BRATTLEBORO — The National Weather Service forecast for the area sounded benign on Sunday morning: freezing drizzle, changing to rain by noontime, with temperatures gradually rising into the mid-to-upper 30s.
What happened next was anything but benign.
According to meteorologist Steve Maleski from the Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury, “a thin skim” of cold air got trapped east of the Green Mountains on Sunday morning.
“The temperatures rose above freezing at eye level,” he said. “But the temperature at ground level was still below freezing, and that includes the pavement. So the rain that hit that pavement froze on contact and produced a glaze of ice on the roads.”
Many motorists didn't know there was a problem until their cars started sliding on the roads.
Vermont State Police reported dozens of accidents throughout the day on Sunday, as the highways turned into skating rinks for unsuspecting drivers.
State police put out the first warning that roads were icing up around southern Vermont at 10:54 a.m. By that point, the accidents were already happening.
A three-car accident on Interstate 91 in Guilford at 10:40 a.m. resulted in a 68-year-old woman, Kathleen Goodrich of Hatfield, Mass., being taken to Brattleboro Memorial Hospital for a broken right arm.
At 11:35 a.m., another vehicle slid off I-91 in Dummerston, rolled up an embankment, and hit a pine tree. All three people in the vehicle - 47-year-old Joann Scott, 57-year-old Larry Scott, and 19-year-old Allison Scott, all of Hinsdale, N.H. - were taken to Brattleboro Memorial Hospital.
State police said none of the Scotts were wearing seat belts at the time of the crash and that Allison Scott, who was sitting in the rear passenger seat, was ejected from the vehicle as it rolled over. She reportedly suffered a fractured neck and a punctured leg in the crash. Joann Scott, the driver, and Larry Scott, had minor injuries.
State police north of Brattleboro were busy. The Rockingham barracks reported 20 accidents between 11:20 a.m. and 5 p.m. in Westminster, Rockingham, Springfield, Weathersfield, Windsor, Andover, Cavendish, Weston, Peru, and Londonderry.
And a Windham County Sheriff's Department cruiser was totaled in a head-on collision on Route 30 in Jamaica at about 2:35 p.m. No injuries were reported.
Conditions never quite improved the rest of the day, as the rain kept falling.
According to spotter reports submitted to the National Weather Service office in Albany, N.Y. on Monday, total rainfall amounts from the storm ranged from 0.49 inches in Westminster to 1.69 inches in Vernon. In between, 1 inch was reported in Wilmington and 1.36 inches in Marlboro,
The Rockingham barracks reported another 10 motor vehicle crashes between 5:30 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Sunday. Six of them were on Interstate 91 between Westminster and Weathersfield. The rest occurred on secondary roads in Chester, Londonderry, Weston, and Dummerston.
State police shut down I-91 between Exit 3 in Brattleboro and Exit 5 in Westminster for a time on Sunday night because of icing that led to a jack-knifed trailer truck that shut down the northbound side in Brattleboro at about 6 p.m.
State Police Sgt. Michael Studin, patrol commander at the Rockingham barracks, said that the common denominator in all the day's crashes was “a combination of the icy roadways and the operators traveling too fast for the icy road conditions.”