If you're holding out hope of extending the ski season and even procuring ourselves one more really good storm, I offer some good news today. It continues to be very mild in the Mad River Valley and snow continues to melt, but we are most of the way through this very warm regime and are on the verge of heading back into a more typical March temperature range late this week and perhaps a colder than normal weather picture in the week beginning March 18th. There's snow to talk about as well. I am not especially bullish on snowfall Thursday but there is an excellent chance for some significant snow in the mountains late this weekend and into Monday, March 11. At the very least, it appears we've found a footing and won't go quietly into the night like 2016 and especially 2012.
I really don't want to spend inordinate amounts of time talking about rain and mild weather so I'll try to be fast with the short term outlook. We've got a wave of low pressure pushing moisture into New England on Tuesday. The clouds will keep temperatures into the 40's and most of the rain will fall south and east of northern Vermont, yet rain is expected during the ski day and for a few hours during the evening. Models are not showing rain for the Wednesday ski day and are instead insisting that clouds linger through another very mild early March day. A push of cooler weather is expected to arrive to accompany some steadier rainfall Wednesday evening into early Thursday. We are just a few degrees away from snow event with this batch of precipitation and if we are to somehow keep it going through the middle of the day, some wet snow could fall across the high country. Like I mentioned in the above paragraph however, I would not hold your breath.
Generally mild conditions are expected to continue into Friday before we finally get ourselves a sub-freezing night just ahead of the weekend. At that point, we will be watching a storm system in the Ohio Valley crank up and head in our direction. Our cold air will continue to be in short supply as precipitation arrives sometime Saturday night, so some initial wet weather is certainly possible. By early Sunday however, we've got some hard evidence that this storm will make a very nice transition to the New England coastline while cold air is entrained into back flank of this deepening coastal cyclone. This is not an uncommon New England weather map though I can't remember seeing anything closely resembling it since November which is ridiculous. Models continue to provide us with varying solutions on how the final details play out on Sunday, but I like the idea of mixed precipitation changing to snow and some decent accumulations late in the day Sunday and into the Sunday night and Monday. I certainly hope we can score a foot or more out of this and its possible, though for now I think a 6-plus inch event is the most probable. Hopefully I can upgrade our prognosis in a few days.
A changeable March scenario appears on tap between March 11-15 consisting of some cooler weather at the start of the week and some milder at the end of the week. The risk of more heavy rain appears minimal even as it warms up late next week but i wouldn't rule out some before it begins to get colder for St Patrick's Day weekend. Meanwhile conditions in the Pacific will be changing dramatically and this sets us up for a very favorable late March jet stream beginning around St Patrick's Day and extending through the following week. Both cold weather and snowfall are favored with the EPO cratering and providing support for a nice looking jet stream ridge in western North America.
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