"Historic" Oregon Storm Could Have Vermont Effects, Too

When the national map of the National Weather Service home page is
very colorful, you know it's stormy and there are lots of hazards.
This year, just in time for the Thanksgiving travel week.

Our stormy Thanksgiving week continues apace in the United States as two large storms continue to have a big impact on travel and in some cases, just the day to day life for people.

Fellow Vermonters might be asking me what the hell I'm talking about, since the weather Monday was so mellow, and nothing special is going to happen today in the weather department.

 (Burlington, Vermont made it to 50 degrees Monday, which is no big deal for this time of year, but still the hottest day since way back on November 4.)

But, as noted yesterday, two big storms are affecting other parts of the United States, so us Vermonters are kind of getting spared this time.

 The first storm coming across the United States is a strong one, the second one even worse.

There's a remarkably broad strip of the central United States stretching from Colorado and Wyoming all the way to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan that's under a winter storm warning for the first storm. A blizzard warning is up for parts of Colorado.

 I guess my in-laws over in Yankton, South Dakota are going to have a white Thanksgiving, since they are under that winter storm warning. Expect four to nine inches of snow there, with winds of up to 40 mph. Ugh.

Another big area just to the south of this storm is under high wind warnings and wind advisories.  Also, a few severe thunderstorms and a tornado or two could pop up today in the mid-Mississippi Valley today.

For us in Vermont, this first storm won't be too bad. We'll get a decent slug of rain Wednesday afternoon and night. Falling temperatures on Thanksgiving will change the rain to snow showers, but accumulations won't be all that much -- maybe a couple inches in the mountains.

It will be quite windy Wednesday night and Thanksgiving with this storm, so there might be isolated power outages. But it won't be anything close to what we had to deal with in that epic Halloween storm a few weeks back.

Then it's that "historic" storm in Oregon.  A powerhouse of a tempest is coming ashore in Oregon today, with hurricane force gusts along the coast and heavy inland snows. In many areas of Oregon and northwestern California, this has the makings of being among the worst storms in decades. Power will be out for some people in that region through Thanksgiving.

This storm will remain very powerful as it crosses the Lower 48 between now and Sunday. Expect severe weather in the South, and blizzardy weather in the northern Plains and lots of wind in between.

For us, this storm has an uncertain future. Some computer models have the storm producing another snowstorm for Vermont on Sunday. Other models take it too far south to give us much of anything, and a few models take it far enough north to give us mixed precipitation.

Stay tuned, is what I always say.

Winter Update And a Strange Norwegian Guy Embraces Winter, With The Help Of Vodka

As this projected weather map shows, two very strong
storms on Wednesday will disrupt Thanksgiving
travel across much of the United States.

Yesterday's storm in Vermont, as expected, pulled a few surprises.  Central Vermont, as expected, got two to four inches of wet snow, sleet and slush.

However, the light snow and rain that forecasters thought would develop in the Champlain Valley never materialized.

From Burlington north, it was a dark, gloomy Sunday with a heavy, thick overcast, but no precipitation fell. (It gave me a chance to do a little work outdoors, which was nice.)

That storm's gone, but it looks like Thanksgiving week travel is going to be a challenge for much of the United States.

The first storm will travel from the central Rockies, through the middle of the Plains and into the Great Lakes Wednesday.  This will lay down a stripe of heavy snow from Denver to Minneapolis to the northwestern Great Lakes Tuesday through Wednesday. That will cause a lot of problems and flight delays for sure.

Here in Vermont, that storm will give us a slug of of rain Wednesday and Wednesday night, followed by mostly light snow, gusty winds and cold weather on Thanksgiving.

Meanwhile a beast of a storm is due to crash ashore in Oregon Tuesday night with its own package of strong winds, snow and rain on the West Coast.  The storm will reorganize over the southern Rockies and then emerge over the Plains late in the week, so the trip home from wherever your going will be a challenge, too.   It looks like that one will be a big, disruptive coast-to-coast storm.

No rest of the weary.

