Messy December Storm To Get Us Out Of Remarkably Wintry November

Tonks the weather dog looking sad and forlorn in our St. Albans,
Vermont driveway the other day. November was one of the
snowiest on record in Vermont.

No rest for the weary!

After a incredibly wintry November here in northern New England, we've got another messy storm on the way. At least this one won't be as bad as some recent ones, but it's still worth taking note.

I'll get into some of those November statistics in a minute, but first the upcoming storm. 

It's a sprawling one as of this morning, unleashing snow and mixed precipitation across the central Plains and Midwest, severe thunderstorms in the South and rain pushing into the Southeast.

The storm will lift northeastward toward the Great Lakes, putting us Vermonters on the, well, warmish side of the storm.

After midnight, we'll probably get a quick burst of snow, with a quick changeover to sleet, freezing rain and rain. The ice won't accumulate much, but it will slicken the roads. Plus, trees in many mid and high elevations in northern and central Vermont are still heavily laden down with heavy, wet snow from the last storm earlier this week.

As of early this morning, there were still roughly 2,000 Vermont homes and businesses still without power from that messy snow a few days ago.  Even a little bit of snow, ice and rain could make that snow heavier on trees, leading to more snapped branches and new power failures.

Not good.

The mix will change to a cold rain for pretty much all of us on Sunday, and the precipitation should lighten up sonewhat in the afternoon. Kind of a yucky day, though, especially under foot with that slush and melting snow.

It will stay sort if mild into Monday when a cold front will bring us back down into some winter chill. Not subzero again by any means, but it will feel like winter.

Bonus: It looks pretty unlikely that we will have any big storms next week. Some light snow and snow showers, yes, but there are no big dumps in our immediate future.

THAT WINTRY NOVEMBER

I'm glad to be through November, 2018 mostly because it felt like the depths of winter.

The month's statistics for Burlington, Vermont bear that out. The mean temperature for the month was 33.6 degrees, which was 4.6 degrees colder than normal. It was the coldest month, relative to average,  I believe since February, 2015.

Burlington's November temperature did not crack the Top 10 coldest list, but still. Other areas of Vermont were colder, with average temperatures for the month running more than five degrees colder than average.

It was soggy, too, in case you didn't notice. Most of us had five or more inches of rain and melted snow. Burlington clocked in with 5.48 inches of precipitation for the month, which make it the fourth wettest November on record.

As you know,  it was also very snowy. Burlington had 19.5 inches of snow in November, making the fifth snowiest November on record. The top of Mount Mansfield had 46 inches of snow on the ground on November 29, the most on record for so early in the season.

It's hard to say how the rest of the winter will go. Honestly, anything could happen and probably will.