No Snow In Forecast, But Now's The Time We Can Start Getting It

A bit of snow in my St. Albans, Vermont yard one year ago today.
No snow in the forecast for the next few days, but it's surely coming.

On this date last year - October 24 - it snowed a little in most of northern Vermont.

It wasn't much in most places.  I got about an inch in St. Albans and a some places in the Northeast Kingdom picked up a few inches.

Though no snow is in the forecast for the next few days, last year's events are a reminder. Time to get the snow tires on, as we can get winter weather at any time now.

Vermont does have a history of October snows, some of them pretty substantial. And some of them came earlier than this.

I turn to the Vermont Weather Book by David Ludlum for examples. Details are sketchy on one the biggest Vermont October snowstorm on record because it happened so long ago. But on October 9, 1804 a moisture-rich hurricane swept up from the south.

A very cold air mass was in place over interior New England, so a lot of this came down as snow. Some places got a foot and a half of snow, with major tree damage because leaves were still on.

In modern times, nothing can beat the epic snow on October 4, 1987.  More than 18 inches of snow fell on southwestern Vermont and adjacent parts of Massachusettts and New York, including in the Albany, New York area.

 Totals of more than six inches extended through most of Vermont, except the Champlain Valley.

Wild scene in Bennington Vermont on October 4, 1987.

Of course in this instance, too, leaves were on the trees, so there was massive destruction and long power outages during the height of the fall foliage tourism season in Vermont.

Another biggie on October 10, 1925 dumped up to 18 inches of snow on the high elevations and up to a foot in the low and middle elevations of Vermont.

The storm was accompanied by high winds, so there was a lot of drifting. Road clearing wasn't great in those days and cars were relatively new.  Many got stuck in drifts up to five feet high. Some cars around Stowe were snowed in until the next spring.

Substantial October snowstorms also hit Vermont in 1933, 1969 and 1979. A few towns in southern Vermont got more than six inches of snow in the Octobers of 2005,  2011 and 2016.  The October 25, 2005 storm was particularly bad. Some leaves were still on the trees - it had been an otherwise warm autumn.  About 100,000 Vermont customers lost power, some for a week. Up to 14 inches of snow fell in Underhill.

So yeah, it can get wintry this time of year. It's just a matter of time before we get hit.