A Bit Of Snow Making Vermont Travel Bit Iffy This Evening; Winter Weather Advisory Tomorrow

Light snow falling and blowing around along Route 78
in Alburgh in this traffic cam grab. Roads are a bit
iffy through northern Vermont this evening because
of light snow. We're still on track for a few inches
of snow later tomorrow, too.

A patch of light snow was blowing through central and northern Vermont late this afternoon, so just a heads up: 

The roads on the way home from work today aren't perfect.  This will mostly affect areas from Route 4 north this evening. 

It's a very light snow, and will amount of less than an inch. But a dusting is enough to make the roads just slick enough so that you'd want to slow down. 

Basically, just lay off the gas peddle and the eggnog this evening and you should be good to go. 

The snow is very light and dry, too. If a big truck passes by you, it could stir up enough snow to briefly cut your visibility to almost nothing. 

The big news, of course, is tomorrow's somewhat bigger storm. This evening's update is that there's a winter weather advisory is now up for most of Vermont except the Champlain Valley, western Rutland County and the lower Connecticut River Valley. 

Those of you under the advisory can expect three to five inches of fresh snow between tomorrow and Wednesday morning.  If you're not under the advisory, you'll still probably get a good two or three inches of snow out of the deal. 

The mountains will of course get more snow than the valleys. Forecasters are still talking four to eight inches at the ski areas, fingers crossed. 

I'll have a full update on this with tomorrow morning's post. 

Tuesday Evening Vermont Snow Forecast Update: Decent Dump In Green Mountains, Travel Trouble Wednesday

Through Friday morning, the next round of snow will
really pile up in the Green Mountains. Yellow shading
is six inches or more, orange is eight inches or more
Much of Vermont is under a winter weather 
advisory for three to seven inches of snow,
mostly during the day tomorrow. 

 I'm shooting out a little update on our next bout of Vermont winter weather, due tomorrow. Mainly because there are some new snow alerts up. 

This isn't exactly storm of the century. I don't want to hype it too much. But modest storms like this, typical for a Vermont winter, are still enough to raise a few alarm bells if you're going to drive anywhere tomorrow. 

A winter weather advisory is now up for most of Vermont. It's easier to tell you who's not in the advisory. Those not-in-the-advisory places are the Champlain Valley, the lower Connecticut River valley and far northern Vermont. 

The places in the advisory should expect to see three to seven inches of snow between 7 a.m. Wednesday and 1 a.m. Thursday. 

The Champlain Valley and Connecticut Valley should see two or three inches of snow. That'll still be easily enough to interfere the road conditions

The timing of this storm is - once again - not great. The snow will start just in time for the morning commute, which will mess up your trip to work. The snow will increase in intensity, with rates of up to one inch an hour in some places roughly between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. 

It's still looking like it will warm up in the afternoon, too, so the snow will turn kind of wet and heavy in the lower elevations. That's a double-edged sword. On a few of the main highways, that might help keep snow from piling up on the pavement too much. On the other hand, wet snow can pack down down into slippery ice, making things all the worse.

It looks like the warmest part of the day might come in the late afternoon or evening. Although some of the banana belt  valleys might see a few rain drops mixed with the snow, pretty much everybody will still be snowing. 

So, you might still run into trouble on your way back home from work. The roads will probably still be iffy. 

During the main storm tomorrow, the lightest snow might be in far northern Vermont.  The people who love to brag about their never-ending dumps of snow might briefly shut up as they might be a little left out at first.

However, those northern areas will make up for it late tomorrow night through Thursday night. It'll be the usual upslope snows in the central and northern Green Mountains. Again, this usually happens after a storm leaves the Green Mountain State.

The ski areas are going to win again. Between early tomorrow morning and Friday morning, a lot of Vermont's ski areas could see another eight to 12 inches of snow, on top of the riches of white powder they've already gotten over the past few weeks. The Jay Peak braggarts will be back, and other ski areas will be listening to their cash registers overwork themselves. 

No complaints from me! 

