trees or branches would hit power lines in the South instead of falling harmlessly away from the wires. 

In many areas in the ice zone, the freezing rain is falling lightly. Or at least tapers off to a lighter rain at times. That's actually bad news. As Matthew Cappucci explains in the Washington Post, when a raindrop freezes, it released a teeny amount of latent heat. If it's really pouring that latent heat can add up, and could bring temperatures above freezing. Or at least bring nearby raindrops above freezing. 

A freezing sprinkle doesn't release much heat. So it adds up on trees and power lines, causing chaos. 

A new storm hazard has appeared. It looks like the systems warm front will get into the Florida Panhandle, southern Alabama and extreme southwest Georgia. These areas will turn briefly warm and humid overnight and part of tomorrow. That is until the storm's cold front approaches. 

These areas could see severe thunderstorms and maybe even a few tornadoes before temperatures fall sharply later tomorrow. Interestingly, the area under the tornado threat is the same are that had some very rare for them snow last Sunday

The snow and some sleet will send up slowing  travel from New Mexico to New Brunswick and beyond. In the United States, everybody in a wide band between about Roswell, New Mexico to Eastport, Maine will end up with at least six inches of snow. Many spots in this vast zone of snow will end up shoveling more than a foot of snow. In some places, sleet mixed in will make the chore especially onerous. 

As the storm closed in, panic buying continued, as people stripped grocery shelves of water, milk, bread, eggs and whatever else  people thought they needed.

"I know people want to be ready, but calm down, you don't need to buy all the toilet paper in Virginia," Kim Lee told WWBT "Some of the things I wanted to make sure I have, I do not have." 

VERMONT EFFECTS

Well, I guess we can say today was sunny for a change. It's been such a gloomy winter that any sunshine is a blessing. 

No panic buying in Vermont, apparently. The bread aisle
in a Colchester supermarket looks well stocked today. 

Even if it's near or below zero. You know it's cold when most of the cars on the highways have little piggy tails of steam coming out of their tail pipes. 

Not many people were out today, at least as far as I saw when I was out doing errands. The only knots of activity were at grocery stores. But unlike the panic buying elsewhere, the store shelves I saw seemed well stocked.  

It did manage to get above zero in Burlington this afternoon, keeping a usually long streak going. The last time Burlington had a high temperature of just 0 degrees was on January 15, 2022. The last time we had a subzero high temperature was January 6, 2018. 

Subzero high temperatures used to be quite a bit more frequent than they are now. 

As late afternoon arrived, I could see high, thin clouds on the southern horizon. That's the first sign of our storm. 

The temperature will drop like a rock for the first half of tonight as skies remain mostly clear for awhile.  It'll actually be a bit colder than earlier forecasts hinted at. The "warmer" valleys will probably make its the upper single numbers below zero. Most of Vermont will be in the teens below zero, and the Northeast Kingdom could get as low as 25 below. 

The increasing clouds late tonight will keep temperatures from really bottoming out. Readings should level off after midnight, and maybe even rise a bit toward morning. 

THE STORM

The forecast really hasn't changed much since this morning. Within 24 hours or so before a storm, the computer models can start looking at picky details.

It's looking like the initial thump of snow tomorrow evening will come down quite hard, especially in southern Vermont.  Late at night, the snow could lighten up somewhat. 

Then, during the day Monday, the storm might form a little trough or extension northwestward into Vermont. I say 'might" because meteorologists aren't entirely sure yet. But it's likely, and that would make snowfall heavier for a few to several hours near wherever it might set up.  Preliminary guesses have it setting up somewhere in central Vermont. 

This evening's updated snowfall prediction map for
Vermont and surround areas is little changed from this
morning. Source: NWS/South Burlington

Not sure, so we'll keep an eye on that. 

The forecast for total snowfall hasn't changed much. The National Weather Service is still going with 8 to 16 inches by Monday night, with locally higher amounts maybe in the southern Green Mountains. Or where and if that trough sets up for several hours somewhere in Vermont. 

The snow will still probably start tomorrow afternoon. So if you have some supplies to nab, do it in the morning. The roads will be bad from Sunday afternoon on through Monday.

 Sure, it's going to be a fluffy snow, but visibility will be poor, and some of that snow will compact into ice on the roads. 

A saving grace is it won't be all that windy during the storm, so blowing snow won't make the visibility even worse. The snow should finally peter out Monday evening. 

The upcoming week also continues to look quite chilly, but not nearly as bad as today. Still, every night in the coming week starting Monday night around the Northeast Kingdom will probably go below zero.

After this storm blows through, it still looks like very little if any snow will fall Tuesday through at least next Saturday. Or even later than that. 

 

Winter Storm Making Travel Weekend Miserable In U.S., Especially Midwest

A must-vehicle crash amid on Interstate 70 in western
Indiana on Saturday. A huge swath of the Midwest
is under winter storm warnings today as heavy
snow delays travel for many. 

While we here in Vermont await a minor bout of winter weather tomorrow, the same storm is spreading snow over a huge area of the Midwest. 

Since so many people are traveling this holiday weekend, the Scrooge mood has hit early for many. 

The winter storm warnings Saturday stretched from eastern South Dakota to Michigan. 

The relative center of this winter weather zone is Chicago, The windy city serves as a hub for American, United, Frontier, Southwest and Spirit airlines. 

You can imagine the mess.

As of Saturday morning, more than 1,000 flights were canceled at Chicago airports, CBS News reported. I imagine things later got even worse for flights in and out of Chicago   as heavy snow with very poor visibility lasted all afternoon. 

As of 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time, FlightAware said the number of flights today canceled at just O'Hare was 1,038.