So, with that in mind, I found this odd little video from a guy in Norway who is a bit enthusiastic about the onset of winter. Certainly more than me.

Clad only in black underwear, he cleans off his car, drives to a frozen bath tub, cuts up the ice with a chain saw and relaxes in that icy tub.  It's apparent that copious amounts of vodka are helping with this. And for some reason he's got a little doll to help him out with this adventure.

In other words, DON'T try this at home.  But the video is oddly entertaining nevertheless. Watch:

Seattle And Hawaii Battling Weird Winter Storms

Huge wave crash into Hawaii in November 2013. This weekend, waves
that make this look like a bathtub could crash ashore in Hawaii as
a very dangerous, rare storm moves in. Image via Weather Underground

It's the heart of winter storm seasons, but two places that normally aren't that wintry are, well wintry.

One of the two places I'm talking about - Hawaii - of course won't be particularly snowy, but is having some serious stormy challenged. 

The other place I'm discussing - Seattle - gets snow pretty much every winter, but the snow there lately has been much more than they're used to.

HAWAII 

It can get stormy in Hawaii, but not like they're expecting this weekend.

In the winter, Hawaii is prone to something called Kona storms.  In these cases winter storms in the North Pacific come far enough south to drag cold fronts through or near Hawaii. Ahead of these cold fronts, winds come from the southwest in Hawaii, which is opposite of the usuall east to northeast trade winds.

When the Kona storms hit, normally dry areas of Hawaii get rain. (Usually the trade winds dump rain on east facing parts of Hawaii while western parts of islands behind mountains stay dry.)  These Kona storms also increase winds, and dump snow on the highest volcanic peaks, like Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa.

The storm this weekend is odd and a lot more intense than usual because it's coming directly from the north, heading due south toward Hawaii. Which means it won't be paradise in these paradise islands this weekend.

North facing shorelines face very serious surf and coastal flooding.  Wave heights just off the northern shores of the Hawaiian islands could reach 60 feet.

The National Weather Service in Honolulu said:"Overall, this low is shaping up to be a high-impact event, bringing mulitple weather hazards and significant threats to life and property.....Anyone with vulnerablle ocean front property needs to complete their preparations for this event as soon as possible."

The NWS said the storm and waves could bring unprecedented flooding and damage to north and west facing beaches in Hawaii.

The winds, as noted will come from an unusual direction for Hawaii. That means winds could rush down the south and east slopes of some mountains, causing high, damaging winds in areas that aren't used to it, including some areas of Honolulu.

Finally, this is a cold storm so by Hawaiian standards, it's going to be frigid this weekend. High temperatures Sunday will probably only barely make it to 70 degrees Sunday amid the high winds and rains. Lows Sunday night in Honolulu will be in the upper 50s, which is ice box weather for that region.

SEATTLE SNOW

A rare, snowy mess in Sequim, along the Washington State coast.
It snows a LOT in the Cascade Mountains, but it usually rains
near the coast. Not this week.

The same complicated weather pattern in the North Pacific that's causing the Hawaii storm is setting up an unusually long-lasting spell of winter weather in the Pacific Northwest.

As of late morning today, Seattle's Sea-Tac airport had gotten 7.9 inches of snow in the latest storm. That's on top of a few inches earlier in the week. Of the snow they've gotten, 6.4 inches fell on Friday alone, the second most Seattle has gotten in a single day.

They're not used to this. Seattle usually would have gotten about 3 inches of snow for the entire season by now. 

You can tell Seattle residents don't deal with winter this intense. Grocery store shelves were pretty much devoid of break, milk water and other staples by Friday afternoon. (Despite the snow, they're being re-stocked).

Usually Seattle comes in light flurries that melt quickly.  Seattle this month so far is a snowy New-England-y landscape There was snow on the ground three days during last week, and the snow that's there now will be there for awhile.

There are daily chances of snow, or even likely periods of snow through this coming Friday around Seattle.

