I was somewhat disappointed with the snowfall Wednesday but was more perturbed by the 20-degree bust on temperatures. The closest thing we have to a Santa Ana wind here is when we get one from the southwest, something that occurred yesterday for 2 hours, caused temperatures to spike all the way to 30-degrees before falling back toward expectations by later in the day. In spite of all that, Thursday turned into a nice semi bluebird special with some fresh powder on the mountain, excellent visibility and a chilly but tolerable wind.
An area of low pressure in the central plains, has a healthy area of moisture associated with it on its eastward trek across the United States. This is a good looking setup at face value, yet the formidable polar jet is going to squeeze this sucker and ultimately prevent a decent area of snowfall to develop across interior New England. At least we'll manage to avoid the rain I suppose though its hard not to think of this as a wasted opportunity with so many of the right ingredients available to us. Friday's weather will thus consist of clouds and moderating temperatures through the middle of the afternoon followed by a period of light snow persisting late into Friday night. By Saturday morning, bluebird weather is back with a snowfall unlikely to exceed 1-3 inches. It's not an ideal situation for anyone with rain or mixed precipitation be the featured story as you head south and only light snow to the north. This storm, unfortunately seems very unlikely to evolve into a significant snow producer for hardly anyone. At least February arrives wintry and it follows a month of January that saw little to no rain, depending on your elevation. Saturday will be cold accompanied by a stiff northerly wind and temperatures in the single numbers accompanied by sunshine. Sunday should start sunny with sub-zero temps and finish with clouds and readings in the teens along with light winds.
Lots of weather of all kinds for the first week of February and uncertainty remains as to the actual outcome. A dose of cold snow Sunday night should bring 2-6 inches of powder our way for the ski day Monday, a day that will eventually feature milder temperatures that get close to the freezing mark and will likely exceed it in valley areas thanks to that lovely southwest wind. Arctic air then reasserts itself for Tuesday returning the thermometer to the teens and providing us with a bit of sunshine. Then all the question marks come and we will see what kind of defense we can muster for the late-week period. Ensembles are putting us on defense a lot in the first half of February. Though arctic air is expected to remain close, its getting very difficult to imagine us getting to February 15th without a day of mixed precipitation, rain or a substantial 1-2 day thaw. As for late next week, it remains possible. The Euro continues to bring a storm system up through the St Lawrence Valley with ice and rain deep into northern Vermont on Thursday February 6th. This is a bias of the Euro model though and other simulations are still suggesting a different and better outcome so its probably best to let this play out a little before hitching our wagons to anything.
This basic setup is expected to rinse and repeat a few times through the middle of the month as I mentioned. It reminds me a little of the early February '22 setup which gave us some lousy weather and also the best storm of the season. The core of the coldest air across the entire globe is on our continent, just on the wrong side of it (Alberta, Saskatchewan, northern Rocky Mountains). This cold is shown to extend into eastern Canada which means if we can flatten this pattern out a bit and void the big amplifiers, we could see some bigger storms. Can't say the same for southern ski areas from Pennsylvania southward which can expect a lot of bad results and not many good ones in this setup.
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