A REALLY White Christmas Is Set For Vermont, Rest Of The Region

The National Weather Service in South Burlington,
Vermont is still forecasting a general four to eight inch
snowfall across Vermont on Christmas Day. A winter
storm warning is in effect. 

As of Sunday morning, it looks like the roads are getting cleaned up fairly well after the rain, freezing rain and snow of Saturday. That gets us a chance to do last minute stuff and travel before the next winter storm hits.

It's going to be a very, very white Christmas in Vermont. And this second half of December appears to be the opening weeks of what is increasingly looking like a harsh winter. We shall see.

It's certainly been somewhat harsh lately, with cold snaps and icy, snowy precipitation events coming fast and furiously for the past couple of weeks. And it's getting more harsh.

All that freezing rain, rain, followed by snow and rapidly falling temperatures late Saturday afternoon and evening caused lots of travel nightmares across much of Vermont. There were lots of slideoffs and accidents. Firetrucks couldn't even make it up a hill in Winooski to respond to problems.

OK, that's done. Now we're facing a Christmas Day winter storm warning for northeastern New York, northern Massachusetts and all of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. (Upgraded from yesterday's winter storm watch.)

Expect widespread accumulations of four to 10 inches across this region, with locally more as you head off into northeastern Maine.

This is all caused by storm that has laid down a stripe of snow across the central Plains and into the Ohio Valley. The storm will come out of the Ohio Valley and start getting into New England early Christmas morning.

From there, a nor'easter will rapidly form on the New England coast and take over before zipping on up into the Canadian Maritimes toward Christmas evening.

The snow will start after midnight tonight, so driving around this evening will still be OK. Christmas morning, not so much. The snow will taper off in the afternoon, so things might not quite as bad on the roads toward Christmas evening. However, you'll also have to contend with some blowing and drifting snow as winds pick up.

There's still ice on the trees in many parts of eastern Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, so the winds could knock down some more branches and power lines, but I don't think the problem will be too widespread. Luckily, the snow that comes with the Christmas storm will be light and powdery, so it will blow off tree branches rather than weigh them down further.

After this storm goes by the doors open for the long-advertised Arctic outbreak. It will get increasingly cold Tuesday, and be absolutely brutal Wednesday through Saturday a least. Look for highs barely getting to zero, if that, and lows in the teens below zero region wide. There will be some areas in the 20s below.

As noted yesterday, this cold will last awhile. It might moderate some, at least temporarily in about a week, but the overall pattern well into January favors colder than normal weather.   Yeah, as if we all love paying a billion dollars per second on our heating bills, right?

Whether this will be accompanied by any other substantial snowfalls is anybody's guess. On the one hand, the pattern well into January favors storm development along or off the Eastern Seaboard. On the other hand the Arctic air coming in from the north and west is so heavy and strong that it could easily keep any storms that do form well south and east of our region, so we would not get all that much snow.   We'll have to wait on that.

The lake effect snow machine will certainly go nuts for at least the next few days. Some areas of western New York, especially near and south of Watertown off of Lake Ontario, can expect three or four feet of lake effect snow, possibly locally even more than that, by Wednesday. Yikes!

Whether you like winter or not, we're going to get plenty of it. And whether or not you like winter, Merry Christmas!