Though not a lock, a 1-2 foot snowfall is the most likely outcome late Sunday into Monday !

Mild southwesterly breezes brought temperatures up past the 40 degree mark early Friday effectively ending the wintry paradise of late November. A period of light rain Friday night is unavoidable at this point but should mostly be out of the way for what will be a cloudy Saturday. Milder above freezing air will remain for early Saturday but winds are expected to become northeasterly as the day progresses and temperatures will cool toward the freezing mark Saturday night. 

There remains a lot of critical disagreement regarding the upcoming storm late Sunday into Monday, but I don't think the confusion is as bad as it seems and I am ready to render a "most likely outcome" verdict and I think readers of the blog will be happy with it. Avid followers of the New England Patriots certainlly remember coach Bill Belichick's famous remark after getting blown out in week 4 of the 2014 NFL season. We are "on to Cincinnati" he said and a billboard in the stands during the ensuing game read "In Tom and Bill we trust !". They blew out the Bengals last night, only lost 2 regular season games the rest of the way and eventually beat the Seattle Seawhawks in the Super Bowl . I don't know why I remember that handmade billboard so vividly (I am not even a Pats fan), but it serves as a good analogy for this situation. In the Euro I trust !,  at least given the circumstances. Over the course of the last several days it has established a consistency regarding the simulation of this storm,  so I am throwing up my own little billboard  and yelling "snowstorm !!". Lots of things need to happen to make a big snow work in northern Vermont. We need the cold air to bleed south, the track of the storm to remain close to the southern New England coastline, and most importantly, we need an orderly and efficient transition of energy from the initial primary low pressure center, to the new coastal low pressure center. The Euro, continuously has illustrated that. Other models have been substantially more hesitant on many of these aspects but they've all been inconsistent and over the last 24 hours, they've all made some small steps in the Euro's direction so although it's not a lock, a big snow for Monday is looking more and more likely

Most of the ski day on Sunday is expected to just be cloudy and precipitation-free but conditions will change by early Sunday evening. If we hitch our wagons to the Euro as disucssed above, any early mixed precipitation becomes all snowfall and continues into the overnight and into Monday. Other models, as mentioned, track the initial primary low farther north or don't show an orderly transition of energy to the coast and are thus producing a less snowy outcome either because we miss the heaviest precipitation or we receive a substantial initial period of rain and sleet. In this case, I believe the Euro will win the day resulting in a 1-2 foot snowfall for the northern Vermont high country thanks to the addition of continuous light snow persisting through Monday night. I should mention a blurb about snow consistency which is likely to start wet and likely stay wet in the valley, but become powdery above 2000 feet.

The rest of the next week looks sub-freezing but not bitterly cold with temperatures falling into the 20's on Tuesday and Wednesday morning and teens Thursday and Friday mornings while daytime temps remain generally below 30 on the mountain. I would love to promise more snowfall from snow showers but there is action on the weather map well to our south and this should reduce the convective snowfall potential during the mid-week period. 

The longer range outlook continues to show a loss of high latitude blocking in jet stream but it looks like northern New England will retain some Canadian-style chill for MRG's opening weekend. After that, the temperature outlook appears normal with the loss of the aforementioned blocking counter-balanced by what continues to appear to be a favorable situation in the Pacific. The Madden-Julian Oscillation which gets a lot of discussion among the winter weather enthusiast crowd will actually be progressing through some milder phases over the next week and then work its way back toward colder phases by the middle of December. Either way, I've been encouraged with how the EPO index has been behaving throughout much of November and now what it's expected to do in December and this points toward what should be a fun month ahead for us.