Snow Squalls And Whiteouts A Big Risk Around Vermont Today

A heavy snow squall in Burlington, Vermont a few years ago. 

For the third time in a week, snow squalls will make things challenging in and around Vermont today.

The snow squalls coming up will probably really be business, and be quite a bit worse than the ones last Thursday and Sunday.

Everything is coming together to make the snow squalls a lot like a summertime line of strong to severe thunderstorms.  Except of course it will snow.

A strong Arctic cold front is approaching from the west.  There's a lot of instability in the air ahead of it, so there will be lots of sharp updrafts to create towering clouds, like the kind you get with thunderstorms. The cold front is grabbing a bunch of moisture from the Great Lakes to supply the snowfall.

No guarantees, but there's actually a very slight chance that some of us will get thundersnow today.

The squalls will probably organize into a line or lines of squalls heading west to east across the region today. They won't last super long in any one place, but while you're in them it will be nasty.  The snow will come down really, really hard, the wind will pick up to maybe 40 mph in gusts, so the snow will blow around a lot.  Expect whiteouts, which are terribly dangerous on the highways.

Across the northern half of Vermont, yesterday's snowfall overproduced and accumulated more than expected. Now there is a few inches of very fluffy snow on the ground. (There's close to five inches of it in my St. Albans yard.)

That fluffy snow will also blow around, worsening the whiteouts.

The timing of these, very roughly, is as follows, as estimated by the National Weather Service: The squalls will be crossing the Adirondacks around noon, enter northwest Vermont after 1 p.m., rocking across the Champlain Valley around 2 p.m. or so, then continuing east and getting into the Connecticut River Valley and towards New Hampshire around 5 p.m. or a little after.

Since at least some of these squalls sound like they're going to be particularly intense, don't go out driving in them.  The National Weather Service in South Burlington will probably be issuing snow squall warnings as they approach.  Listen for these because they are super helpful. Snow squall warnings are much like severe thunderstorm warnings in the summer, and cover only a county or a few counties at a time.

These warnings will tell you when the squalls are expected to arrive, so you'll have a chance to sort of hunker down where you are until after they pass. You probably don't want to be out on the highways when they hit.

Snow accumulations will be hard to measure with all the wind, but most of us will get no more than one to three inches. As I said, the snow squalls won't last long, so the heavy snow won't have a chance to linger over one spot and dump big amounts.  It's the wind and blowing snow that will getcha.

Wouldn't you know I get out of work around 2 p.m., then I have to get the dogs from the kennel and drive home with them right around the time things are likely to be the worst in the Champlain Valley. I'll probably have to take my own advice and wait it out until after the snow squalls clear.

Let's hope there's no pileups on the highways before the Vermont Agency of Transportation plows and salt shakers clean up after the snow squalls.

Since this is an Arctic cold front, expect temperatures to start feeling, well, Arctic. It'll get much colder very fast behind the cold front and squalls.  Wind chills will be a factor this evening, overnight and into Thursday.

The wind chills at their worst tonight and Thursday will be in the teens and 20s below zero.