Meanwhile, Winter Is Still Slamming Much Of The Nation

A snowy dawn in Manhattan this morning.

I've been obviously focusing on the major news of the day - the tornadoes in the Southeast - but meanwhile, winter is really hanging tough in much of the nation.

In parts of southern New England, the snowstorm last night managed to overperform. Most forecasts said few, if, any locations would get more than 10 inches of snow, and most places would come in at around six inches.

However, there were numerous reports of 12 to 16 inches of snow, with 17 inches reported at Burrillville, Rhode Island.

The snow was wet and heavy, so there were a lot of power failures in that region as well.

Here in Vermont, the snow was more in line with prior forecasts. The most snow I've seen in Vermont out of this so far is six inches in Wilmington, down near the Massachusetts border.

In central and northern Vermont, accumulations, as expected were in the one to three inch range. Burlington got 1.7 inches, and I measured 1.3 inches in St. Albans.

Elsewhere, bitter cold is the story. North Platte, Nebraska reported a low this morning of 25 below breaking the record there for lowest temperature for any day in March by three degrees.

Record lows were also reported from Colorado to Minnesota.

That cold air is heading east. That includes Vermont, but it won't be as cold as it was in the Plains. Like I said yesterday, we'll get a few days with highs in the teens to around 20 and lows around 0. Not record breaking, but still a good 15 to 20 degrees colder than average for this time of year.

A secondary surge of cold air tomorrow will likely set off some snow showers. A few could be very briefly heavy, especially in the mountains. This time of year, the sun is stronger. When the air is very cold, that helps create taller, billowing clouds that can squeeze out heavier precipitation than flatter clouds.

Still, accumulations will be light. Most of us will get a dusting. Some northern mountains could pick up a few inches.

The next chance of any kind of storminess around New England is this coming Sunday.