Matt of All Trades blog, like the title suggests, is by a Vermont author and offers offbeat musings on pop culture, media, journalism, humor, weirdness, stupid people, smart people, my life as a journalist, landscaper, photographer, married gay man, dog lover and weather geek and more. It's run by me, Matt Sutkoski, a native Vermonter living in St. Albans, Vt.
There's a winter storm watch up for Vermont because we might, maybe get a routine snowfall of 6 to 10 inches Thursday night. We'll see.
Read this post if you want to read how I'd warn the public about a winter torm like the one pictured.
I poached this from my sister blog, Matt's Weather Rapportbecause it's not strictly weather related.
If I were in charge of issuing storm warnings for the National Weather Service, this is what I would come up with.
"The National Weather Service has issued a Winter Storm Watch in Vermont.
Snow is expected to begin Thursday and continue Thursday night into Friday. Screams of "Powder Day!!!" from Vermonters are expected to accompany the heavy snow.
The snow is expected to mix with scattered idiotic drivers on Interstate 89 during the storm, especially during the morning and late afternoon commutes. The fast-moving idiots, coming mostly in the form of SUVs, will cause traffic delays, bent fenders and derisive laughter as people mock the upside down SUVs in snowbanks.
Also in effect is a Tow Advisory to continue into Saturday as people leave their cars on the streets despite winter parking bans. Scattered cursing and arguing will occur during the Tow Advisory. There is even a chance of a thrown punch during the Tow Advisory period.
The National Weather Service has also issued a Sledding Hill Congestion Watch through Sunday as heavy sledding and tobogganing is expected to develop this week. The areas most threatened with sledding hill congestion are areas near schools closed by the snowy weather, where children will gather to play, proving they could have made it to classes after all.
Additionally, a Clueless, Rude Out of State Skier Watch is in effect through the next week at least. There is a risk that some out of state visitors might travel on the wrong side of the road, text while zooming down a ski slope and yell at a hapless waitress because the restaurant is out of Stoli O.
Vermonters are urged to exercise caution and patience during the Clueless, Rude Out of State Skier Watch period.
Finally, a seed catalog greenery advisory is in effect through March. Winter weary Vermonters might start drooling over the lush plants pictured in the seed catalogs now appearing in Vermont mailboxes. Slick spots due to gardeners' drooling over the pictures are likely.
There's been a lot of news this past week about snowstorms, sleet, ice storms and hail affecting large parts of the United States, even though its April.
Still, snow, sleet, and freezing rain yesterday did not exactly encourage me as I pine for spring green and budding and flowering.
Now, it's Saturday morning, it stopped snowing and sleeting and the snow and ice on the ground seems to be melting at a pretty good pace.
Here's a quick video I made of the sights and sounds around my house as winter barged in on April, again. At least one of our dogs seemed to be having a good time:
It snowed a little here in Vermont this morning, enough to slicken up the roads and cause a few crashes.
I don't know if any of the vehicle accidents were caused by stupidity, but I give you a brief video of one of the world's stupidest drivers. Thankfully nobody who lives near me.
It snowed recently in parts of Britain, and a dashcam video caught an oncoming car, a Jaguar of all things, with the teeniest, tiniest peephole in a windshield otherwise totally covered in snow.
Really, the guy or gal driving couldn't take just one minute to clear that bit of snow from the windshield so they could see? They didn't think they might hit something? Maybe they didn't want to be recognized?
I wouldn't want to be if I were that stupid. Watch for yourself:
Here in Vermont, and in much of the rest of the country, spring appears to have been canceled.
They're blaming an errant jet stream. High pressure is over the Arctic, and it's forcing the cold air that's normally up there down on us. And much of the rest of the United States. And much of Europe.
Heavy snow falls in Burlington, Vt. on the day before spring.
This state of affairs seems to want to last indefinitely, so the old adage in Vermont that we have 11 months of winter and one month of not so good sledding is going to have to go. It appears the snow sledding will be just fine year round, at this rate.
The winter weather in spring is extremely frustrating for people like me, who really need and want to get out there and get the landscaping going for spring. Not with all this snow. And the weather pattern makes things especially torturous. It's like they're playing with my head up there, hoping I break.
Snow clings to a tree during a snowstorm in
Burlington, Vt. this week.
Here's what I mean. The sun tries to break through the clouds during the day, and a little snow melts. That gives one a little hope.
Maybe the snow will eventually go away. But come dark, it snows again, and what little snow
melted is replaced.
The process goes on day after day. A little melting during the day, replacement snow at night, on and on it goes and the white, bleak landscaping doesn't change as "spring" ostensibly rolls on.
With false beliefs in weather gods or whatever leaving me frustrated, I turn to science. Maybe the long range forecasts offer a glimmer of hope.
And they do. Every day that I check, the forecasts indicate a warming trend about 10 days out.
Kids trudge up a sledding hill during a snow squall in
Underhill, Vt. on the first day of spring this week.
But I check those long range forecasts every day, and each day, the forecasts postpone the expected warming by a day or so. In other words, it ain't going to happen.
A snowy view of Lake Champlain and the snowy Adirondacks
in the background this week.
