Somewhat favorable pattern will produce some snow and seasonable temperatures through St Patrick's Day

Meteorologically speaking, the two most impressive events of the season were what many referred to as the "bomb cyclone" that hit on January 4th and the recent super'easter that smacked the I95 corridor with rain, wind and snow this past Friday. Both events grazed Mad River Glen and surrounding northern Vermont with a few inches of snow and wind but saved the best snow for varied locations to our south. In this recent instance, the block in the jet stream, which ultimately positioned itself over the Labrador Sea, was a bit too close to New England and prevented the storm from making the typical northward turn along the coast that most most do. Through about St Patrick's Day, the pattern looks decent, anchored mostly by the aforementioned blocking which will weaken somewhat over the next week. Weak ridging in the jet stream across the west will help yield what I think will be too fairly substantial east coast jet amplifications and this means chances for snow across Vermont over the next two weeks.

A rather unique looking upper air feature will slide southward in between two areas of jet ridging in Canada. There is a little dissension in the data over who gets the best snow out of this on Sunday and Sunday night but the clouds and light snow should be prevalent over the mountains of interior New England. For Vermont, it looks like some periodic light snow late Sunday and Sunday night worthy of about 2-4 inches. Flurries may continue into early Monday but much of the into Tuesday appears mostly cloudy with temperatures in the 30's during the day and 20's at night; in other words, very seasonable. Our next potential snow producer then arrives Tuesday night or Wednesday.

Over the last 4 days or so, very little has changed regarding this system. The central Rockies get hit with a big storm late this weekend and that storm will move out into the central and northern Plains this upcoming week, occlude and weaken. The remnants of the initial storm will spin its way eastward Tuesday and Tuesday night and by Wednesday we should see a bit of activity along the Atlantic Coast. The question now is, how much activity ? A decent coastal low pressure area would have the capability of producing good snows across Vermont in the Wednesday/Thursday time frame. Without any such low pressure area, the region will have to rely on the instability induced by the old remnants of the initial storm. In either case, the mountains should get some snow but the former case we could get over 10 inches. The "bigger" snow case is the more unlikely one right now unfortunately but still worth watching. The "lesser" snow case isn't a terrible one though since instability could linger all the way until the weekend allowing  snow shower to persist across the high country for several days.

As mentioned several times, there isn't much in the way of any intense cold in this pattern, even with the significant jet amplification. All of that is over Europe right now, but seasonable temperatures will continue throughout. The 2nd big jet amplification is then expected around the 1-year anniversary of our great Ides of March storm from last year. Could we pull something off yet again ? Something big is certainly possible though it remains 10 days out and then some.