The snow has really been piling up in the West Coast mountains, too. Down in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, some resorts got more than seven feet of snow last week. Another several feet of accumulation is expected in the coming week.

It's going to stay cold and snowy in Seattle well into the upcoming week.

What We Hear In Winter Storm Forecasts Depends Upon Our Psychology

A blizzard stops traffic in St. Albans, Vermont in March 2017.

A huge winter storm is socking the Southeast today with heavy snow, sleet, ice and wind. It's a real mess down there.

This most definitely won't be the last winter storm to affect the nation in the coming months. Some of the upcoming storms will obviously hit us here in Vermont - though there's nothing in the immediate forecast.

There's been some interesting articles out there lately about how we hear and how we react to winter storm forecasts (or any kind of weather alerts for that matter.)

We all laugh at the panic we see or think some people feel at the first hint of an oncoming storm. Gotta get the bread and milk! Bread and milk and eggs! It makes you think a snowstorm requires us to make French toast, or something.

That's just one small aspect of it.

Another aspect of winter storms is "wishcasting," as meteorologist, professor and writer Marshall Shepherd notes in Forbes. He's not the first person to come up with this term, but he explains it particularly well. If you're a person who likes snow, you focus on forecast for the deepest snow compared to all the other forecasts. If you hate snow, you do the same thing, although, as Quartz points out, is maybe called "awfulizing."

Says Quartz:

"Cognitive psychologist Dr. Albert Ellis, the pioneer of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy in the 1950s first coined the term to describe the act of escalation, a situation into the moset negative possible conclusion, often with no concrete evidence to prove its validity."

Here's how it manifests itself in weather forecasts, and the actual storm. Say the forecast called for six to 12 inches of new snow. At your place, you "only" got six inches of snow. The storm prediction was accurate for your area, but you didn't get a foot of snow, so you think it's wrong. People tend to focus on the upper range, and not the lower range, Shepherd points on in Forbes.

We also focus on things that we're not used to. Shepherd lives in Atlanta. For this current storm in the Southeast, there was a mention of snow in the forecast for the Atlanta region, but mostly in the mountains to the northeast of the city.

The much greater threat from this storm in Atlanta was the risk of heavy rain and flooding, and strong winds that could knock down trees and power lines. But all anybody asked Shepherd in the days leading up to the storm was snow. Nobody seemed to care about the wind and rain.

I guess Atlanta is not used to snow, but certainly used to windy, wet storms.

Another area where people emphasize the extreme in winter storms is computer model forecasts and social media. Several days to a week or two before a storm, computer models start to hint at what might happen, but have certainly not pinned down the specifics of the potential storm.

A few computer models almost always spit out forecasts of extreme expected snowfall, ice, wind or whatever.  These forecasts are not realistic (garbage in, garbage out) and are not in line with what most forecasts are calling for.

But people inevitably post on social media the forecasts for the most extreme scenarios. It's great to raise interest and gather clicks and views, but does not do anything to spread accurate information.

Hmmm. It's as if you can't believe everything you read on the Internet. Whodathunk?

Stick to meteorologists you know and trust, and who are not given to too much excitement and exaggeration. You figure out which ones are good soon enough, trust me.

Oh, and that bread and milk I mentioned above? They're bad choices to stock up on ahead of a storm. Milk goes bad if the electricity goes out and the refrigerator dies. Bread doesn't have great nutritional value.

The better choices is to hunker down with, especially if you're expecting a long period of time with blocked roads, no electricity and other hazards, are foods that are nutritious and can be stored without refrigeration or being needed to cook, notes Accuweather. 

Instant oatmeal, mashed potatoes, and cup soups are good, especially if you know you're going to have a supply of clean water. Cans of tuna and things like that are good, too.

You should also have at least a gallon of water per person ready ahead of a storm, with extra water for pets. If you don't know if the water is perfectly clean, you can boil it for a few minutes before using, if you have a heat source. You can also buy purifying tablets at camping stores.

It also does not hurt if you've got a great supply of heating fuel for your home before the storm, and your car and truck should have a full tank of gas.

