The Storms And The Wind Just Keeps On Coming

A tangle of fallen and hanging branches in my St Albans,
Vermont yard that I have to clean up today after last night's big wind

Much of the northern United States is recovering from a nice big, windy storm, but don't relax too much. There's more where that came from.

More on that in a minute.  

That sprawling storm concentrated its highest winds in the northern and central Plains, with gusts as high as 79 mph.

Thundestorms worked their way oddly far north. Sioux Fals, South Dakota recorded their first Christmas thunderstorm on record.

My relatives in Yankton, South Dakota, where winds gusted to 72 mph, report many large branches down throughout town.

Here in Vermont, we really got the wind yesterday and last night. While not as strong as in the Dakotas, it still caused some problems, as we're not quite as used to such strong gusts like people in the northern Plains are.

In Vermont, winds gusted to 61 mph in South Hero and 58 mph in Alburgh. The wind, as expected, was strongest in the Champlain Valley, where there were numerous reports of gusts over 50 mph. 

The Champlain Valley reported quite a few trees, branches and power lines down, blown over signs, and even a fallen traffic signal in Colchester.  The ferry across Lake Champlain at Grand Isle had to shut down yesterday due to high winds and waves.

My yard in St. Albans is littered with dozens upon dozens of small branches, and a few shingles blew off my roof.

The wind has calmed down now, and it has turned mild. Most of the snow melted off my yard overnight.

But there's no rest for the weary. More storms are on the horizon.

The next one comes along Thursday. At first glance, it doesn't look like much. Just a little clipper coming in from the west. But it's dynamic and will spin up a coastal storm somewhere near New Jersey.

The new nor'easter will "bomb" in other words, intensify super fast as it makes its way northward along the New England coast.

That means some areas, probably the eastern half of New England away from the coast, are in for more than a foot of heavy, wet snow, along with strong winds.

There will be more rain along the coast than snow, but everywhere in eastern New England can expect strong, gusty winds out of this.

Here in Vermont, we're right on the edge of this thing as it looks now. There's a high probability current forecasts are wrong, because a slight wobble by the storm either a little west or a little east will either greatly increase or decrease the amount of snow we get out of this in the Green Mountain State.

As it stands now - and this is really subject to change - the National Weather Service in South Burlington is thinking possibly six inches or more of snow in eastern Vermont. That could taper off dramatically the further west you'll go across the state. We'll just have to wait and see.

Still, even in the Champlain Valley, a few to several inches of snow is possible out of this one. Stay tuned.

After that, another large scale storm will get going in the central Plains early next week. It looks like the Dakotas might be under the gun again, and the sprawling storm next week looks like it could bring another wide variety of weather, including strong winds, blizzards, rain, severe weather and ice.

It'll take a few days before we can figure out exactly what next week's storm will do. We'll just have to get through the rest of this week first