Sunday, January 3, 2010

One final encore for the New Years storm and some good old time New England chill awaits us

The New Years storm proved to be quite an event and will prove nearly impossible to tally in terms of inches. The wind blew and blew hard and is likely to blow much of the snow from the trails into the woods. The snow will continue to fly through much of the day Monday with lighter winds and tolerable temperatures hovering in the high teens to the upper 20's. An additional and very difficult to measure, 3-5 inches of snow is possible between Sunday night and Monday which will leave MRG with a powder day of sorts. This will be followed by more flurries and snow showers Tuesday and perhaps another few inches and another powder day of sorts. The flurries will continue even through the end of the week although accumulations will be light.

Temperatures through much of the week will be defined as seasonable and New England through Thursday will be one of the few places in the eastern half of the country that will be seasonable as opposed to below normal. The rest of the this region, particularly the south, will be experiencing some unusual chill and likely some snow late in the week as more mischief in the southern branch of the jet stream collides with this cold air. This storm later in the week will ultimately allow a blast of cold to encompass the eastern third of the country and send temperatures here in our beloved Vermont well below zero as we get to the weekend. The storm will make a left turn up the coast and we will watch it as it does this but the jet stream as of now is very suppressed and our snow through the end of the week will consist of flurries and snow showers.

The surge of cold stems from the surging PNA or a building upper ridge in western Canada. There will be a few clippers riding down the front flank of this very large ridge and much of our new snow between Saturday the 9th and Wednesday the 13th will be a result of these weaker weather systems. As we move toward the late part of that week there is evidence of a strengthening and very energetic southern branch of the Jet Stream and with it should come another significant east coast event. This is way out on the forecasting timeline but we can do that since that is the way we like it at the SCWB. Hopefully everyone got a nice taste of the New Years wind blown powder and had a safe holiday.

2 comments:

JTDsurf said...

Sunday saw some tasty helpings of knee to thigh deep fluffy (of the east coast variety) powder at Bolton Valley. Only problem was the lifts stopped at mid mountain. You had to earn your turns if you wanted a taste.

Paul Damon said...

It was certainly powder pastry tasty in the Notch. Legs nice and soar from breaking bootpack, throat soar from yelping on the way down, ahhhh