Winter Hanging Tough In Vermont With More Snow Than Forecast

I see from my holiday perch in Yankton, South Dakota (where it was a tropical 39 degrees as of noon) that winter is really having tough back in Vermont.

WCAX-TV says this police cruiser rolled
over in slippery conditions this morning
on Interstate 89 in Williston. 

Snowfall so far today in Vermont has amounted to as much as four inches, and might end up as deep as eight inches in some of the western slopes of the Green Mountains.

Hey, at least it's snow, not more ice, and it's fairly fluffy, so it's not adding much to the weight on the ice-encrusted trees.

Still, reports filtered back to me that there were a lot of crashes on Vermont roads and highways this morning. Remember, people, an inch of snow can be just as slippery, or even more slippery than several inches.

From all I can tell, winter is going to hang around for awhile, so get used to it. Temperatures might finally rise above freezing briefly Friday and Saturday afternoons, which would be good to finally get some of that ice off the trees.

As long as the trees are weighted down and as long as the wind blows, we could lose more branches, trees and powerlines, so if the ice melts off a bit, that's a good thing.

It looks as if a couple of Arctic cold fronts will come through late this weekend or early next week, ensuring more bouts of subzero weather at night and bone chilling days for awhile.

Forecasters are watching a potential coastal storm Sunday or Monday. It looks like it might move far enough off the coast to keep Vermont out of the heaviest precipitation, but these things are sneaky.

Stay tuned to updated forecasts later this week. We could, maybe, get another surprise storm.