Of course, these last few paragraphs I've written make it seem like life is a perpetual emergency. As we know, it's not. Just remember this: The next time a winter storm warning goes up for your area,  it's not the end of the world. A little smart preparation, though, goes a long way.

I Hope You Like Winter In April

Some progress in getting rid of the snow in my St. Albans yard.
This first photo was taken a week ago Thursday -- on March 22.

It kind of feels like spring got here, sort of .

Temperatures got into the low 50s Thursday and we managed to get through a storm system that just had rain, not snow overnight. Much of the snow in the valleys has melted (though we definitely have more to go).

We turn the calendar over to April on Sunday. Ahhhh.. Spring. Right?

Um, no.

The weather pattern is now setting up so that we'll need our parkas and boots for awhile yet, and you can totally forget about spring blossoms anytime soon.

This state of affairs is true through most of the entire third to half of the nation, and it will probably continue into mid-month. I'm a bucket of spring cheer this morning, aren't I?

Already, the forces of winter's resurgence are gathering. Winter storm warnings are now in effect across much of North Dakota, a good chunk of Minnesota and northern Wisconsin. It's really lovely in North Dakota, if for some reason you're planning a trip there.

In parts of that state, the temperatures were in the single digits this morning, it was windy with snow and blowing snow, and forecasts indicate North Dakota will remain continuously below freezing at least for a week, likely more.

It won't end up being as bad as that here in Vermont as we head into April, but it will be bad enough. I hope you didn't put away your snow shovel, for example.

...and this photo was taken in the same place, a week later - yesterday March 29.
Still a ways to go, though 

There looks to be several outbreaks of Arctic air coming into the northern Plains over the next week or two, and each of them will spread east toward us.

Obviously, these Arctic blasts won't be as intense as they are in January, but you can see why it will stay so cold in the Northern Plains, with some nights getting below zero out there.

In Vermont, it will remain relatively mild today and Saturday. Nothing super warm, but definitely tolerable for this time of year. (Highs in the 40s to around 50 both days.)

The first in a series of cold fronts and chilly storms will come through Saturday night. Easter Sunday looks rather unpleasant, I'm afraid. There might be some snow showers around, especially early in the day. There will be a cold northwest wind and temperatures for most of us will remain at or below 40 degrees during the day.

A stronger system looks like it wants to come in Tuesday into Wednesday. At this point, it looks like it will be mostly rain here in Vermont, but it will be close. We could get surprised by some snow with this. I'll just cross my fingers and say rain for now.

On Wednesday, a cold front that really means business will sweep through, keeping us definitely cold.

Beyond that, it's hard to tease out the strength, position, temperature and moisture content of fast moving cold fronts and storms that will come through into mid-Apri.

It's spring, so there might be brief attempts by warm air to come in during that time before being slapped down by repeated cold fronts.  It will snow during the first half of April here in Vermont, but right now it's impossible to tell if it will be a little or a lot.

Just don't plan on picking any daffodils for awhile. Remember, though. Spring WILL get here.

Eventually.

Saturday Evening Storm Update: Stay Off Roads This Evening; New Storm To Sock Us Christmas Day

Here's an initial forecast for the amount of snow expected on
Christmas Day - this from the National Weather Service in
South Burlington. At this point, it looks like most of Vermont
is in for six or seven inches of snow on Christmas.

As of 4:30 p.m. Saturday, rain and freezing rain in the northern Champlain Valley of New York and Vermont had changed to snow, and this changeover was working its way steadily south and east and will encompass most of the state through this evening.

By the way, that light predicted Christmas snowfall I was talking about this morning ain't so light anymore. There's a winter storm watch out for the region on Christmas Day for what now appears will be a mid-sized storm. More on that in a bit.

First, let's get through what happened today and what's happening this evening. Gawd, it was an awful day weatherwise through northern New York, the northern two-thirds of New England and southern Ontario and Quebec.

