Snow, finally.

The National Weather Service is getting all excited about breaking the record of the latest date of first measurable snowfall (measurable meaning more than .1″). Being that they keep the record in Burlington, which didn’t get snow yesterday, they are poised to break it tomorrow. I never get too excited about records, what the hottest day was, the coldest, all that. It’s like baseball statistics-dry, interesting on the periphery, but not riveting reading.
Here in Middlebury we got about 1/10th of an inch, exactly .04″ in liquid form. (The weather station melts the snow and pretends it is rain.) The sidewalks and roads were warm enough to melt the snow as well, so facilities got this one off (yea!). Look for colder weather this week, and a big storm on Wednesday, the jury is still out as to amount of rain/snow/sleet/junk that may fall.

No Snow Yet

Still no snow in the Champlain Valley, and it’s almost the end of November. (No complaints) According to the National Weather Service, on average the first measurable snow in Burlington falls around November 6. Here’s the 10 latest snow falls, going back from 1906, along with the amount of snow in that entire season.

Season total
rank -date -snowfall (inches)
1. 12/7/1937 45.1
2. 12/5/1915 54.4
3. 12/1/1948 40.7
4. 11/30/1918 69.6
5. 11/30/1953 83.6
6. 11/30/1960 51.6
7. 11/28/1913 56.5
8. 11/27/1941 57.7
9. 11/26/1982 80.5
10. 11/25/1957 94.9

And no, I’m not making any predictions. There is a link on the right for the Long Term Forecasts from the weather service, if you wish. Have a good Thanksgiving all!

Yesterday’s Rain

The college weather station was down yesterday, related to the couple of power failures over the weekend. (One power failure at 3 in the morning, then 2 hours Sunday afternoon for an insulator repair) So, for those of you keeping track, my house in Weybridge (7 miles away, close enough) got 1 3/4″ of wonderful rain. Sorry it came on a weekend, but did we ever need it.

Forecasting a Nor’easter

I’ve heard somewhere that weather forecasting in the Northeast is one of the most difficult areas in the world. That may be, I don’t know, but we have many influences on our local weather-a meandering jet stream, the Atlantic, the Great Lakes, our Green Mountains, even the Arctic itself. On the weekend of February 21-22, the National Weather Service in Burlington was forecasting a potential Nor’easter to hit New England the end of the next weekend, on March 1. I followed the forecasting of this storm closely all week, to see how the forecast and storm would develop through the week. Continue reading

Weather Station

There is now a weather station for Middlebury College, thanks to the Environmental Council. We are using it down here in the landscape department for Insect Pest Management, as well as for snow removal. We currently stream the data to the Weather Underground here-there is also a couple of desktop widgits on that page to add to a desktop or webpage if so desired.

More on it later, as well as hopefully it’s own website somewhere.

Weather Underground PWS KVTMIDDL2