Snow continues to pile up and overall outlook continues to move in the colder direction

The northern Vermont high country, Mad River Glen included of course, again was able to score as expected and as I've mentioned, is doing so in spite of a less than ideal weather pattern.  So it feels especially good to take on a bit of powder and then read a weather outlook that appears colder and quite wintry which this one will.

Additional snowfall is expected Wednesday night into early Thursday (3-6 inches) and when combined with all the wind, will create plenty of first track opportunities even as the snow gradually abates during the day. Thursday is also the last relatively balmy day on the mountain with temperatures holding in the lower to middle 20's though as mentioned, it will continue to be quite blustery. Polar air, much of which will miss a large chunk of the eastern United States will descend on interior New  England Thursday evening into Friday and allow for a succession of days where temperatures range from zero to 10 below during the early mornings to near 10-above during the afternoons. It will remain windy on Friday along with a lot more sunshine but will markedly calmer Saturday/Sunday with at least limited amounts of sun Saturday. There has been and continues to be talk of an east coast storm Sunday into Monday and all indications point toward a miss for Vermont and quite possibly a miss for all of New England. That said, I never want to completely disrespect a "southern streamer" type system during an El Nino. I wouldn't at all be surprised to see a stronger storm and a late northward trend though it will take a big trend to get the snow as far north as Vermont.

This leaves a pretty dry outlook for ski country after Thursday. Another push of milder temperatures will bring the opportunity for a weaker disturbance to spread some snow into the state early in the week but there are no indications that this amounts of anything of significance. This push of milder temperatures will lose some steam prior to reaching New England and may even fail to bring any above freezing temperatures to the high country the entire week. Furthermore, there are hints of a stronger weather feature later in the week capable of producing some accumulating snow before the polar jet arrives in time for the weekend and sends temperatures downward around January 19th and 20th.

There has been plenty of discussion and hype regarding extreme cold in the longer range weather forecasting circles. For the most part, this discussion has amounted to idle chatter with much of North America remaining largely free of widespread extreme chill. The reasons for this boil down to the lack of high latitude blocking in the jet stream and a Pacific Jet that has, so far, failed to completely weaken. The high latitude blocking situation is expected to change in the coming week or two with a decisively negative AO expected to emerge. The situation in the Pacific has been more a more challenging riddle to solve. The MJO was in high gear and ready to cycle back into some of the colder North American phases but provided a giant head fake to all that were watching and swerved in a more neutral direction. Now, there are indications again that it will swerve potentially back toward those colder phases and the jet in the Pacific will weaken. This part of the equation though still appears less certain than the buildup of blocking at high latitudes. I certainly wouldn't want to contribute any more to the idle chatter but I still think its reasonable to expect a colder period to commence around January 19th and 20th. Though we don't want to suppress the storm track too much, we will certainly see some action from the polar jet and can expect plenty of chances for additional snowfall during the rest of the month. Good times for sure !