There was lots of freezing rain for most or all of the day, especially in parts of northern New York, eastern and central Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and a good chunks of Massachusetts and Connecticut.

As expected, the Connecticut River Valley in Vermont was included in the zone that really got socked by the freezing rain. As of 5 p.m. Saturday, more than 5,000 homes and businesses were without power from just south of St. Johnsbury all the way down to the Brattleboro area.

Even in places that got a cold, but ostensibly non-freezing rain today, like the central and southern Champlain Valley of Vermont, the ground was chilly enough that even though the air temperature was something like 35 degrees, the rain froze on roads, sidewalks, parking lots and the like. It was nasty.

There were tons of car accidents and crashes, road closures and the like throughout the region,  As expected, enough freezing rain fell on parts of New Hampshire an Maine that there were some issues with tree branches and power lines failing under the weight of the accumulated ice.

If the freezing rain hasn't changed to snow yet where you are, it soon will. It won't amount to much in most locations - I suppose one to three inches will do it. But as temperatures drop below freezing, the falling snow combined with the water freezing, will make it bad for driving and walking this evening.

I noticed during the height of the rain this afternoon that there was a bit of street flooding in Burlington, Vermont due to snow-clogged drains. Those big puddles freezing up will be pretty interesting by Sunday morning.

If you need to travel in Vermont or through most of New England or eastern New York this weekend, you've got a narrow, safe window of opportunity tomorrow - Christmas Eve. The road crews will have been out by morning, and there will be little if any precipitation to speak of.

But now, let's get into the Christmas Day snow.

It looks like the storm on Christmas Day will be a little stronger and a little closer to the coast than many forecasters thought earlier. That means more snow.

This still won't be a blockbuster, but there is enough expected snow to prompt winter storm watches for wide areas of the Northeast, including much of New England away from the coast of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut.

Ice accumulates on tree branches in Lowell, Massachusetts
on Saturday. Photo via television station WCVB

Here in Vermont and surrounding areas, look for a general four to eight inch snowfall - the least to the northwest and the most to the south and east and higher elevations. The snow will begin in earnest in the wee hours of the morning Christmas and continue for most if not all of the day.

This still looks like a well-behaved storm with no sleet or freezing rain in inland areas like Vermont, interior New Hampshire and western Maine. Still, the roads will be slick all day so watch out for that.

Vermont ski areas must be rejoicing. They got some good dumps of snow, then some rain and freezing rain to help establish bases today, then more powder tonight and Christmas.

Here's the only drawback for skiers, and the rest of us. It's going to be frickin' COLD during the middle and end of next week. We're talking highs barely making it above zero and lows in the teens below zero, with some isolated cold spots.

Unlike the cold waves of the past couple of winters that only lasted a day or two, this one starts Tuesday and goes at least into next weekend.

Computer models are also hinting at some sort of nor'easter with maybe, just maybe, the potential of some decent snows somewhere in the Northeast or Middle Atlantic States. It's way too soon to pin down who, if anyone will get the bulk of the snow out of that potential storm.  Don't pay serious attention to forecasts that offer specifics of this potential storm until at least Thursday.

Anyone who tells you they know precisely where and how much heavy snow will fall next weekend is, um, snowing you.

No Rest For The Winter Weary In The Plains States

Icy conditions over the weekend caused this
multi-vehicle crash involving a truck, several cars
and a building on Interstate 40 near Soncy, Texas
says the Amarillo Police Department 

In the past couple of weeks there's been two nasty rounds of winter storms in the middle of the country, especially in the central Plains and, yep, here comes a third one.

Icing is still a problem in parts of Oklahoma and Kansas this morning. In fact, parts of eastern Kansas, ice storm warnings are still up.

Precipitation there hasn't been as heavy as in hard-hit Oklahoma, but the ice has been slowly building up on trees and power lines all weekend.

It's gotten to the point around Manhattan, Kansas and environs that the tree branches and wires are now snapping.

This long icy storm that began the day before Thanksgiving has been responsible for at least 11 deaths in the region, according to the Weather Channel.

