6-8 inches of snow/sleet/ice followed by some early winter chill

And for those who are lucky enough to have a day off Wednesday, there will be some morning powder across the northern half of Vermont as it appears snow will fall in earnest through early afternoon. Temperatures and more importantly, wet bulb temperatures (the lowest temperature that can be reached through the evaporation of water)are such that Wednesday's event will indeed consist of several hours of powder before precipitation goes to sleet and a very brief period of freezing rain later this evening. The storm is far from epic but will, as promised, prove to be a good primer for a base which should steadily build over the next several weeks.

Snow of the terrain induced variety will return by Thursday morning and continue in at varying but mostly light intensities through a good part of the day Friday. The unstable layer providing support for the snow Thursday and Friday is relatively shallow as it often is when arctic air invades the state. Nonetheless, we should see additional accumulations of 4-8 inches before it dries out over the weekend.

There is no need for any lenghthy addendum's on what still is a very optimistic outlook through the middle of the month and perhaps now through the holidays. The pattern will be driven and driven quite hard by a ferociously negative NAO and AO over the next several weeks. This will keep temperatures on the cold side and most impotantly will keep the rain out. The American GFS model showed the second coming of March 13th, 1993 on one of its runs yesterday but it lacks support from other model data including subsequent runs of the GFS. There is a potential for snow in the early to middle part of next week. This is an east coast system that will try and intensify at the last second or pass us by in benign fashion. Next week will then finsh similarly to this week with some terrain induced powder and cold temperatures. More on the long range this Friday.