For the U.S. as a whole, FlightAware said there had been 2,166 flight cancelations and 18,322 delays as of late this afternoon. So if someone you expected to arrive at your house today says it won't happen, they're probably not lying. It's nothing personal. Just the weather.  

Of course, highways are slow, too. As many as 30 vehicles crashed into each other on slick Interstate 70 in western Indiana. Social media is rife with images of cars in ditches and vehicles with smashed and dented fenders, or worse.   

The winter storm warning affected 32 million people and winter weather advisories along the storms edges covered another 20 million, USA Today reported. 

The snow is expected to dwindle off and end by late tonight in places from Chicago west, and during the morning in locations farther east, like northern Indiana and most of Michigan. 

A new winter storm is expected to hit a large swath of the Midwest and Northeast on Tuesday.  

Oddly Foggy Winter Locally In Vermont, And In Nation

Once again, dense fog obscures the forest behind my
St. Albans, Vermont home today. Dense fog has been
unusually prevalent this winter in Vermont. It has 
also been strangely widespread across
the United States this week. 

 Once again Thursday afternoon, my area around St. Albans, Vermont was encased in a cold, dense fog.

It's happened a lot this winter. It's very strange for a season in which cold, dry, gusty air usually flushes out any trace of fog.  Even on days without dense fog this winter, a low overcast and lighter fogs and haze have given us a truly gloomy winter. 

Vermont isn't the only place in the nation to have strange bouts of dense winter fog. 

The past three days have set records for the most widespread areas in the United States to fall under dense fog advisories. This morning parts or all of 27 states were under dense fog advisories. That's 100 million people who were under those fog alerts. 

Fog was widespread in other states today, too, but in those areas like in Vermont the fog wasn't dense or widespread for long lasting enough to trigger those advisories. 

Dense fog can obviously be dangerous or at best inconvenient. The Washington Post noted that a pedestrian died when they were hit by a car in dense fog in Indiana, and a Louisiana causeway was closed because of a highway pileup in the fog.

Over the past two days, fog  is mostly responsible for the cancellation of roughly 7 percent of flights at Chicago's O'Hare airport and delayed roughly 17 percent more. 

WHY IT'S HAPPENING

The vast areas of fog in the Midwest, Plains, Ohio Valley and Great Lakes had their roots in last week's cold snap. Snow covered most of this area, and the ground got quite cold, actually freezing in many of these places.

The vast gray area on this National Weather Service
map from this morning is all dense fog advisories. 

That same fire hose of moisture I talked about the other day - the one that produced severe flooding in parts of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi - also features a much wider, broader flow of warm, moist air from the Gulf that infiltrated most the nation east of the Rockies.

That warm, wet air passing over the cold and often snow covered ground. This moist air is chilled by the cold ground, so that moisture condenses into fog.  

Strong winds that usually blow in the winter would disperse a lot of this fog. But this flow of wet air has featured just light winds 

The past few days featured the biggest fog attack of the winter in the U.S. But there were other ones around Christmas and New Year, some of which disrupted holiday travel. 

Here in Vermont, we've had frequent bouts of slow, warm, wet air flowing over us since November, hence our many days in the fog. 

This latest bout of fog should clear up toward the weekend in most places as windier, drier air makes inroads across the Lower 48. 

No Surprise: Dense Fog Advisory Up For Northern Vermont

Taylor Park in St. Albans this evening, as seen from the
Lake Street intersection with Main Street. You can 
barely make out the dude walking the dog there
on the sidewalk. A dense fog advisory is in effect.

 A late Thursday afternoon update on the murky weather in Vermont I described this morning. 

It's gotten worse since yesterday, if you ask me. The National Weather Service agrees.  

At around 4 p.m. today, the National Weather Service office in South Burlington has issued a dense fog advisory for northern and central Vermont through 10 a.m. Friday. 

The fog is thickest north of a weak nearly stationary weather front oriented roughly west to east across central Vermont. South of the front, it's cloudy and gloomy, but visibility isn't so bad. North of that front, it's been foggy all day. 

The fog has been really thick all day here in St. Albans, Vermont. I don't think I've ever seen a day that entirely consisted of dense fog. Sure, we get thick fog for a few hours on some occasions, but all day? I got up at 7 a.m. and visibility was about a quarter mile. It has stayed that way through 4:30 p.m. as I write this. 

My house has a great distant view of Lake Champlain. I haven't seen the lake since dusk on Tuesday. Almost makes you wonder if it's still there. 

At least as remarkably, starting at 9 a.m. yesterday the visibility in Burlington has been two miles or less, except for a two-hour period late last night when it was four miles. The fog was getting even thicker today as darkness fell, with visibility close to zero in some spots. 

The so-called view through my windshield this
afternoon on Fairfield Street in St. Albans, Vermont. 

I had to do some errands on the road today and the National Weather Service is right. The fog is dense enough that you really have to be careful while driving. 

With the even now thicker fog, you really need to be careful driving, especially on high speed highways like Interstates 89 and 91, or highways that have a lot of curves and hills that can hide surprises.  

If somebody has stopped in front of you, or cuts you off, you won't see it until it's too late if you drive at normal speeds. Drive way slower than usual if you're out on the roads this evening and overnight. 

Also, if you're flying in or out of the Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport, keep on eye on flight stats.

Some flights have already been diverted to other airports or canceled today and this evening. Flights later this evening were still listed as on time as of 5 p.m., but if the fog persists, that could easily change. 

Chances are the fog will start to get somewhat less dense through late morning and afternoon Friday, but it will stay murky. 

Bad visibility is routine on Vermont roads during the winter. But that is pretty much always due to heavy snow. A long fog attack like this one is new on me.