This is What a Cold Front Looks Like

It's been warm for the last two days.  The snowpack in Vermont has taken a major hit.  For the last 18 hours or so, it's been raining rather hard, and the smaller rivers are raging with rain and snowmelt.  Otter Creek is still iced over but I wouldn't be surprised if the ice ripped up and caused some ice jams.

At about 10 AM, I noticed that the online weather station was indicating 33 degrees in Middlebury.  I was confused because I had just been outside and it was a balmy 48.  Was the weather station broken?

Nope!  Sure enough, it WAS 33 degrees outside!  It was POURING, and the rattle of sleet was evident in the rain.  A strong early spring cold front was blasting through the area.

Two hours later, Burlington is reporting snow and here in Middlebury it is 31 with freezing rain and sleet.  There are little beads of frozen raindrops on the branches of the trees, and everything is slowly becoming covered in ice.

The ice storm won't last long, because the freezing rain and sleet will soon turn over to snow here also.  We could get up to 10 inches of wet snow before the storm is over tomorrow morning.

This graph from a wunderground.com weather station is pretty amazing.  You can see the temperature dropping 15 degrees in about 10 minutes, the wind shifting from the south to the north, and heavy precipitation.