Storm Update: Nasty One To South, Some Snow, Bitter Cold Toward North

For parts of New England, Thursday and Friday could bring the Snowstorm Of The Winter as a nor'easter takes shape just off the coast.

Here's what the National Weather Service
in Burlington was predicting for
snowfall in the next storm, due to start Thursday.
As always,  click on the image to make it bigger
 and easier to read.  

In northern New England, it's going to snow, maybe fairly heavily in some spots, but the real story in the North Country will be the horrible cold.

Don't bother traveling Thursday and Friday morning to places like Boston, Providence, Hartford and New York City. 

That is unless you like near-blizzard conditions, heavy snow amounting to more than a foot, pretty much impassable roads, subzero wind chills and coastal flooding. 

It's really going to be a mess down there.

Here in Vermont, and in northern New York and the northern half of New Hampshire, the impacts of this storm will depend upon where you are.

Southern Vermont, the southern half of New Hampshire and the Capitol District of New York will share in the heavy snowfall, with amounts ranging from 6 to 12 inches. Winter storm warnings are up in these areas, or will be soon.

Snowfall amounts will taper off quickly as you head north. Of course, this makes the forecast tricky, since a slight shift in the storm's track could make northern sections either get much more snow than forecast, or nothing at all.

The thinking now is central Vermont, say, Middlebury and areas just to the south of Montpelier are in for four to eight inches of snow. Around Burlington, the National Weather Service is forecasting two to four inches. As little as an inch might accumulate near the Canadian border.

This is going to be a remarkably cold storm. Usually, it warms up into the upper teens and 20s during this type of storm, but the Arctic air will hold firm. In fact, in some parts of the north, it will never get above zero during the entire duration of the snowfall.

And the temperature will go below zero this evening and not get above zero again until Saturday afternoon. 

As uncomfortable as the cold will be, at least this means it will be a powdery snow, not wet and heavy. This time, mercifully, it doesn't look like power failures will be much of a problem in northern New England. 

Watch out for the wind chill Friday and Friday night. With temperatures well below zero and strong north winds behind the departing storm, wind chills will be ridiculously low.

Another storm is due Sunday or Monday. Some forecast models push the storm to our west, which means a brief, abrupt warmup and snow changing to sleet, freezing rain and rain. Other computer models keep the Monday storm just to our east, which would bring us mostly snow.

Next week, the bottom will drop out of the thermometers again, so we'll deal with more bitter cold then. 

As I said before it's not an easy winter so far, is it?