Cold and snow to advance on the Vermont high country

The road to recovery begins a little sooner thanks to a wave of low pressure that will bring a swath of precipitation to New England. Mad River Glen is on the northern edge of this shield of moisture but the northern edge is the place to be for snow. It won't be a huge amount, but 3-6 inches is a welcome sight after the damaging and destructive weekend thaw.

Break out the welcome mat for the polar jet after Wednesday's snow. With it will come the arctic cold along with flurries and snow showers Thursday. The PJ will be pretty ferocious but its southward advance will stop over New England and the arctic cold will temporarily be confined to northern New England through the weekend. This also means that precipitation through the weekend will come from disturbances rotating through this powerful jet which at most will take the form of a potent clipper system. A series of three disturbances between late on Friday through early next week should all bring the chance for flurries or snow showers. Each successive feature should be stronger in nature and more capable of bringing fresh snow to the mountain. All three of these relatively moisture hungry systems mark the boundary between cold air to the north and west and warm mild air to the south and east. Light snow Friday evening into Friday night from the first of these disturbances could bring 1 to as much as 4 inches to the mountain by Saturday with the 4 occurring near the summits. Sunday's system appears a bit more dynamic and will have a better pool of instability in its wake possibly yielding 3-7 inches during the day. The last of these three features has the best chance of interacting with the Atlantic Coast. Such an interaction doesn't necessarily mean Vermont gets big snow but the potential does exist for a modest accumulation Monday night into Tuesday.

The cold weather will also play a big role in this upcoming story. This will ultimately become one of the more impressive outbreaks of cold in two years certainly besting anything we saw in last years pathetic excuse of a winter. The "teaser" blast of cold Thursday night into Friday will bring temperatures back below zero but the successive and more vigorous disturbances Sunday and Monday night will bring the Polar Jet further south and advance a serious chunk of cold air into large portion of the eastern United States. The New England high country could certainly see a 1-2 day period next week where temperatures struggle to get above zero even during the day and fall to -10 or even -20 at night.

There is more potential for snow late next week, again coming generally from clipper systems or terrain induced fluff. As mentioned in prior postings, the potential for a more organized system gets higher by the last full weekend of January and beyond. I'll discuss this in more detail in a subsequent update.