Intermittent light snow Thursday night and Friday followed by snow showers Friday night adds up to about 4-6 inches

 Though we did manage to avoid a damaging thaw this week, it was certainly mildly disappointing that a week loaded with snowfall potential may end up featuring less than a foot. Worse is the overall realization that one of the best overall east coast snowstorm setups in several years, failed to deliver the big storm to northern Vermont. It's still probably the best February of skiing in several years but we've also had some bad ones since 2017. 

Our east coast snow event has been a story of a storm that once threatened to track close to Lake Huron and is now only producing a narrow corridor of snowfall in areas of the northeast close to the coast. Models had a difficult time with this one, especially the American GFS model, but when a polar jet is involved, small errors in the short term become large areas a few days out and even bigger ones 5-7 days out. We are still likely to see some snowfall beginning within a few hours of midnight Friday and persisting intermittently through the day. Unfortunately, I don't think the snow will ever reach an intensity capable of producing a heavy accumulation and we are thus likely to see only 2-3 inches of fluffy powder. We have a decent snow shower set up for a few hours with some instability combined with favorable wind direction Friday night. I would be more optimistic except in this case, but when a storm is consolidating offshore it can act to steal moisture from us inland locales. Forecast data is still suggesting that a few inches are possible Friday night in northern Vermont and the high country is best positioned for the highest amounts. Lighter snow showers are likely to continue into Saturday, an excellent ski day with some new snow and cold temperatures (near 20) and gusty northwest winds.  I also expect a bit of sunshine late Saturday and a bit more early Sunday before clouds arrive in advance of the next weather system. Sunday will be dry, less windy with a cold start (single digits) and a tolerable afternoon of 25-30 degree temps. 

We continue to have a possible snowfall lined up for Monday the 22nd. This is a fast moving Pacific impulse and its eastward advance marks the arrival of milder Pacific air and the retreat of Arctic air and the polar jet more generally. The storm system appears to be moving too quickly to evolve into a big east coast snow producer but the potential for a few inches is certainly there. There are parts of the rest of next week that are showing up a bit milder today but not excessively so. The midday cycle of models on Feb 18 also indicated that arctic air will linger in southeast Canada through next week and perhaps might make a push southward ahead or during the advance of an approaching storm system in the Thursday/Friday(25/26th) time frame. This combination at least brings the possibility of some new snow late next week but we will have to wait and see how this situation evolves. 

Fundamentally speaking, the pattern does not look especially cold in early March. The +EPO appears to be back in the drivers seat and it opens the door for a few spring-like days in the first week of the month.