I'm still taking winter photographs, of course, to add to my collection. Or at least try to. You can see some not yet edited samples in this post.
But for once, I would like to shoot something green. Something warm. With all the cold air pulled south, I should moe to Greenland. It's unseasonably warm up there, I'm told.
The two photographs in this post were taken in downtown Burlington, Vermont Sunday morning, just 10 minutes apart. The first one shows a fairly heavy snow falling, and in the second, the sky is totally, completely clear.
Just another day in a Vermont winter/early spring.
The contrasts between years are extreme and bizarre, too. On this week last year, we had an incredible, unprecedented early heat wave, in which temperatures soared into the 70s and 80s for a full week, shattering records highs by as many as 20 degrees.
This year, it was below zero in many Vermont communities this morning, and a large snowstorm is expected tomorrow. No early spring this year.
I guess you just have to like the variety. You can't do anything else. Last year I fretted about everything in the garden blooming too soon, only to get nailed by frost later. This year, I'm despairing at ever seeing green in my garden. There's no happy medium.
So you roll with punches. Last year, I scrambled to find my summer clothes while it was still winter. This year, I haven't given shorts and t-shirts a second thought.
Maybe I should just stop listening to weather forecasts and let every day be a surprise. Even with the forecasts in hand, it seems like every day is a surprise anyway.
The video in this post is spreading over the Internet and I think it's a lot of fun, too.
It's simple enough. It shows crows having fun in a snowstorm in what looks like Russia. They roll in the snow, use snow-covered windshields as sliding hills and basically act like human children in a snowstorm.
I think we underestimate the capacity of all kinds of animals to have fun.
The crow video comes from a random, delightful and quirky blog called Nothing To Do with Arborath, which features a variety of lighthearted, odd news items, features and videos, many of them having to do with animals. It's definitely worth clicking on the link and check it out.
I'll probably end up stealing a lot of stuff from that blog (crediting them with the find, of course), then adding my own stupid take on the matters they bring up.
Out in western North America, avalanches are always a danger in and near ski areas. Every winter, you hear of people getting killed or injured by avalanches.
A lot of resorts intentionally set off avalanches when nobody is around in an effort to prevent future avalanches that might occur when the crowds turn out at the slopes.
Some of these intentional avalanches are a sight to behold, much like this video of such a project in Stewart, British Columbia. Keep with the video to the end, it's all cool.
It's snowing a little here in Vermont today, raising hopes that some of the powder lost ot the recently ended January thaw will come back, and maybe I can go snowshoeing.
Of course Beck's art doesn't live long, except in photographs, because of blowing snow, melting and fresh accumulations. I wonder if the brevity of his art frustrates him.
In any event, it's amazing how precise Beck is as he creates his wonderful geometric patterns.
Up here in Vermont, we had a big snowstorm yesterday. It dumped 10 to 20 inches of snow on huge swaths of the state, including pretty much all of the ski areas.
People in downtown Burlington, Vermont
enjoy a big snowstorm on Thursday.
It was the same storm that had been crossing the nation since Christmas Eve, unloading tornadoes, floods, ice, power failures, snow, traffic crashes, zillions of flight delays and various other woes and crises.
For almost everybody, then, the storm was an unmitigated disaster. Here in Vermont, we do things differently. To us, the storm caused basically no harm, and was a major cause for celebration.
Last winter, it didn't snow much. We didn't have so much as one statewide storm that could be classfied as a big dump of snow. No powder days on the mountains. The snowshoeing sucked. So did the cross country skiing.
So when this storm hit, nobody could contain themselves. Virtually nobody complained that the roads were icy, that they had to shovel their driveways, that it was cold.
Instead, I haven't seen more people in a good mood in a long time. Myself included, I'll note.
Despite continued heavy snow that made travel slow, people headed for the hills to ski, ride, sled.
Those that couldn't make it out of town during the storm because they had to work made sure they took the time to walk around in the dense veil of falling flakes, as if they had to confirm this storm was real.
It was real.
Watch this brief video I took at how wonderful downtown Burlington, Vermont looked during the storm, and how people were really enjoying this:
The elation at the snow even created a newspaper blooper that got people laughing nationwide as it went viral online. The Brattleboro, (Vt.) Reformer had a banner front page headline heralding the storm. It read. "Let Is Snow, Let Is Snow, Let Is Snow."
Oops. But we get the sentiment anyway.
The storm hit during Christmas break. It was well-publicized. Which mean that no doubt, people throughout the Northeast U.S. loaded up their skis and boards, piled into their cars and headed north to the mountains of Vermont.
I'm sure the folks at the Vermont Department of Taxes are happy. Like every place else in the nation, Vermont is struggling with balancing its budget. All the sales and rooms and meals taxes this storm will generate will surely help.
Yes, the state spent money on overtime pay sending their plow truck drivers out Thursday, but I'm sure the state will recoup its expenses many times over this weekend.
The unfortunate Brattleboro Reformer headline announcing the big snowstorm.
