Christmas Eve Vermont Weather Update: Snowstorm Mostly Over, But Busy Weather Regime Continues

It's a winter wonderland out there in St. Albans,
Vermont this morning. Same for the rest of the 
state as yesterday and last night's storm ensures
a white Christmas. Weather conditions going
past Christmas will be kind of harsh. 

 Our small snowstorm behaved about as forecast, as the few initial reports that have come in so far indicated a lot of people got four or five inches of new snow. 

We have our White Christmas, 2025 in the bag.

The most new snow I've seen so far is eight inches in Woodbury and  6.5 inches, in Moscow, which is right near Stowe. Where I'm at in St. Albans, we collected 4.7 inches of new snow.

Burlington had five inches of snow on the ground this morning. White Christmases had been declining in the Queen City, but with this storm, four of the past five Christmases had snow on the ground.

If there's still five inches on the ground tomorrow, that will be the deepest Christmas snow since 2017.

DEPARTING STORM

The storm is consolidating now along off the Maine Coast. The southwestern part of that state is getting a good dump of snow, with a total of 6 to as much as 14 inches expected in that part of Maine by the time it ends later today.

Back here in Vermont, some of the storm's upper level support was still over us so area of light snow were continuing even after dawn broke. Traffic cameras show most main roads aren't perfect, but pretty good. 

As of 8 a.m the biggest area of lingering snow was slowly moving south through the Champlain Valley, mostly in southern Chittenden and Addison counties so the roads are probably in the worst shape there. 

Secondary roads statewide are still not fully cleaned up, either.  So, as usual, take it easy this morning wherever you're going. 

It got a little above freezing overnight in the Champlain Valley, so the snow you're shoveling this morning might feel a little wet and heavy.  

It could get a little windy at times as the morning goes on. It won't be anything wild like we had last week. But it will blow snow off the trees, so if you're driving through areas that have a lot of pine trees, for instance, you might have brief problems with visibility. 

Today and tonight will be mainly cloud, with a few places getting some clearing. It will be seasonably cool in the upper 20s today, so no big deal there.

WINTRY FORECAST

 This is turning out to so far be the harshest winter in a decade, and there's no rest for the weary. 

But it looks like we're about to get back into the regime we had in early and mid December. That means frequent bouts of frigid air extending into January. In between those Arctic blasts, we'll have mostly small to medium-sized storms. We'll also have those dreaded windy days fairly frequently, too. 

Christmas Day will bring us the start of those series of cold blasts.  The first half of the day will be OK, with temperatures in the 20s to near 30 and some scattered snow showers. But a cold front will come through in the afternoon. That's when temperatures will start to crash and wind will pick up.

By late in the afternoon and the evening, winds will be gusting to 30 or 35 mph again. Overnight, temperatures will tumble and end up close to zero by Friday morning. On Friday itself, highs will only be in the upper single number to mid teens. At least the winds will die down by then.

Friday night and early Saturday, a storm diving down from the Great Lakes to the Mid-Atlantic states might clip southern Vermont with just a little snow. Then, temperatures will hold roughly steady Saturday night and rise into the 20s Saturday. That'll give us a quiet interlude until the next storm.

That one will probably come in later Sunday, as it looks now. Details on this are fuzzy, but it looks like we might be in for that dreaded mixed precipitation later Sunday, into Sunday night. and maybe into Monday morning. 

The computer models are still arguing amongst themselves as to whether will be mostly snow, ice or mostly rain. We'll have this nailed down a little better in a couple days. At least I hope so.

The storm could also bring some gusty winds. Then, on the back side of Sunday night's storm, it looks like we'll have more gusty winds and plunging temperatures. Those cold temperatures looks like they'll last most of next week.

Enjoy or at least endure this year's flashback to what winters used to be like. 

 

Climate Change Is Decreasing Chances Of White Christmas In Most Of U.S.

Snow falls from trees on a white Christmas, December 25,
2017 in West Rutland, Vermont. White Christmases are
getting less likely in most of the nation due
to climate change. 

The mid-sized snowstorm that swept through Vermont last weekend really upped the chances that Christmas 2021 - coming up Saturday, is going to be a white one.

This despite a forecast of mixed precipitation. 

A white Christmas would be a marked contrast to last year, when record high temperatures in the 60s put an end to the idea of a white Christmas. (At one point on Christmas morning last year, Burlington, Vermont was bizarrely the hottest spot in the Lower 48).

This year, it looks like Vermont might be the exception to the rule for a white Christmas in the nation. It's been a very warm month pretty much coast to coast this month Much if not most of the U.S. should have unseasonably warm weather through Christmas Day. Parts of the South and Southeast will likely have record high temperatures.

That will put the kibosh on any Christmas snowball fights in much of the nation. 

The lack of a white Christmas this year for a larger swath of the United States than usual is part of a longterm trend, very, very likely brought on by climate change. 

The Washington Post recently did a white Christmas review of 25 major cities, comparing climate averages from 1981 to 2010 with data from 1991 through 2020.

Here's how they summarized these results: 

"Eight of the 25 cities saw their chance of a white Christmas decrease. Denver and Columbus saw the largest drops (six percentage points) D.C's odds of a white Christmas plummeted from eight percent to just a little over four percent. 

Four cities' chances were unchanged (Minneapolis, Indianapolis and Dallas)

Three saw their chances increase, but only by one or two percentage points (New York, Philadelphia and Raleigh)."

The Washington Post cites the Associated Press in more not-so-white Christmas data:

"The Associated Press, using an analysis from the University of Arizona, also described a marked falloff in Christmas snow between the 1980s and 2010s. In the 1980s, 47 percent of the country had snow on the ground on December 25, with an average depth of 3.5 inches. But, by the 2010s, the snow cover extend was just 38 percent, with an average depth of 2.7 inches."

For the record, it looks like less than 38 percent of the nation will be snow covered this Christmas.  

Back here in Vermont, we're getting a white Christmas this year, and chances in general remain good that we'll have many white Christmases in the future.

But it's not as set in stone as it once was. The chances of white Christmases in Vermont is declining with climate change.  Last year, some of my daffodils around my home in northwestern Vermont were starting to come up in the record warmth.  That probably won't be the last time I see something weird like that.