Since it will turn cold again for at least a week after tomorrow's "heat wave,"  that snow should stick around. We're also still looking at the risk of some pretty intense cold Sunday night through Tuesday morning. 

Thursday Evening Update: Flood Risk Continues In Vermont/New York With Debby; Rather Weird Weather, Too

Expected rainfall amounts through Saturday with
the remnants of Debby. Less rain is expected in
Vermont than earlier forecasts, which will help prevent
another big flood disaster. But local flash loods
are still a real risk. 

As advertised, clouds increased this afternoon across Vermont and surrounding areas as now ex- Tropical Storm Debby makes its way towards us.  If it isn't raining where you are when you read this, it will soon.  

THE BIG PICTURE

Already, as of 5 p.m. rain had moved into far southern Vermont and in northwestern New York. There were a few heavy downpours embedded with that rain. A sign of things to come. 

The overall forecast for its track, timing and duration hasn't changed much since this morning. The 5 p.m update from the National Hurricane Center actually has it moving a little faster than they predicted this morning. 

This morning, the projection was former Debby would be over northern Vermont as of 2 a.m. Saturday. Now, it's expected to be just north of the northern tip of New Hampshire at that hour.

The faster former Debby moves the better, as it would have less time to dump a bunch of rain on us. 

Heaviest rain is still expected to be across northern New York with this thing with somewhat lighter totals in Vermont. 

The National Weather Service office in South Burlington has updated its flood watches, expanding the watch across all of the northern half of Vermont except the Champlain Valley. 

Although trends have continued to minimize the threat of another mega-flood disaster in the Green Mountain State, instances of flooding, washouts, that kind of thing are still definitely in play. 

That northern Vermont flood watch was put in place largely because areas hard hit by the two other big floods this summer are especially vulnerable to heavy rain. 

The State of Vermont, and towns affected by that flooding hurriedly patched up washed out roads and culverts just to get the roads open. More permanent repairs come later. 

Since a lot of those quick repairs are ad hoc, they're not particularly  resilient against heavy rains. So downpours associated with ex-Debby that in normal times wouldn't be that big a deal are. Ex-Debby might undo a lot of the work that's been done in the past month. 

STEP BY STEP OUTLOOK

Tonight

Overnight, chances are you'll hear the occasional roar of quick downpours on your roof, interspersed with periods of lighter rain or no rain. Overall, radar has rain coming in quicker than I thought, so you might see a shower even before sunset. 

Overnight, rainfall will only amount to maybe a quarter of an inch in southern Vermont, with locally higher amounts. Northern Vermont can expect maybe a half inch to an inch. 

This won't be enough to trigger flooding but will prime the pump for possible flooding later, as I noted this morning. 

Friday/Friday Evening

A weird, tropical day. There might be a lull in the rainfall early in the morning, but it should pick up in the form of numerous showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon.  The day will feel incredibly humid and south winds could get a little gusty with this, too.

 Former Debby is still expected to cross over northwestern Vermont. With tropical storms and former tropical storms thunderstorms tend to develop along and east of the path, with a steady, heavy rain west.

So the steady, heavy rain will mostly stick to New York. 

The more sporadic nature of the numerous showers and storms will make things a bit challenging for forecasters. Areas of flash flooding - and flash flood warnings - won't become apparent until the actual flood is underway, or the flooding is just minutes away.

Though we know that most of us will receive one to two inches of rain, there could be much higher totals in a couple spots if storms hit the same spot over and again.

If we do see any flash flooding with this, the best chance of it hitting are between early afternoon and midnight Friday.

Definitely be ready to hear any flash flood or severe thunderstorm warnings that might be issued tomorrow. It will be an active day and evening .

Some of the storms could end up being severe, with a few reports of damaging gusts definitely possible.  Vermont is now in a marginal risk for severe storms Friday and Friday evening, meaning there could be isolated instances of damage. I do wonder whether that risk level will be upgraded to slight tomorrow, which is a slightly higher risk of severe weather. 