I haven't had a chance to go out and play in the snow very much yet, but I will. I haven't even finished shoveling my large driveway, but I'll get to it. (I'm too cheap, and I need the exercise from shoveling too badly, to buy a snowblower)
Tomorrow, lo and behold, another storm is coming in tomorrow. It's a bit of a surprise because they had been forecasting just flurries. Now, they're saying we'll get 2 to 5 inches of additional snow, with even more than that in the mountains.
That's not a big storm, but it will add to the fun most Vermonters are having.
Up here in Vermont, we're expecting a big snowstorm tomorrow. We'll probably get more than a foot of snow from the storm, which is coming up from the Gulf Coast and will turn into a nor'easter.
For Vermont, the big snowstorm is probably more good than bad. The ski areas aren't complaining about it, given the fact it's the Christmas vacation week, and a lot of tourists and locals have been jonesing for a good powder day.
A tornado sweeps through Mobile, Alabama on Christmas Day.
Surveillance video of one tornado as it hit a Mobile, Alabama Walgreens just came out. One interesting thing is you notice is how the people there go from curious, to awestruck, to terrified as the storm approaches.
Luckily, nobody gets seriously hurt, though some people got cuts and other injuries from flying glass. It looks like the interior of the store stayed largely intact, which means the people who wisely ran to the back of the store, away from the windows were able to ride the thing out OK.
Yesterday, two days before Christmas, the ground was free of snow in Burlington, Vermont, though snow covered the landscape in most of the rest of Vermont.
Snow begins to fall, Church Street Marketplace,
Burlington, Vermont Sunday night
Burlington is in a low spot, near Lake Champlain, and sometimes misses out on the snow.
As last minute shoppers scurried around Burlington's Church Street Marketplace while darkness fell late Sunday afternoon, it began to snow.
Big, slow flakes drifted down, making everyone think they wandered into a teleision Christmas special. People emerged from shops and restaurants, exclaiming and smiling at the falling snow. Children gaped up at the sky trying to catch flakes on their tongues. Dozens of people whipped out their smart phones taking pictures of one another enjoying the snow.
With the arrival of a little snow, the holiday preparation was complete. Time to enjoy Christmas.
Here's a quick video postcard I made of the holiday scene in Burlington last night:
We finally had a decent snow storm in Vermont the other day, and it is nice to see that clean, fresh blanket of white, instead of the brown grass, dirty patches of ice and muddy hillsides we'd gotten used to this time of year.
It's hard to improve on such a white landscape, but out in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, an artist named Sonja Hinrichsen has done it.
The artist, along with some assistants, paintakingly, carefully carved beautiful circles and spirals into a snowy landscape by walking in snowshoes in precise patterns. Of course, this being snow, the art didn't last, but luckily, the work was photographed.
The patterns in the snow make the field the work was done on resemble an intricately woven fabric. More pictures are at this Flickr Page.
And here's a great video, taken from the air, as the project was nearing completion. So cool!
You've watched me marvel at the weird, warm winter we've had in Vermont this year, and that trend got weirder over the weekend.
Most of us in the state got a small snowstorm, two to six inches of snow. Run of the mill February weather.
Here in St. Albans, Vermont, where I live, we got five inches of snow. Ho-hum. But the storm focused on the mountain range just to my east, where up to three feet of snow fell. You go from practically nothing to completely buried in just a few miles.
This morning I drove the short 13 miles from my five inches of snow to that nearly three feet in Bakersfield.
Within ten minutes of leaving my house, I was in the middle of the old fashioned winter Vermont has lacked this year. I'm sure glad I didn't have to unbury these cars, or shovel the 30 inches of snow out of my driveway.
For once, as much as I like to play in deep snow, I'm glad the storm missed my place. Scroll down for a couple more photos.
We had a little over four inches of snow here in St. Albans, Vermont the day before Thanksgiving, but warm weather quickly returned and the snow quickly melted.
A remaining pile of snow thawed weirdly on my front deck, creating the little snow creature that you see pictured in this post. A little snow dog, maybe? Maybe a space alien snow creature? You decide.
After a warm autumn, winter finally hit Vermont with a snowstorm the day before Thanksgiving. Like many early season snows, the flakes were wet and sticky, and clung beautifully to the trees.
Photo is what my backyard in St. Albans, Vermont looked like shortly after dawn on this Thanksgiving morning.
The skiers and riders are happy. But in my experience, it seems every time we have a white Thanksgiving, we have a snow-free Christmas. We'll see what happens this year.
Ihe meantime, whether you have snow or not, happy Thanksgiving!
Yesterday, I mentioned that I was happy that the huge snowstorm in the Northeast missed my house in the northwestern Vermont town of St. Albans. I only got a half inch of fluff.
My house is surrounded by trees. I think I should call a tree surgeon and get rid of some of those trees.
Why? Watch what happened Saturday when heavy wet snow fell on a leafy tree in New Jersey. The leafy tree fell on, well, you'll see. Hope the place was insured.
It's muggy and rainy here in Vermont today, and being that it's August, I know a lot of winter-hardened Vermonters don't want to think about snow this time of year.
Sure, it's causing problems. But as this charming video shows, many people in Wellington saw the magic amidst the unaccustomed snow flakes. Worth a watch, even if you don't like snow.
