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| Riverside Avenue in Burlington this morning. Roads across Vermont remain snow covered, icy and slippery because it's still too cold for salt to work. Allow extra time and be prepared for lousy driving. |
If you're tired of this very active weather, well, buck it up.
We're in for a stormy, challenging, wintry ride for the next week at least, probably more, and there's something in the forecast to cheer - and disappoint - pretty much everybody. The weather pattern coming up is going to be a lot of work for all of us Vermonters.
I'll get to that in a minute, but while we're cleaning up the snow outside, I'll clean up some more storm tidbits from the weekend.
One remarkable thing about the storm was how uniformly Vermont got hit. Most of the time, one section of the state gets really bullseyed, while others miss out. This time, pretty much everybody got at least a foot, with just a few exceptions.
Burlington is usually one of the places that get a little less snow than others. But the storm total there is an impressive 17.3 inches. This is the 17th biggest snowstorm on record for Burlington. That total includes 15.6 inches that fell on Sunday, making it easily the snowiest January 20th on record.
The highest snow totals I see now are across the pond in New York with 21 inches in North Hudson, New York and 20.8 inches in Elizabethtown, New York.
In Vermont, there are 18 inch reports scattered statewide, including Walden in the northeast, Craftsbury, and Sudbury, in northern Rutland County.
Snow for the season in Burlington is up to a pretty impressive 57 inches, which is 20 inches ahead of normal for this time of year.
The other aspect of the storm was the low level cold air in the Champlain Valley, that we've already talked about. It seems like Burlington and Mount Mansfield reversed each other. The high and low temperature in Burlington Sunday were 5 above and 6 below.
Atop Mount Mansfield, the high was 16 and the low was 3 above. Very strange.
Now on to what happens next. As I said, it's busy.
TODAY: The wind chill warning stays in effect until 1 p.m. but the entire day really will feature nasty cold. Highs will end up a few degrees either side of zero, and winds will gust to 25 mph. Expect wind chills to often be in the minus 20s.
Road conditions will remain iffy because it's too cold for salt to work, and winds will blow snow back onto the roads. Take extra time to get to your destination. On my ride in today, the snow was packed on roads and had pretty much turned into ice. They won't get much better until it gets warm enough for salt to work.
TUESDAY: Pick of the week I suppose. It will be really cold at dawn, with temperatures in most places in the teens below zero. Near Lake Champlain it'll be in the single numbers below zero and the cold spots will be near minus 20.
But, the day will be generally sunny, winds will be lighter and temperatures will "warm" into the 8 to 18 degree above range.
WEDNESDAY: Early in the morning, before dawn, both temperatures and wind will be rising. By Wednesday morning, winds will be gusting as high as 35 mph across much of Vermont and as high as 45 mph in the Champlain Valley.
Which means there will once again be lots of blowing and drifting snow. The wind will be coming from the south this time, the opposite of yesterday and today. Which means snow that was in protected areas will now get blown about. There will be visibility problems on roads. In open areas, rural roads and driveways will once again be blocked by drifts. The work never ends.
There will also be some light snow around, especially outside the Champlain Valley. Some places could get another one to three inches.
Temperatures in some spots could make it above freezing by mid-afternoon, so a few raindrops might mix in.
WEDNESDAY NIGHT AND THURSDAY: Lots of uncertain, still, but it's seeming more likely it's going to rain on our nice deep winter sports-friendly powder snow. A cold front will be approaching from the west, and a wave of low pressure will be moving up the East Coast, but it's looking like that storm's path might be well inland.
If that's the case, we could get unpleasant rainfall or a mix Wednesday night and Thursday. If by some chance the path of the storminess is a little east of forecast, we'd get more snow. Stay tuned on this one. Nobody is yet sure how this will pan out.
FRIDAY: Cold air comes in again. There could be some snow, but how much is anybody's guess.
SATURDAY: A good chance of a reinforcing shot of cold air. Some computer models give us some run of the mill snow showers and a typical January cold shot. Other models give us some nasty snow squalls and a super bitter air mass at least as frigid as the one we're getting this morning. We'll see.
BEYOND SATURDAY: It's impossible to tease out weather systems with any detail this far in advance. It looks like an active pattern wil continue into early next week, but it's hard to say if we'll get small snow installments or some kind of humdinger.
But with such a busy week coming up, it's easy to wait and see what happens a week from now.
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