Bitter Cold. Next Up: Freezing Rain In Vermont. Oh, Joy!

Bad road conditions in Burlington, Vermont last winter. Expect more
of the same as winter's early arrival keeps punishing us.

I'm more than a little jealous of people in north central and parts of the Northeast Kingdom.

Last evening, as those well-predicted snow squalls lumbered through, there were lightning strikes up in that area.

Thundersnow! I haven't seen that in a few years, so I missed out. Where I'm at in St. Albans, there were some snow showers, but nothing spectacular.  So congratulations to those who got thundersnow.  You get the Jim Cantore thundersnow excitement award.

Now, as expected, its ridiculously cold out there. Most of us were in the single numbers to low teens at dawn broke this morning. A couple subzero readings showed up.  As of 6 a.m., it was minus 2 at Gallup Mills, Vermont in the Northeast Kingdom and early this morning it was a remarkable 8 below at the tradtional cold spot of Saranac Lake, New York. 

We will have record cold high temperatures today, as temperatures only peak between 15 and 22 degrees. It should be in the low to mid 40s this time of year. More record low temperatures are due tonight, with lows regional wide from about minus 5 to plus 10.

Think this winter misery for so early in the season is over after that? Think again. I hope you like freezing rain and ice, because that seems like it's coming our way Monday into Tuesday.

Now, this won't be the type of 1998 ice storm that brings down all the trees and powerlines. Not by a long shot. There will only be a light accumulation of ice. Enough to make the roads, sidewalks and such a slick nightmare.

There's still a lot of question marks as to how much ice will come, exactly when it will come and how much sleet or snow might mix in.  On Monday afternoon, temperatures in many areas will probably sneak a couple degrees above freezing.

But it's been so cold that the ground is frigid, so rain will freeze when it hits. This is normally a problem later in the winter, not in November. But this is a bizarre month. Has been from Day 1.

The Monday evening commute and Tuesday morning trip to work will both be tricky.  Again, there won't be a lot of precipitation, but it will be the wrong kind.  At this point, it looks like the mix will change to snow Tuesday morning, but there won't be a huge accumulation.

This icy start to the week will come from an offshore nor'easter.  It will be pretty far out to sea, which explains why the precipitation won't be especially heavy in Vermont. But the weather pattern will pull moisture inland from the storm, which means we will get some icy ick coming from the sky.

This same nor'easter will cause gusty winds, coastal flooding and a lot of beach erosion in the Southeast and the Mid-Atlantic states.

The next storm comes Friday. It's too soon to give you details. Early hints are it will be a rain to snow situation, but there's plenty of time yet to figure that one out.

That Blizzard In The Midwest Was Bizarre. Here's Why

If you look closely at this fresh-fallen snow in Mankato, Minnesota
Thursday, you can see brown from Texas dust blown into the storm system
Photo via Twitter, Mark Tarello @mark_tarello

Minnesota Public Radio is calling it the Tex-Mex blizzard.

In some parts of Minnesota and South Dakota, some of the snow that fell with the blizzard that hit the region over the past couple of days had a tan, brown or orange tint to it.

You couldn't use the phrase "pure as the driven snow" in this case.

The storm system was so strong that dust from New Mexico and Texas was drawn up from the south into the cold northern flank of the storm.

The dust mixed with the falling snow to produce the off-color snow. Voila! The Tex-Mex blizzard.

Hmmm. A mix of snow and dirt. I guess you can say it was snirting in Minnesota on Thursday.

Satellite images of the vast storm system showed winds gusting to 70 mph lifting huge clouds of dust in West Texas and propelling it northward.

This storm reminded me of the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s. My late father remembered brown snow in Vermont in the 1930s as dust from the Great Plains came all the way to New England, mixing with the falling snow to give the drifts  a brown hue.

The National Weather Service/Twin Cities, Minnesota shared this
satellite image snowing blowind dust Wenesday over Texas that
drifted northward, causing brown snow in Minneota.

My husband Jeff grew up in South Dakota and he says he can remember a time or two when "snirt" fell - leaving a brownish wintry landscape. Still, this event was rare

There were other weird aspects of this storm. There is often thundersnow with this type of Plains storm. The parent system gets so strong that thunderstorms develop in the heavy snow bands.

However, this storm had an incredible amount of lightning, and there were reports of thundersnow with frequent lightning for two days.

The National Weather Service office in Aberdeen, South Dakota urged people to stay indoors there was so much lightning.

Severe thunderstorms are common during strong Plains systems like this one, but the severe weather almost always happen in the warm, moist air to the southeast of the storm's center.