Tropical systems can be prolific tornado producers. There have already been several in the Southeast. There is a low, but not zero chance of a brief spinup with former Debby in Vermont tomorrow and tomorrow evening. Could happen anywhere in the state. If it does happen, the best chance is in southwestern Vermont. 

Outside of those severe storms, winds could gust to 40 mph in spots Friday afternoon and evening. That could be enough to push over a few trees. Remember, wind can uproot trees more easily if the soil is wet and soggy. So expect a few widely scattered power outages, even if no severe thunderstorms develop.

Saturday

Since this ex-Debby thingy will be rocketing by so fast, it now looks like Saturday will be a nice day. Although the chances of serious river flooding in Vermont appears low, we'll have to watch those water levels, especially Saturday morning if the rain we get Friday and Friday evening turns out to be heavier than expected. 

1 PM Friday Vermont Flood Potential Update

 Well, we got through this morning's rain without too much trouble here in Vermont, but unfortunately, the fun is just beginning.  

NOAA says area inside the pink cloud is at the greatest
risk for local flash floods this afternoon and evening.
Notice Vermont is entirely within the pink cloud. 

As advertised, we're in for another afternoon and evening of flash flood risk, and the storms that might cause these issues were just firing up as of 12:30 p.m. 

NOAA's Weather Prediction Center put out an update at noon, stating that the places the highest risk of flash floods over western New England, including all of Vermont and most of New Hampshire.

As of noon, conditions were becoming more and more favorable for torrential downpours. The intensity and size of the small scale downpours we saw on radar in the noon hour will keep expanding. Sunshine in many areas between the developing storms is adding to the instability in the air, which will help sustain the storms. 

Some will form into somewhat larger, organized clusters, and that's where you'll find the most trouble today. Too bad we don't yet know in advance who the lucky devils are who get these "larger, organized clusters."  Or, the scientific term I came up for these, "fuster clucks."

Most, but not all of the developing  storms seem like they are moving, and not lingering over one spot, at least for the most part. But their movement is painfully slow, and that state of affairs should continue through the afternoon and early evening. 

I've already seen one small, but heavy downpour on the Champlain Islands about halfway between Burlington and Plattsburgh, New York pretty much sit there for about an hour as of this writing. Were that to happen over areas already slammed by flash floods, we'd be having some real issues now.  That's the risk we might be facing through this evening. 

Some favored locations might end up with two or three or even a little more inches of rain today. That won't be everybody, as most of us will see less. A few of us might see hardly any additional rain at all.

But you know the drill. Any hilly area seeing that kind of heavy rainfall in a short time will have problems, given how wet the soil is.

Consider this: Sunday evening, a thunderstorm dumped two to three inches of rain on Richmond and Bolton. The road damage from the resulting flash floods was very impressive. It seemed almost every dirt road in Richmond sustained at least a little damage, if not a total washout.

Had soil conditions not been so soggy, I'm sure the damage there would have been much less from Sunday's storms. 

I'm not suggesting it'll necessarily be Richmond under the gun today, but it could be any other town near the Green Mountains or Taconics. 

With today's rains, main rivers shouldn't flood again, but they will  remain high, turbulent and muddy for this time of year. 

There's still some risk that besides the flash flooding, a few storms could become severe, too. Though not widespread, a couple of the storms could produce damaging winds.  So we'll have to watch out for scattered tree damage and power outage issues today, too. 

But the main risk is still flash flooding.  I'm still thinking things could get as bad as they were Sunday evening, when we had several reports of flash flooding. This is always luck of the draw, so we still don't know who is under the gun this afternoon and how many people that involves.

Today is still looking like the last flash flood threat in Vermont for awhile. We've basically been under the gun since the month opened, so it will be wonderful to get this out of our hair. 

Just stay weather aware through this evening. If you receive a flash flood warning in your area, make sure to skedaddle immediately if you are in a flood prone spot.

And don't drive over flooded roads. Vermont has been incredibly lucky through all these flash floods in which nobody has died in their cars. Let's keep it that way. Vehicles are the most common place for deaths in flash floods. Lest