Wednesday Afternoon Update: The Snow Just Keeps On Coming

I showed you a pic of my back deck this morning, but
now it's even more buried because of snow sliding off
the roof and additional accumulations of snow. 

As expected, it's been snowing all day in most of Vermont, and the accumulations are getting crushing.

At my house in St. Albans, in northwestern Vermont, the storm total was up to 12.5 inches as of 4 p.m. today. That's less than many areas have gotten, but it's still a wicked pain.

The snow is rather wet and heavy and difficult to move. And as I said, it keeps coming, so the shoveling is getting extremely old.

Winter storm warnings remain up for the western half to two thirds of Vermont. Pretty much only the Connecticul River Valley below St. Johnsbury is exempt from this. Most of the Adirondacks remain under the gun, too.

Storm totals continue to impress and get more impressive. At last report, Graniteville, in central Vermont was up to 29.5 inches new. Williamstown has 24 inches new. Westfield is up to 22 inches.

A side note: At the bottom of this post, you'll see Elsa from "Frozen" come to the rescue.

In most of Vermont, except the Connecticut River Valley, expect another three to eight inches of snow by 8 a.m. tomorrow, with locally higher amounts along the Green Mountains and on the western slopes of those mountains.

The snow is getting downright dangerous. Big avalanches are fairly rare in the Vermont mountains, but can happen when there is a layer of icy snow, followed by big accumulations of wet or powdery snow, which is the case now.

Today, six U.S. Army soldiers were injured in an avalanche around Smuggler's Notch, Vermont as they were conducting mountainneering training. At least five of them were taken to a hospital, television station WCAX reported. It's definitely unusual to have such a dangerous avalanche in Vermont, so that tells you something. This was also the second avalanche in that area this week.

The National Weather Service in South Burlington, Vermont took the unusual step today of warning back country skiers and riders to be extra cautious in the Green and Adirondack mountains over the next few days as the risk of more avalanches continues. 

I'm only partly dug out this afternoon in St. Albans,
Vermont as the snow relentless continues to fall

Power outages have diminished since this morning, but with more snow loading on trees tonight, there might be additional problems.

This evening's commute, and tomorrow morning's will probably be tricky once again.

The snow will finally, slowly wind down tomorrow, but some accumulation will continue, especially in those Green Mountains and western slopes. Actually, the mountains could pick up a few additional inches Friday and maybe Saturday.

As noted this morning, the weather is going to trend colder, so most of it will stick around for quite awhile. High temperatures will not get out of the 20s this weekend and the first part of next week.

And, yes, we're still looking at the possibility of yet another nor'easter next week that has the potential to dump a bunch more snow on us here in Vermont. It could still miss - it's a long way away, but the risk is still there and we have to watch it.

Now for something completely different, here's a man dressed as Elsa from "Frozen" pushing a police van out of snowbank in nor'easter-wracked Boston. I'm  not making this up: