Spring 2015 will really struggle to dent the deep New England snow through early April

A southern branch storm system Friday and southeastward moving Clipper Saturday will miss a chance encounter by a day. If we could have gotten these two storms to fall in love, it would have been bombs away and some big weekend snow. Friday's southern stream system has some moisture but will track well south of Cape Cod and some snowfall will make it into southern Vermont Friday, we shouldn't expect anything significant at MRG. The high march sun angle will work to push the mountain up toward 30 degrees in spite of some cloudiness.


Saturday's incoming clipper, like many other clippers, is a bit moisture starved. I expect that we should do fairly well considering. Snow should begin in the midday hours and a very healthy looking frontogenetic zone should pass through the region Saturday evening and help induce a heavy burst of fluffy snow for no more than two hours or so. Flurries should continue into Sunday accompanied by blustery winds and some impressive relative chill for March. The accumulating snow will be confined to Saturday afternoon and evening however and should amount to 3-6 inches of fluffiness mostly available for the Sunday ski day. Saturday's temps should climb into the 20's, Sunday's readings however are likely to hover in the low teens with wind chills well below zero. We may have missed out on the potential phasing of the equinox storm but it eventually will phase well downstream of us over the Canadian Maritimes. The storm may get hung up a bit on Sunday into Monday allowing some moisture to wrap itself back into interior New England. There are hints of some accumulating snow across the Green Mountains Sunday night into Monday as a result of this but it may only amount to continuous flurries.


Accumulating snow or no, Monday will continue to feature blustery and very chill weather. Tuesday will be dry and cold with less wind and we should finally see some modification in the temperatures by Wednesday. Models are trying to suggest that a storm will cut up through the eastern Great Lakes later in the week either tracking up through interior New England or well up into Quebec. A mild push of weather will certainly be the result but to what degree. Consensus seems to indicate at least a small period of rain Thursday though this is subject to change.


In spite of the brief period of mild weather, the pattern remains fundamentally cold and should continue to be through early April. The PDO and specifically the nature and intensity of this winter's PDO event has yet to fade. The strong ridge across western North America will thus not get eliminated and will continue to allow relative chill to encompass much of eastern Canada and the northeast U.S. going forward. Cold weather will reestablish itself over New England during the last weekend of March and could very well be accompanied by some snowfall. The cold my lessen in intensity as we move into April but aside from the brief period of melting we might see late next week, we shouldn't see much more through April 4 incredibly. I know the end-of-season MRG coop meeting is slated for that Saturday and there is no reason to think the mountain can't remain nearly fully open then.