In this case, there weren't that many severe thunderstorms in the warm sector. But very oddly, some severe thunderstorm warnings for large hail and gusts to 60 mph were issued in areas getting snow and sleet. That's very strange.  There were some reports of one-inch diamter hail in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

NEXT STORM OMINOUS

Areas in yellow, orange and especially red are at risk of severe thunderstorms
and tornadoes Saturday. Some of the tornadoes might be strong
and long-lasting. 

The next big storm system will develop tonight and tomorrow in Texas. This one looks more conventional, for the lack of a better word, than the last one with the "snirt" blizzard in the Plains. But this new storm seems much more dangerous.

As mentioned yesterday, this storm threatens a nasty tornado outbreak in the South over the weekend.  

If anything, latest forecasts up the chances of tornadoes, some possibly strong this weekend. The lower Mississippi Valley is the target Saturday, with the highest risk in northern Louisiana and southern Arkansas. 

Severe thunderstorms and possible tornadoes will spread into the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys and the Southeast Sunday. It's Palm Sunday and churches will be busy. I'm no theologian, but I think God would want churches in these areas to have weather radio tuned in during services. God would also want congregations to have a plan to get to a safe area if a tornado warning is issued.

The storm system will reach New England Sunday night and Monday. Here in Vermont, it still looks like the storm could dump an inch or so of rain on us, and melting snow from the mountains will add to the runoff.

I suspect the National Weather Service will issue flood watches for the region that will go into effect Monday.

WILD Nor'easter For Some; Meh For Others. Sifting Through The Reports

The scene in Morristown, New Jersey yesterday.
Photo by Bob Karp/The Record via AP

Sorry for the last start with this post here on Thursday morning, but I'm finally getting my act together.

What a storm last night!!  What, you only got some light snow? Yeah, me too.

A grand total of 2.9 inches new in my yard at St. Albans, in northwestern Vermont. We will get some more snow out of this in northern Vermont. More on that in a while.

But first:

The general forecast of who would get a lot of snow and who would get a little panned out, but the people who got the heavy snow really got it. And some of the people were were expecting lighter accumulations didn't get much at all.

 t was a snowstorm to remember in some parts of the Northeast.  There's a couple videos at the bottom of this post, by the way.

Here in Vermont, Woodford, in the far southern Green Mountains, clocked in with a whopping 36 inches of snow. Searsburg got 32.5 inches. Landgrove and Wilmington got 25 inches.

In a band from New Jersey through areas near New York City, the lower Hudson Valley, Connecticut,  western Massachusetts, and, yes, the far southern Green Mountains, it was absolutely wild yesterday afternoon and last night.

Thundersnow was very common in New Jersey up through the Big Apple and into Connecticut. One woman in New Jersey was hospitalized after she was struck by lightning. It's the first time I can remember somebody being injured by lightning in thundersnow.  

Incredible snowfall rate, Springfield, Pennsylvania.
Photo by Matt Slocum/AP

One death was reported so far with this storm, that of an 88 year old woman hit by a falling tree.

The incredible snowfall south of Vermont in many areas was very wet and heavy. More than a million people lost electricity, after last week's nor'easter cut power to more than two million.

More than 3,000 flights were canceled. The heaviest snow hit during the afternoon rush hour in and near the big cities, so there were lots of trapped cars, crashes and other highway nightmares.

Snowfall totals outside the southern Green Mountains were also incredibly impressive - 32 inches was reported from Clarksburg, Massachusetts, with North Adams, Massachusetts close at 30 inches. In Connecticut, 28 inches was reported in Warren. In New Jersey, 26.8 inches was reported at Montville.

It was the rate of snowfall that really crushed some areas and gummed up the works.  One town in the Massachusetts Berkshires got 18 inches of new snow in three hours - that's six inches per hour!

STORM OVER, EXCEPT IN NORTH 

The storm is pretty much over from Massachusetts and far southern Vermont and points south all the way down into the New Jersey storm zone.

Things will keep cranking today in northern New England, especially in Maine and New Hampshire, where many places will get at least half a foot of new snow today.

Here in Vermont, it looks like it will keep snowing in most of the central and northern Vermont the rest of the day today.

Tree on a house, Walpole, Massachusetts with this storm.
Photo from AP

In fact, it looks like the snow might pick up a bit in intensity this afternoon, with another two to six inches of snow likely. (We could easily double the amount of snow we've gotten so far in St. Albans, for example.)

Light snow will probably continue on and off Friday, Friday night and maybe into Saturday across northern Vermont, too, with a little additional accumulation.

By the way, the early and middle parts of next week in Vermont look interesting, too. By "interesting" I mean we could get more snow. I have no idea how much yet.

