Winter To Slap Vermont Hard Again. Watch It On Roads This Afternoon/Eve

Too early in the season for dealing with this.  Snow slides off my
roof in St Albans, Vermont during today's minor thaw. The sliding
snow tries to block the front door. Another harsh cold wave
is starting this evening and continues through Saturday night. 

This isn't saying much, but today is the warmest day in Vermont since Sunday.  True, it's still chillier than normal and Sunday was cooler than normal, too. But I suppose we have to take what we can get.

This "heat wave" won't last. We have at most a few hours of it, then it's back to hard core winter. That re-introduction to the cold later today will be accompanied by the risk of danger on the roads later this afternoon and evening.

Another Arctic cold front is on our doorstep.  Temperatures ahead of this front are mostly above freezing. Snow and possibly rain showers will develop as the front presses in from the northwest.  This, and the minor snow melt we're getting earlier in the day, will make the roads wet.

Then, as the Arctic cold front comes through, many of us will have some briefly heavy snow squalls, and all of us will see rapidly falling temperatures when the front passes.

This will result in a flash freeze, where wet roads instantly ice over. The snow squalls will create periods of zero visibility in spots, and the snowfall will turn the ice on the roads very slippery.

The snow showers and snow squalls won't last long in any one place. Almost everyone will get an 1.5 inches of new snor or less. But that's enought to make things wild and dangerous on the roads during and immediately after the squalls.  The worst of it will be in the northern half of Vermont.

The timing of this is lousy, heading from northern New York at mid afternoon, then going northwest to southeast across Vermont in the late afternoon and evening. Just in time for the evening commute.

Expect the National Weather Service to issue snow squall warnings in areas of northern Vermont and New York later today. These warnings are much like severe thunderstorm warnings in the summer.  Each one will cover only one or a few counties and reference dangerous weather lasting for only an hour or two in a given area.

Some places will get it worse than others.  Some places won't even get snow squalls. But the risk of a mess is such that, if you can, get home before the snow squalls arrive.  If you're still at work or whatever when the snow showers and squalls hit, just hang out where you are until an hour or two after they pass by.

The roads will still be icy in spots, but at least the visibility will have improved and the road crews will have begun to clean things up.

Temperatures will crash right after the front and go right back down to record low levels tonight through Saturday night. This cold snap will be even stronger than the one we just had.  Lows tonight will be in the single numbers and only go into the teens to around 20 for a "high" Saturday

Lows Saturday night will also be in record territory, with temperatures of between minus 5 and plus 5 for most of us. That's just incredibly cold for mid-November and something that's not in the record books.

Winter isn't going anywhere, either. Tempertures will warm up next week, but still stay generally cooler than normal for this time of year. (Forecast highs are in the 30s to around 40, with lows in the 20s).

The exact track of upcoming storms and fronts starting Monday and through next week are uncertain, but we have good chances most days next week of a variety of winter precipitation. Ugh.