The Frigid Blast Has Arrived; Snow, Blowing Snow, Too, But Hope On Horizon?

The scene in Boston during storm surge
flooding on Thursday. 

The epic nor'easter from yesterday has pulled away into Atlantic Canada, but here in Vermont, we're still going to have that hangover of snow, lots of blowing snow, wind, and frigid temperatures.

We've been advertising this for days, of course, and now it's here. Moisture wrapping around from the Atlantic Ocean down toward us will keep the snow falling today, especially in the north and mountains.

The snow won't be all that heavy, but it will continue to pile up.  Which means this storm is overachieving in northern Vermont. The Champlain Valley can expect storm totals in the six to nine inch range, with most of northern Vermont getting a grand total of six to 12 inches out of this. A moderate size snowfall, yes. But that wind and cold!

It's a really fluffy snow, so gusts to 40 mph or even more will really whip that stuff around. It's going to be tough driving to work or school or wherever today with all the snow, black ice, drifting snow, poor visibility in blowing snow and those low temperatures.  A lot of schools will close or have delayed openings today anyway.

But think about it: We're almost through this long, nasty cold spell, which began on Christmas. Seems like ages ago. Yes, there's wind chill warnings here in Vermont through Saturday night for air that will feel like it's 40 below or so.

Yes, the wind and blowing snow are miserable. And temperatures still expected in the 20s to low 30s below zero Sunday morning are nothing to embrace, that's for sure.

The end of this cold siege is at hand, however. Sunday afternoon will still be quite chilly, but not nearly as bad. By Monday and Tuesday, practically all will be forgotten as temperatures rise to the 20s to around 30. There might be a little snow those days, but we can handle that.

Traffic backed up on the Arctic wasteland, namely Interstate
89 in Milton, Vermont this morning. Lots of black ice.

Forecasting models have also pretty much abandoned the idea of another Arctic blast for the middle of next week. YAY!!!  It's even quite possible a January thaw of sorts could come in for a couple days toward the end of next week.

Meanwhile, they're picking up the pieces in places like Massachusetts and Maine, where this intense nor'easter caused a lot of storm surge flooding along the coast on Thursday.

At least 75 homes in Suffolk County, Massachusetts had water on their first floors. Water surged onto the streets of downtown Boston.

Other homes flooded on Cape Cod. Throughout the coastline, motorists were caught by surprise by the flooding, and had to be rescued. Quite the memorable storm to say the least. You can see videos of it all at the bottom of this post.

The Weather Channel said more than 4,000 airline flights were canceled on Thursday, and it will take awhile to work through that backlog.

In Canada, up to 100,000 residents lost power in the places like Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Deep snow engulfed New Brunswick, while heavy rain, hurricane force wind gusts and destructive storm surges assailed Halifax. On coastal location in Nova Scotia reported a wind gust of 105 mph. It gusted to 72 mph in Halifax.

As of this morning the intense cold that's beginning to affect us here in Vermont is also surging into the Maritime Provinces in Canada.

The storm might have also set a record, at least for the western Atlantic. To qualify for the now-famous "bomb" status, the storm had to get stronger by 24 millibars (an air pressure measurement) within 24 hours. Preliminary estimates indicate the storm strengthened by 59 millibars within 24 hours.

At least we got through it all. So far anyway.

Below are some videos from the Massachusetts coastal storm surge yesterday:

Storm surge in Marshfield, Mass:



Chaos in the Seaport district of Boston: