Vermont Travel Notes

Most of the weather forecasts I've seen for north central Vermont call for about six to ten inches of snow Tuesday and Wednesday. However, Josh Fox at The Single Chair Weather Blog is forecasting 13 to 18 inches. The upper elevations, such as the Mad River Glen ski area he is forecasting, get more snow than standard forecasts because of their altitudes. That seems like quite a disparity between 10 inches and 18 inches but it is not unusual for the upper elevations to get twice as much snow as the standard forecasts call for.

The headline in Fox's blog entry yesterday says: "Here we go !!! Big mid-week dump is now in the making !!"

I enjoy reading Josh's blog because he writes in a very friendly and well constructed conversational style. The entries are often detailed but when I find the writing has gone into more detail than I have time for, I just move on to something else.

And he is not perfect. But when he does have a cold streak (pun intended), he owns up to it and often explains how it happened. It gives the non-meteorologist interesting insight into how weather forecasting is done.

Roger Hill is a popular Vermont meteorologist located here in Waterbury. His web site is Weathering Heights (pun intended). He is not saying much about accumulation yet. His web site has lots of colorful weather maps if you enjoy getting into the details of weather.

Another popular weather forecasting service is put out by the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium in St. Johnsbury VT. It is called Eye on the Sky and is produced by Chris Bouchard. His forecasts are the ones used by Vermont Public Radio.

Eye on the Sky is calling for one to three inches of snow Tuesday east of the Green Mountain and two to five inches west. The snow could mix with rain at times over the far southern valleys. On Tuesday night, Chris expects an additional three to seven inches.

Whatever the snow accumulation ends up being, this latest storm should make for good skiing, snowmobiling, sleigh rides, etc. We have deep base almost everywhere except I noticed snowshoeing at the lowest elevation in the Mad River Valley yesterday that the snow is only a few inches deep there. Most upper elevations such as our inn have a couple of feet of snow on the ground and the ski areas have much more.

For weather forecasts in other parts of Vermont, you can use the weather do-hickey in the right hand column of this blog. Just enter the zip code of the place you would like to visit or use one of the samples I supplied.

As a side note, I noticed on the Eye On the Sky website that on this day in 1936, three inches of BROWN snow fell in Vermont. It was most likely due to dust storms in the Great Plains. So I guess that was a "dusting" of snow (pun intended).

There's snow time like the right time to stop writing before I pun again.

(c) 2008 Jeff Connor Grunberg Haus Inn