Some videos:

CBS New York has this report of how awful it was out there on I-280 in East Orange, New Jersey and other areas. Even their news van took a minor hit:



Thundersnow in Moorestown, New Jersey:

Weird, Challenging Nor'easter Snowstorm Continues To Keep Forecasters On Toes

Extremely heavy snow falling in Bucks
County, Pennsylvania today. There were
widespread reports of thundersnow and
snowfall rates of at least two inches per hour

The long-promised nor'easter is now well underway in the Northeast, and it's continuing to frustrate the heck of out many meteorologists.

Early runs of computer models a few days before this storm were remarkably consistent in forecasting what this thing would do. Those same models have been all over the place - not knowing what to predict - as the storm got underway.

That's the opposite of how it usually works out. Forecasts usually get more accurate as we get closer to the storm. Not this time, really.

Broad brush: The latest trends suggest northwest Vermont will get a little less snow than we were thinking last night. As I say that, parts of New Jersey, southern New York and inland southern New England are getting blasted even more than many forecasters thought.

The bad news is this worst of the storm seems to be hitting New Jersey, the New York City metro area and on up into the lower Hudson Valley and Connecticut right at rush hour today.

Things weren't too bad earlier today in that neck of the woods, so a lot of people went to work. Now that it's time to go home, YIKES!

Snow late this afternoon is coming down at a rate of two to three inches per hour, which is amazing. Visibility sucks. And since temperatures are near 32, that wet snow compacts under car tires to create slick ice, then deep accumulations pile up on top of that. And throw in some lightning and thunder to make things really dramatic.

By the way, there's LOTS of thundersnow in New Jersey, southern New York and Connecticut. More than I've seen in a nor'easter in a long time.

Yeah, just try driving in that crap.

Additionally, this is very wet, heavy snow down there. A lot of trees and power lines are coming down.

Those bands of heavy snow are, as expected, moving north into northern New England, but the question is, how intense will the snow be tonight, given the latest computer guidance that the storm will go a little further east than earlier anticipated?

One band of snow moved northward through Vermont this morning and early afternoon, laying down a half inch ot an inch and a half of snow. But it's March, and when a weak sun temporarily struggled through the clouds, most of that melted.

The bigger band will come through tonight, so there's no snow to cause any melting

An initial band of snow with the current nor'easter dropped
0.7 inches of snow on my property in St. Albans, Vermont
late this morning and early this afternoon, but the
higher sun angle in March meant that a lot of it
melted when the sun struggled to come through the clouds

So the latest thought is that anything in Vermont east of a line from Middlebury to Newport can still expect at least six inches of snow by the end of the day Thursday. In the Champlain Valley, it may - or may not - end up being a little less than that.

It depends upon how the northward moving snow bands hold together.

The National Weather Service office in South Burlington, Vermont has a fairly doubtful outlook on this, so they've downgraded winter storm warnings in the Champlain Valley to winter weather advisories. 

They're saying four to six inches - total - in the Champlain Valley. They're probably right, but this storm has held so many surprises that I'm not counting on that forecast, even though we're right at the cusp of the storm starting, when we're supposed to know what's going on.

I guess just expect lousy travel conditions overnight and on Thursday morning as we deal with this snow.

It still looks like whatever snow we get will get lighter during the day Thursday, but it will continue off and on into Saturday. There will be light additional accumulations each day through Saturday up here in Vermont, but nothing spectacular.

In the warmer valleys, there will also probably be a small amount of melting as temperatures rise just above freezing, and the stronger solar radiation in March will get through the clouds.

Speaking of computer forecasting models not knowing what's next: Nobody has any idea what the frig the weather will be like early next week. I guess we'll have to wait to find out.

"Weak" Cold Front Turned Into A Thundery Vermont Powerhouse Thursday

A rainbow appeared as a line of surprisingly strong
rain and snow showers, some with lightning, approached
Alburgh,Vermont Thursday morning. 

Here in Vermont yesterday, we woke up to quite a benign weather forecast: A slight chance of a light morning shower as a lame pair of cold fronts arrived.

Temperatures would start out mild in the 40s and fall into the 30s Maybe there'd be a mountain snow flurry.  

The temperature trend forecast was spot on, but boy those showers had some oomph to them.

I was working outdoors along Lake Champlain in Alburgh when the "light showers" arrived. It didn't rain particularly hard, but those clouds were tall and dark and the gust front with this was impressive. And was that thunder I heard in the distance?

Sure was. Some of the showers with the cold front had lightning strikes within them. And it abruptly turned colder as the showers arrived, turning the precipitation to snow in some areas. So a few Vermonters - like those in Craftsbury Common - were treated to relatively rare thundersnow, which is always cool.

