Icy Calm Christmas After The Chaos

Several thousand homes and businesses in Vermont have no power this Christmas Eve morning as crews continue struggling to restore power lost in the weekend ice storm.

This photo by Ryan Mercer of the Burlington (Vt)
Free Press shows the damage and challenges
from the ice storm in Cambridge, Vt.  

Here's hoping everyone gets their power back soon, but it might be a couple days yet for a few people.

It really was the worst one in Vermont since 1998, in my opinion.

The ice remains on the trees, and there's some risk of more power failures and falling branches as a result, but it won't be as bad as Sunday or Monday.

Also, the weather will be calm and pretty normal for the rest of the week. Christmas Eve and day will be quite cold. Many Vermonters will wake up to subzero temperatures Christmas morning.

I really hope there's antifreeze in Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer's snout.

At least the parts of Vermont that have snow on the ground will have a white Christmas. It's a crusty, icy, brittle, decidedly non powdery, bad snowball making snow, but you take what you can get, I guess.

And there's no big storms coming for awhile. Little disturbances will zip on through as they come in from the west, dropping bits and bursts of light snow and flurries on Vermont's landscape.

I'm reporting live from Yankton, South Dakota, where there are only patches of snow on the ground. It's below zero here this morning, but it is supposed to snow a little this afternoon for a white Christmas in the Great Plains.

Merry Christmas to all!!