Storm And Its Aftermath Overperforming In Some Vermont Spots

At 10:30 a.m. Thursday, rain was changing to snow at
my place in St. Albans, Vermont. 

I said yesterday that weather conditions would change rapidly in Vermont and that sure as hell happened.

Around my house in St. Albans was typical. At 10 a.m. Thursday it was raining.

By 11:30 a.m., it was snowing hard, more than two inches of heavy snow was on the ground and motorists could barely make it up the hill on the road in front of my house.

In most of Vermont, the snow tapered off in the afternoon and most areas got about as much snow as forecast - a dusting in southeastern Vermont at most, and one to three inches elsewhere.  Some spots overperformed, though.

A good five inches accumulated at my place in St. Albans, but I'm at a high elevation away from Lake Champlain.

Now we're into the aftermath, with moisture wrapping around the back side of the storm, which is now way northeast of us. As expected, epic lake effect snow bands are crashing off the Great Lakes into western New York.  A few places in the famous Tug Hill Plateau snow belt could get a total of four feet of accumulation off this.

For us here in Vermont, this is an amazingly good set up for a pretty whopping snowfall along the western slopes of the Green Mountains, at least in the central and northern parts of the the state.

An hour later, at 11:30 a.m. it was back to a winter wonderland

If you looked at radar returns Friday morning, you can see a major snowband plowing into an area just south of Watertown, New York and smashing into the Adirondacks, releasing most of its snow.

But the remains of the snow band, combined with that moisture rotating around the back side of the storms, continues that radar-indicated snow into and through northern Vermont.

Especially in the Champlain Valley, very little of that snow is hitting the ground: The Adirondacks are blocking the moisture.  Elsewhere in northern Vermont, snowfall overnight has been light and continues that way this morning.

But I imagine the high elevation slopes of the Green Mountains are kind of getting clobbered. As of 6 a.m., I haven't seen much in the way of updated snow totals, but that will come later.

This state of affairs will continue all day today and well into tonight.   I suspect we'll see some surprisingly deep accumulations on those western slopes, and in favored locations in the Northeast Kingdom by Saurday.  

If you live right in Burlington, or Middlebury, or in the Connecticut River Valley south of St. Johnsbury, you'll wonder what all the fuss is about. There, you'll get, at the very most, two inches of new snow between now and Saturday.   Most likely you'll see an inch, if that.

Head into the mountains, though, and it will be a different story. The National Weather Service in South Burlington is already predicting that between 1 p.m. yesterday and 7 p.m. tonight, four to as much as eight inches of snow will come down in the high elevations north of Route 2, with a little more after that.

Tonight, a boundary - essentially a weak cold front - will sag southward into Vermont. That will, for a time, enhance the snowfall over northern and central Vermont.  Once this boundary passes your location, snowfall will taper off dramatically, even if you start the night getting a ton of snow.

This boundary, once it goes by, will suppress moisture from that Lake Ontario snow band to the south, leaving northern and central Vermont with pretty much just flurries Saturday.

The following is by no means an official forecast, and I readily admit I don't have nearly  the expertise of a full-fledged meteorologist.  But I've seen this movie before, and I would not be surprised to see a foot or more - maybe 18 inches or more - of new snow between last night and Saturday morning in isolated spots on some mountains.

I'll repeat that's not most of us.  Even on most valley floors in northern Vermont away from Lake Champlain, most forecasts think those areas will only see another one to five inches of fluff.

Enjoy the deep powder on some mountains this weekend, because another warming trend is due next week. Hey, we're getting into March, you can't expect winter, even a warm one like this has been, to last forever

Monday Vermont Update: Icy Start, Windy Day, Power Outages Already

Workers make emergency repairs to the roof of this Milton, Vermont
house damaged by strong winds last October. Winds strong enough
to cause structure damage, and lot of tree and power line
trouble are likely today along the western slopes of the Green Mountains.

Another slug of freezing rain came through much of Vermont early this Monday morning, adding another layer of glaze to everything out there.

Kinda depressing for mid-April.

Now the wind is picking up, as expected. In some areas the ice hasn't melted from the trees, or won't have melted yet when the wind cranks up. That will just increase the chances of power failures.

High wind warnings of course remain in effect across the western slopes of the Green Mountains today.

As of 10 a.m., there were already more than 3,000 homes and businesses wthout power mostly in western Vermont.

Wind gusts reported as of 10 a.m. include 64 mph at Mendon in eastern Rutland County and 58  mph at Breadloaf, in eastern Addison County,  Underhill Center has reported a gust to 54 mph. Winds will probably increase more over the next few hours.

Ice from overnight freezing rain glazed everything, including my budding
lilac bush, in my St. Albans, Vermont yard this morning.

To give you an idea of how the wind is screaming ferociously several thousand feet overhead, a wind gust of 94 mph was reported early this morning at the summit of Whiteface Mountain, New York

The eastern slopes of the entire range of the Green Mountains is under the gun for damaging winds today.

Here's how this works: As mentioned, there's incredible winds several thousand feet above the surface, coming at us from the southeast.  Lower level winds are lighter, but are still coming from the southeast.

These lighter winds go up the eastern slopes of the Green Mountains and sort of overshoot the tops of the ridge lines. These winds sort of "grab" pieces of the much stronger winds raging higher up, and then send those strong gusts tumbling down the westenr slopes of the Greens.

Winds could reach 75 mph in gusts along the western slopes in Rutland and Addison counties. Winds will probably be a bit lighter along the western slopes in northern Vermont, but I will not be the least bit surprised to see gusts in the 60 to 65 mph range in eastern Chittenden and Franklin counties, in towns like Underhill, Cambridge and Bakersfield.

The National Weather Service in South Burlington is thinking today's winds will not be as widespread as those in late October, which caused lots of structural and tree damage in western Vermont all the way to Lake Champlain.

These types of storms are usually confined to the immediate western slopes of the Green Mountains, with exceptions being last October's storm and the very damaging one in Rutland back in April, 2007.

Still, this time, we unfortunately do have a shot of damaging winds extending further west than the immediate slopes. It really depends upon how much force the winds could muster as they push westward

There is a temperature inversion today, a situation in which in gets warmer with height. That tends to suppress the ability of the strong winds to get too far to the west, away from the Green Mountains.

On the other hand, it is April. Even though it's cloudy, sun's radiation can get through. This can "break" the inverstion, reverting things to the normal situation where it gets colder with height.  If that happens, it's possible, but definitely not certain, - that damaging winds can extend as far west Rutland, Middlebury and Williston.

The downslope winds along the immediate western slopes of the Greens can create breaks in the overcast sometimes. If that happens, more sun can get through and the strong winds can propogate further west. It's unclear if any breaks in the clouds will form.

Only time will tell.

By the way, the strong upper level winds are overhead in much of the Northeast. If thunderstorms in the Mid-Atlantic and southern New England can "grab" these upper level winds and bring them to the surface, there could be local damaging winds in some of those areas, too.