February finished mild but the outlook for March has turned abruptly colder

 Our February weekend finale could have been rainier, as it was along parts of the southern New England coastline, but the mild air arrived in a big way. It was a classic mixdown situation late Saturday where gusty winds took some of the mild air aloft and brought it right to the surface, destroying any inversion and bringing temperatures up toward the 50-degree mark in some low lying areas. After a very minimal amount of rain early Monday, a typical early March tumultuous ride on the weather train commences. Colder arctic air will push southeast and for a period of time between Monday afternoon and the very early morning hours Tuesday we will be presented with some of the best low level instability of the winter season. We have the right wind direction off a partially unfrozen Lake Champlain as well and it argues for an excellent terrain enhanced snow shower situation late Monday into early Tuesday and some decent powder for the ski day Tuesday. Some of the computer models have responded accordingly but the high resolution data that is typically best at picking up on these scenarios is only producing limited snowfall, essentially showing that some low level dry air is negating the intense instability. Normally I would be fairly excited about this setup but I want to be respectful of the data as opposed to trying convince readers I am smarter than the computer. 2-5 inches is thus my guess for snowfall late Monday into early Tuesday. The potential is there for more but the aforementioned high res data is showing more like 1-3 so I am compromising. 

The roller coaster ride then begins with a very cold day Tuesday with temperatures remaining in the teens followed by a much milder Wednesday with readings eclipsing the freezing mark. There is a clipper system in between the two days that could bring a small accumulation to the MRV and is much more likely to do that north of I89. The outlook thereafter and more generally has trended colder and is making several forecasters look very foolish since many were absolutely convinced it would torch in March. I am not naming names nor am I implying anything disparaging about their weather forecasting abilities but they were very confident it would be warm in March and it does not at all look mild for our first weekend of the month. After temperatures eclipse the freezing mark on Wednesday we are likely to begin a stretch of almost a week with readings staying sub-30 on the mountain. Can we score the elusive big storm or any kind of snow producing system ? This is still a tougher ask right now the pattern looks dry. The southern streamer late Wednesday into Thursday appears out of phase with the polar jet and the trough axis appears too far east when it eventually gets cold late in the week. We can hope for instability induced snow showers, a very common occurrence in the months of March/April during cold setups but the risk of a big storm appears small.

As mentioned, the colder sub-freezing stretch of temperatures is likely to persist through March 9th, making the GFS and it's ensemble members look very foolish. Spring-like temperatures continue to look possible for a short time between March 10th and 12th but the data is not supporting the notion that winter undergoes a major retreat. In fact, it will be the Pacific, a pesky nuisance all season which will undergo some changes beyond the 10th of the month and slow the advance of Spring in the middle to later part of March. We can still expect a few mild days embedded in this setup, but I expect some winter weather action in the 10 days beginning March 13th