A new storm coming out of the Rockies is about to spell more trouble for the region. A wide area of winter storm watches is up for places like South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota for Monday into Tuesdsy -- all places that have been getting hammered by early winter so far this month.

This storm will be more snow that ice, and a widespread six to 12 inches of snow is expected in this region. With, of course, locally higher amounts.

As has been the case with so many storms this month, this one will head northeastward across the Great Lakes Wednesday, putting the East Coast into the warm side of the storm.

Some rain will fall there midweek, but very little if any snow will come down in the ski resorts of New England, so winter enthusiasts there will just have to keep waiting.

God Or Mother Nature Or Something Is Really Hating On Tennessee and Kentucky

A huge area of the country is under winter weather advisories
and warnings (the red, blue and pink) That huge
area of gray near the Gulf of Mexico is
fog advisories, testament to the huge amounts
of moisture available for heavy rain, snow
and ice the next couple of days.  

New England stole the spotlight for extreme winter weather over the past five weeks or so, but a sleeper epicenter of really bad winter weather has snuck up on us.

Since mid-February and continuing on through this week, Tennessee, Kentucky and some surrounding states have been getting totally hammered with extreme weather.

The next couple of days are going to be particularly rough in those parts, even as the weather will keep brutally beating up on New England this week.

Back in mid-February, the area had an ice storm (with lots of snow to the north in the Ohio Valley), then they had another ice storm, which caused a widespread disaster zone of fallen trees and powerlines, then heavy rain and flooding, then a flash freeze, then unprecedented late February cold, then more ice, now more heavy rain and flooding, and then more snow Wednesday.

Now, another one-punch is unfolding across the region. Round one is the massive area of precipitation breaking out across much of the eastern part of the nation.  A very wet storm is in the process of gathering and lumbering across the mid-South today and tonight.

A flood watch is up later today into tonight for much of Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia and nearby areas, as up to three inch of rain, melting snow, and soil saturated from the previous storms could lead to fast rises on area rivers.

Of course the storm responsible for the Ohio and Tennessee valley rains today is spreading north and east.

Already, a little freezing drizzle and freezing rain is causing big problems a little to the north in Illinois and Indiana, including the Indianapolis metro area. The rush hour this morning is on glare ice, and accidents are happening faster than anyone can keep up with.

A blizzard is brewing in parts of South Dakota and Minnesota today as light snow associated with this storminess is stirred up by winds expected to gust to 50 mph today.

A massive part of the country, encompassing basically anything east of the Mississippi River and north of the Mason-Dixon line, is under winter weather advisories and warnings later today an tonight.

That includes beleaguered New England, which stands to gain another 2 to 6 inches of snow from this, along with a little mixed precipitation late tonight and Wednesday morning. That goes for all of New England, by the way, including for readers in my home state of Vermont.

This first storm's cold front will slowly sag south through the Mid-South later today and tonight, encountering a vast amount of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico as it does so.

There could be one or two severe thunderstorms with the front as it moves into Louisiana and Mississippi, but the real story will again be the Tennessee and Ohio valleys.  

After an expected big winter storm leaves
Kentucky and Tennessee Wednesday, it could
move into the New York City area and
southern New England. It could drop more
than six inches of snow, according to this forecast
model. (Areas in pink.)  

The moisture interacting with the Arctic air bleeding south from Canada with the front, represents Round 2 of this mess for Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas and surrounding areas.

It looks like another heavy snowstorm is coming, mixed in many areas with the kind of sleet and freezing rain that has brought down trees and power lines earlier this winter.

It's starting to get a bit late in the season for places like Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky to get four to ten inch snowstorms, like what seems to be in the offing.  But, as we know, it's not a normal winter.

After everything clears out of the Ohio and Tennessee valleys, Arctic air will become entrenched.

All time record lows for the month of March are threatened by Friday. Hey, why not? Some of the same area had all time record lows for February, too.

And that snow that's expected in Tennessee and Kentucky? It moves on to southern New England Wednesday night and Thursday for a few more inches of snow there. Just what they need, right?

