If you continue to hope for a return of some winter after March 10th, I have a few breadcrumbs for you. Until then however, we have an ugly debauchery of a winter weather pattern consisting of a well defined jet stream structure favoring both cold and snow in the west and very mild weather in the northeast. This is terrific if you have plans to ski out west over the next few weeks but eastern ski enthusiasts can expect a situation more typical of late March or April. Over the last 15 or so years, the two worst March weather months were 2012 and 2016. Both of these months put salt in the wounds of bad snow seasons. 2012 consisted of a mammoth jet stream ridge over the middle part of the continent which caused the growing season to begin a month early of a wide swath of the country while 2016 was less warm, occurred after the last super nino winter and ensured that the worst snow season I can ever remember in Vermont, stayed that way. Long range indications suggest we might deviate from those outcomes, but that's about as optimistic as I can be.
The snow forecast for the next 7 days isn't quite zero and I'll get to that in a minute. First, I should alert folks to what will be an outstanding ski day Tuesday consisting of no new snow, but sunshine and near 50 degree temperatures. A few days ago, I wasn't sure if we could "mix out" Tuesday which is a term the meteorology community likes to use sometimes to describe a low level environment where mid level temperatures are fully mixed to the surface. These are typically low pollution days and if the mid-level environment is warm, so will surface temps, sometimes extremely so. Tuesday is such a case and readings should warm well into the 40's and even 50's at base areas, bringing with it the corn horn. I should highlight Tuesday because I can't guarantee that snow cover will return to where it will be tomorrow once this warm weather pattern plays out in the next 10 days. Wednesday is the ugly days with surging dewpoints, gusty south winds and rain which will begin Tuesday night and continue, in sporadic fashion through the ski day Wednesday. We aren't expecting a lot of rain though we are expecting the trifecta of ingredients for snow melt and we should see quite a bit of that by evening with exposed areas in the valley losing about everything. The snowfall, I mentioned above, comes Wednesday night with sharply colder temperatures. Mountains can expect 2-4 windblown inches and there should be some talk about flash freezes with temperatures indicated to drop almost 40 degrees in a span of a few hours. This airmass will come and go, but it is ferocious and will bring temperatures back to the single numbers by early Thursday on the mountain accompanied by gusty west winds. March will thus come in like a lion with near 10 degree temperatures to start Friday before readings quickly warm to near 40 thanks to full sunshine and winds shifting to a more more mild southerly direction.
Upwards of 3 50-degree days are possible in the period beginning Saturday, March 2nd and ending Wednesday, March 6th. This forecast applies to higher elevation areas of course and base areas could certainly see temperatures hit 60 multiple times over this time frame. The extent of warm weather during the day will likely depend on the amount of sunshine we receive. Rainfall is expected to stay away for the upcoming weekend but will become a risk again by the middle of next week.
The AO is expected to neutralize as by as early as March 5th and the longer range outlook shows a more blocked downstream environment. The coldest weather in North America is still favored over Alaska and the western part of the North American continent for the middle part of March though there is more evidence that New England will see less milder weather after March 8th. A conflicting set of fundamental indicators isn't enough to produce a miracle March recovery, its simply too late in the season for that. The outlook does look stormier however and perhaps we can neutralize the Pacific a bit further after March 10th and make some magic.
5 comments:
comparisons to 11-12 and 15-16 seem overdone to me. The biggest glaring difference is how deep the alpine snowpack has been this season compared to those two. Has this been a great season? No. But it actually has, overall, the deepest alpine base in the last 5 years (so far). In 11-12 and 15-16 I do not remember two multi-week really good periods of skiing like we have had this season (first part of december and middle to last part of january).
I agree with your response Andrew. I'll emphasize that my comparisons to 11-12 and 15-16 were really just for what we can expect for March
Tuesday is going to be gooooooo
Ooof gawd, I really hope something comes together before we’re really done this season. I do recall some pretty scary temps in March 2016 that I hoped I’d never see in March again.
I looked back at my ski diary for 2015-16. March 9: 63 degrees at base of Lincoln Peak. 103 trails open (including Mt. Ellen): March 10 down to 65 trails. My last entry for the year was April 17: still had 19 trails open. Picnicked at top of Heavens Gate in the 60s.
For 2011-12 my notes showed SB was 100% open on March 30 and LP had 33 trails open on April 19.
Hopefully we banked enough snow this year to make it into April.
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