Very positive start to 2021 with accumulating snow expected 4 of the next 5 days

I hope 2021 is off to a good start for everyone ! The snow and mixed precipitation Saturday morning is certainly a big improvement in the MRV and the outlook going forward continues to improve. We will continue to fight an agitated Pacific Ocean jet stream through the middle of January but there are signs that it will weaken somewhat. Most importantly, and there are no two ways about it, this is a blocked pattern at high latitudes. This, more than anything else, gives our beloved ski country the opportunity to avoid rainfall or extended thaws for a period of a few weeks. As we've seen, nothing is guaranteed and the pattern hardly looks arctic, yet, but it does look stormy and the track of these storms appears a lot more favorable and certainly not rainy. 

The southern branch of the jet stream continues to over-perform and in many cases defy model expectations and I am thus watching the Sunday/Monday situation closely. The consensus of all this data shows the heaviest snow falling further south from a modest looking, but strengthening storm expected to move northeast but remained positioned just off the coastline. Given the propensity of these types of systems to track farther north and attain more strength, it will be worth watching until the end. Even without a more favorable track, the storm is likely to benefit the MRV in more ways than one. We can expect to receive a few inches of snow very late Sunday but the storm in question is expected to get trapped underneath all of that aforementioned blocking and I expect this to induce some additional fun during the early and middle part of the upcoming week. 

I am going to take a stab at some of the details even though they are likely to change some. Following what we think is a few inches late Sunday, a still relatively consolidated storm will confine snowfall to eastern Maine Monday leaving northern Vermont with a dry but mostly cloudy day with temperatures just below the freezing mark across the high country. By Tuesday, the same storm will get stuck and be well passed maturation allowing a conveyor of moisture to rotate westward bringing snowfall back to Vermont. This is how northern Vermont gets paid from a snowfall climatology perspective and lets be honest we are owed ! We won't break any records from this snow but it will be a nice dry accumulation and could be continuous even if light, starting some time on Tuesday and extending into Wednesday. 6 or more inches above 2500 feet in this time frame is very realistic and would make this upcoming Wednesday easily the best ski day of the year so far.

And there is yet another storm to be watched for Friday. Models have been taking this potentially large precipitation producer farther south over the past day or two. This is somewhat related to our storm early in the week getting hung up over the Canadian Maritimes. Even if we miss on this guy, we can be ensured of keeping temperatures below freezing through the week. Not too bad in a very non-arctic pattern. 

Speaking of that pattern, I have certainly been a lot more encouraged over the past few days. The nature of the blocking over the Davis Strait/Labrador Sea was disconcerting as of a week ago but this feature appears a lot more cooperative going forward, confining its influence closer to home. A not so insignificant block in the jet stream north of Alaska in the Arctic is a nice added chess piece as well, counteracting the somewhat menacing Pacific Ocean which is also expected to weaken just a touch. The hotter topic in the weather forecasting community as of late is the sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) event which has just commenced over the Arctic. I won't get too tangled in the weeds on SSW but I can certainly recommend following Amy Butler or Judah Cohen on twitter if you want to learn more. These types of events that occur in the stratosphere often foreshadow big southward advances of arctic cold. So yes, the pattern is not especially arctic over the next two weeks, but that is likely to change in the 2nd half of the month.