Skating Through The South And Blasting Through Winter

Ice storm damage in Helena, Arkansas. By
Stephanie Arnold via KATV.  

Another big winter storm is ending for most of the places it blasted yesterday, and the eastern part of the nation is settling in for more Arctic air.

This is one of those winter that, in general, wasn't so bad at the beginning but really built up to a big crescendo toward the end.

The big problem with yesterday's winter storm was the freezing rain and ice accumulations stretching from Arkansas to North Carolina.

Widespread power failures are still going in Arkansas, Tennessee, northeastern parts of Georgia and sections of North Carolina. (Plus there's probably a few nearby areas I skipped.)

NBC is reporting this morning at least 330,000 homes and businesses across the South have no power because heavy ice accumulations brought down trees, branches and power lines.

It's cold where there's no power, too. Arctic air punched back into the region behind the storm. For instance, it was 14 degrees this morning in Nashville, where about a half inch of ice paralyzed the region.

You start to get power failures during freezing rain if the ice accumulates to about a quarter inch thick. In Tennessee, ice was as much as three quarters of an inch thick, reports the Weather Channel. Many areas reported at least a half inch of ice.

Car crashes, were of course common. Some of them were because people were driving too fast for the conditions.  The city of Memphis, Tennessee reported at least 73 car crashes in about 16 hours, the Commercial Appeal newspaper said. 

WAVY-TV in Virginia had a camera set up on the side of the road in Hampton, Virginia, when this happened:



Notice the SUV stopped just inches from the camera (and the guy standing by filming.)

No serious injuries were reported in this crash.

North of the ice zone, it was heavy snow. Coleman, Kentucky picked up 18 inches of snow, and widespread totals of six to twelve inches were reported from Missouri to Virginia.

As expected, the outer edges of the storm were clipping southeastern New England as of Tuesday morning.

Luckily, after six feet of snow in the past month, this won't amount to much, but it won't help. An inch or two could fall in the Boston area today, and Cape Cod and the Islands expect two to four inches.

Ice storm damage in Memphis, Tennessee.
Photo by Nikki Boertman/The Commercial Appeal

Although it will remain very cold in New England for at least the next week, it might not snow all that much more in the next few days. There will be nuisance snows on several days through the weekend, though.

However, with (cross your fingers!) no HUGE dumps of snow into Saturday, municipalities in New England, with help from outside agencies like the Vermont National Guard, can do some power snow clearing.

You know, get tons of bucket loaders out there to dig the snow out of the streets and store it
in "snow dumps" fields.. or even disposing of it in the ocean, a move that is only legal in extreme cases, due to the pollution contained in the snow from the streets. I think this does qualify as an extreme case.

Speaking of extremes, the cold is locked in through much of the week. The National Weather Service in Indianapolis said the town of Seymour, Indiana got down to 13 below this morning. So did Burlington, Vermont. Of course 13 below in Vermont is not as rare as it is in Indiana but it's still damn cold.

Plus, the overnight low got down to minus 30 in Saranac Lake, New York, minus 26 in Whitefield, New Hampshire and 24 below in Morrisville, Vermont and Sherbrooke, Quebec.

This comes after dozens of cities and towns reported record lows. Erie, Pennsylvania reached 12 below, its all time record low for any date. Watertown, New York reached 34 below on Monday.

Another surge of Arctic air will blast into the Midwest and East Wednesday and Thursday. There's a chance Nashville could get below zero. If that happens, it would be the latest in the winter that has happened on record.

I'm watching another possible snowstorm in the Northeast on Sunday or Monday, but I have no details. Forecasting computer models are all over the place with this, so there's nothing I can hang my hat on yet. We'll see.

The weather pattern is stuck pretty much for the rest of the month. There are still some very uncertain signs the weather pattern could change in early March, but I'm not 100 percent sure it will yet, and it could always change into a pattern that brings more snow and cold to places that don't need it.

Stay tuned.