Why was this cold front so impressive? After all, it wasn't the strongest cold front ever, in terms of temperature change. It got colder after that and another weaker cold front went by Thursday, but it was nothing extreme.

This was another of those "shortwaves" I talked about in recent posts, fast moving, small storms that don't have a lot of moisture with them and don't spread rough weather or heavy rain or snow over wide areas. But some of these shortwaves can have a punch.

Every time a cold front or other weather system comes through, the air is rising, which encourages clouds and precipitation to form. But for a variety of reasons, sometimes this lift is stronger than usual. Such was the case on Thursday.

One area of this shortwave had stronger updrafts than is typical for this time of year.  Stronger updrafts can help showers grow into thunderstorms. And that relatively small area of stronger updrafts happened to pass right over northern Vermont.

Stronger updrafts mean stronger storms, so this one was able to trigger some rare Vermont November thunderstorms.

This was the second time this month that Vermont experience thunderstorms. There were some loud thunderstorms as a cold front passed on the the night of November 9-10. Two thundery days in one Vermont November is pretty rare.

More New England Weather Drama New England Today-Thursday

This is what the National Weather Service in
South Burlington, Vermont thinks snow
totals will end up at with the storm moving 'in today.
Click on the image to make it bigger and easier to see.

A quick post today as I'm on a trip, but as you might have heard, we're in for more weather drama in the North Country.

Today,  Vermont's weather could be particularly interesting. A stong storm in the upper atmosphere is going to come across from New York and through northern New England.

During the day tonight, conditions will be sort of like those humid summer days with scattered strong thunderstorms. Only with snow and cold.

Huh?!?

Winter precipitation in New England is usually what we call stratiform. It's usually broad , pretty long-lasting areas of snow or rain or a mix that give us most of our moisture in the cold months.

In the summer, instability is stronger, so you get bands of downpours with thunderstorms that usually don't last long in any one place.

Today, the system coming out of the west is so dynamic that we're going to bet almost summer -like instablity up in Vermont.

That will produce lots of snow squalls. Some will be brief and drop only a dusting or so or snow. Some will be intense, or several might hit the same area over and over. dropping up to four inches of snow in a very short period of time.

A few of these snow squalls might even have thunder. Yep, thundersnowstorms are possible today.  So yeah, summer variety thunderstorms with snow.

It's hard to pin down in advance who will get the most intense snow squalls today, but expect rapid changes in the weather - and rapid changes in road condtions- at any time today.

This strong system will transfer its energy to off the Maine coast to generate another big nor'easter.

The snow will change to a more traditinal winter form this evening and tonight and into Thursday morning. It will come down steadily, and probably fairly heavily at times over the mountains and parts of the North. '

ACCUMULATIONS:

Let's look at the bottom line, then. Who gets what amount of new snow:

As the National Weather Service in South Burlington sees it, the immediate shores of Lake Champlain, and the low elevations of southern Vermont can expect three or four inches.

Areas a bit inland from the lake will get more. Pretty much anybody along and east of Interstate 89 from Burlington to the Canadian border can probably expect a good six inches of snow, or maybe a little more in spots.

Six to eight inches of snow are likely in most valleys across northern and central Vermont, in fact.

Just in time for the Washington Birthday weekend, and after already getting clobbered by snow early this week, the mountains of central and northern Vermont are going to be the big winners with this one.

Those areas can expect at least eight to 12 inches of fresh powder, with locally more in spots. (Watch Jay Peak: This storm is really designed to bury the slopes of that mountain.) The entire Northeast Kingdom of Vermont can expect eight to 12 inches of new snow as well, as they'll be closest to that developing nor'easter.

Very roughtly, everything north and east of Interstate 89 is under a winter storm warning and areas south and west of the Interstate are under a somewhat less dire winter weather advisory.

This is a weird weather system, so expect some predictions to turn out to be off-kilter in some locations.

New Hampshire and Maine are going to get totally nailed by this storm too.

Parts of New Hampshire and Maine that have received up to three feet of snow in the past week can expect 10 to 15 inches more today through Thursday. 

It's gotten so extreme in those areas that there is real concern we're going to get some roof collapses over the next few days in New Hampshire and Maine, especially since the storm now coming in is going to feature snow that's fairly wet and heavy.

Those of you who can get to the mountains this weekend ought to go. It's going to be perfect. The weather will turn quiet and warm, with highs in the 20s Friday and 30s over the weekend (a little cooler than that in the high elevations.)

Low elevations will see some daily thawing Sunday through Tuesday, but it will take quite awhile to get rid of this much snow.