Winter takes a last gasp this week before capitulating to much milder spring weather

A couple of bluebird days over the recent weekend made MRG a great place to enjoy last week's  massive snowfall. Temperatures have begun to advance above the freezing mark near the base which is no surprise, it's late March and a full day of sunshine will make it very difficult to stay sub-32 for the entire day. This type of weather should continue into Monday and Tuesday with some sunshine on the former and more clouds on the latter.


As promised, another blast of Arctic air arrives very late on Tuesday. There is a rather potent polar jet disturbance associated with the advance of this cold and this should allow for a burst or two of snow either Tuesday night or very early Wednesday. Much of the best snowfall associated with this is, at least right now, indicated to be north of MRG but 1-3 inches is still the likeliest outcome by early Wednesday. This airmass is of the rather shallow and dry variety so the terrain enhancement that we've enjoyed so much of this year is not as likely. Wednesday will be very cold for late March with temperatures struggling to eclipse 10 degrees during the day and falling below zero over the deep late March snow cover Wednesday night. The end of the week will see temperatures moderate quickly with decent amounts of sun both Thursday and Friday. Readings on Thursday should stay in the 20's but advance past 40 by Friday.


The retreat of the cold weather late this week will indeed mark a behavioral shift in the weather out of the recent full-on winter mode and consistent with that of middle Spring. Now lets be honest, we've already been through this once in late February, when the weather resembled something more typical of April and our deep snow was obliterated. The shift was amazingly quick and so was the loss of our snow. This could happen once again as the jet stream in the Pacific is expected to dramatically tighten and we lack the support of any of the key teleconnection indices that we regularly track. Saturday March 25th could turn out to feature some excessive warmth though there is some lingering Arctic chill in Quebec that could at least delay the mild push of weather for a day or two. The last 5-6 days of March all look pretty mild and unless we see some dramatic changes in this longer range outlook, I would expect lots of 50 degree weather and lots of mud on the dirt roads.