From Meteorologist Steve Glazier,
After an awesome start to winter and lots of snow, we've turned much drier across the North Country.
Source: National Weather Service Climate Section: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/climate/index.php?wfo=btv
A lot of our cities and towns have eclipsed the one inch mark for precipitation departure this year. It's nothing too unusual as we can get these waves, patterns, and periods of weather on the order of one week to a few months.
| City |
Precip Departure From Avg Since Jan 1 |
| Springfield, VT |
-1.84" |
| Montpelier |
-1.73" |
| Morrisville, VT |
-1.16" |
| Burlington |
-1.14" |
| St. Johnsbury, VT |
-0.75" |
If you equate this to snow departure and do a loose multiplication of 10:1 snow ratio (snow:liquid), it would mean our area is anywhere from -7.5" to -18.4" snow compared to average since January 1. It doesn't always work though, as Burlington is about -8.4" for snow and -1.14" for precip, slightly off from 10:1.
However Mount Mansfield could use a little fresh, white hat! The graph on the left is courtesy the University of Vermont. The green area is the 'average' snow depth at the same stake through the winter. The line is the observed snow depth this year so far. You can find this image and play around on previous winters atop Mansfield here: http://www.uvm.edu/skivt-l/?Page=depths.php
Mt. Mansfield is roughly a foot and a half down on snow depth at the stake, as of February 3, 2012. You can see that snowy start to December on Mansfield, but then the January thaws hitting the mountain hard. By the way, I think that's an erroneous data point where the level jumps way down and way up, so ignore that. The outlook is 'okay' for the mountains through mid-February. From Monday-Friday, the first full week of February, the mountain bases to peaks should get 3-8 inches of snow, possibly an isolated amount up to 10". Temperatures will stay cold enough to keep the snow, but between February 12-18 our area is going to warm up into the 30s/40s again.
