Thursday Evening Update: Winter Storm Still Moving Into Vermont To Create Friday Mess

The latest NWS/South Burlington snow prediction map for the
upcoming storm. It's showing a general five to eight inches
of new snow regionwide, but I imagine some favored places
might end up closer to 10-12 inches. 

As of late afternoon Thursday, the National Weather Service in South Burlington, Vermont has upgraded the winter weather advisory in all but western Rutland County and Bennington County to a winter storm warning.

All day long, I suspected the NWS would make that move, and sure enough.

I theorize that part of the motivation to upgrade to a warning is to alert people that this snowstorm is surely going to make a mess of our Friday morning commute to work and school.

I imagine, though, that quite a few schools in Vermont might shut down for the day on Friday.

The heaviest, most intense  snow for most of Vermont should come through just before or during the morning commute.

Forecast snow accumulations have been bumped up slightly, and almost all of us in Vermont should see at least six to ten inches of new snow by the time this is all said and done.  By the way, this includes the Champlain Valley, so I would remind you once again this isn't a high elevation storm like the last few.

I would not be at all surprised if a few places, especially in higher elevations, pick up a foot of snow or even a bit more than that.

By Vermont standards, this is a mid-sized, typical winter snowstorm, at least on paper. But there are a few things that are going on to make this one more risky than usual.

First of all, and most importantly, this will be the first big dump of snow of the season on the most heavily populated parts of Vermont. We're not used to driving in these conditions, so we don't have our "snow legs."

Some of us, ahem, have not gotten our snow tires yet, so that's an issue.

Here's another problem: As I alluded to, the timing of the heaviest snow could not possibly be worse. We'll really get dumped on before and during the morning commute. So it will take some time to clean the snow and ice from our cars and trucks.

Then we have to plow our way over snowy, icy roads. Yes, I'm sure the Vermont Agency of Transportation trucks will be out, but there's only so much they can do when it's snowing at a rate of an inch or more per hour.

The burst of heaviest snow will come through a little after midnight in far southern Vermont and reach northern Vermont between I'd say 4 and 7 a.m.

Yet another problem is that in many locations, especially in the valleys, is the snow will become somewhat wet and heavy. Unlike dry, powdery snow, wet snow tends to compact into a particularly slick, wet ice beneath car tires. It just makes everything worse.

Snow will taper to snow showers in the afternoon and evening, but the risk of icy roads will definitely continue.

Usually, a November snowstorm like this melts almost completely away within a week or a little more, at least in the valleys. I don't see that happening this time. Temperatures will stay below normal at least through Thanksgiving, and probably beyond.

Some afternoons will get above freezing in the valleys during this time frame, so some snow might melt. But we will also have additional light snow showers from time to time over the next week, even if there are no further heavier snows in the immediate future.

Which means this snow is going to stick around for awhile.

Skiers and riders must be ecstatic. It looks like Vermont will have the best Thanksgiving week snow conditions in ages, possibly since the late 1960s or early 1970s. It'll almost be like January conditions. Snowshoeing and cross country skiing are usually out of the question in the valleys during a Vermont November.

Not this year.

ELSEWHERE: A MESS

Today is awful from Maryland to New England.

Brooklyn Bridge in the snow today. 

As expected, an area of heavy snow is making its way north through New Jersey into the New York City metro area and southern New England just in time for this evening's commute.

Snow in and around New York City was coming down at a rate of one to two inches per hour late this afternoon. All lanes on the George Washington Bridge were shut down late this afternoon by snow and accidents. Video from the GWB shows that multiple cars and trucks collided on the icy pavement.  

Some areas around New York City reported two inches of snow in just 40 minutes.

The storm has turned deadly The Weather Channel reports seven deaths and dozens of injuries due to crashes on snowy and icy highways.

Here's a video of the first snowstorm of the season today in New York's Central Park:

Tumbleweed Connection: And Easterners Thought The Snow Accumulation Was Bad

Yes, I know, you winter weary achy backed snow shovelers in the Midwest and Northeast. You can't bear to clear one more flake of snow after shoveling your driveway day after day, week after week for months.  

A Colorado neighborhood buried in tumbleweeds
earlier this week. 

But it could be worse! Yes, it could!  You could live in the community of Fountain, near Colorado Springs.

Residents there returned home from work one day last week to find tumbleweeds piled up to 10 feet high against their houses. 

They couldn't get in or out.

These tumbleweeds have been a particularly terrible problem in windblown, drought stricken areas of the western United States this winter.

And what do you do with the mess? It's not like the tumbleweeds are going to melt eventually. Plus, they could catch fire and cause a nasty wildfire. The snow in your driveway is not going to cause a fire, trust me.

For now, the residents have piled the the tumbleweeds in a common area, but if the wind blows in the wrong direction, it could pile them against the houses again.

Tumbleweeds have become a real problem in the western United States this winter. They grew like crazy, especially in areas that got a lot of rain last summer. Then it got dry, and they're blowing around and piling up and getting to be a nasty headache.

You could burn them, but only if it's not dry or windy out.  The city of Kennewick, in eastern Washington suggests stomping them or using  heavy duty string trimmer to break them into bits so you can somewhat more easily dispose of them in the trash.

Some cities are spending weeks and many thousands of dollars with heavy equipment trying to get rid of the tumbleweed invasion, which is the worst in memory for a lot of Western towns.

It was as bad as it gets recently in Clovis, New Mexico, as you can see from this incredible local news vieo out of New Mexico:



Here's the local news clip from Colorado:

Southeastern U.S. Under The Winter Storm Gun Again

Last month, the city of Atlanta had its End of The World moment when a couple inches of snow, combined with a panicked, "We've got to close the schools and get everyone home from work NOW" mentality caused enormous traffic jams that had people trapped on the roads for as long as 20 hours.

The Atlanta GA snow/traffic nightmare in January.
There's another winter storm watch up for
Atlanta. If a storm materializes, we'll see
if they do better this time.  

Well, guess what? There's a winter storm watch up again for Atlanta. This time it's for Monday afternoon into Tuesday.

It's still VERY unclear if the storm will be bad, or just turn out to be mostly rain for Atlanta. It's right on the edge.

But it will be very interesting to see how they handle another winter storm, if it arrives.

We hope practice makes perfect.

This Atlanta storm question is part of another round of snowy, icy weather that will stretch over the next few days from Louisiana to the Carolinas. So we'll hear about problems down that way for a few days.

By the standards of the people of the north, like me here in Vermont, the storm won't be that bad. But despite the frequency of southern storms this winter, the South is still not equipped for, or used to winter storms.

By the way, we here in northern New England won't see much in the way of storminess. We might get a dusting or an inch or two of snow tonight and Monday morning from a weak system passing by.

It'll be cold midweek with subzero lows before it warms up again to near normal February highs in the upper 20s or low 30s by the end of the week.

Some type of storm system might come through New England at the end of the week. It's hard to say how intense it will be, but early indications suggest it will be just light snow in Vermont and surrounding areas on Friday.

Long range forecasts like that are notoriously iffy, so we'll have better forecasts for the Friday system by about midweek.