December is a notoriously challenging month in a ski season in terms of avoiding some sort of damaging warm thaw. Glancing back through history, I was surprised to find that even in one of the colder and snowier winters of our new millennium, 2000-2001, we managed to interrupt that December with a 2-inch 40-degree rain. Not since 1989, ironically my first ski trip to the state, did we make it through an entire December without rain or a significant thaw. We will certainly earn half a trophy for 2025 since cold temperatures and occasional light snow are both expected through December 16th. After that we get tested and I don't think we go down without a fight.
Temperatures near 10 Saturday morning won't feel too cold thanks to calm winds and a few glimpses of morning sunshine. Much of Saturday is expected to be cloudy, especially in the afternoon when light snowfall begins once again. That lighter snow will continue into Saturday evening with a minimal accumulation of an inch or two. Much of the moisture with this latest polar jet buckling will remain disorganized, though it will produce the first accumulating snow for NYC and portions of southern New England early Sunday morning. For us, Sunday will become blustery especially as the day progresses. Clouds and snow flurries will accompany some brief interludes of sunshine. Temperatures will turn colder once again with readings on the mountain hovering around 10 degrees along with those increasingly strong winds.
Monday, December 15th will start out very cold and a period of morning sunshine is possible. Once again we can expect clouds to encompass the region and more light snow later in the day. Monday will feature less wind than Sunday but with similar temperatures of around 10 degrees. The lighter snow which will persist into Monday night marks the advance of milder temperatures. Expect Tuesday to be a bit less cold as a result with temperatures reaching the 20's. Our first real shot at above freezing temperatures, the first of the month, will come Wednesday as west to southwest winds send the thermometer to near 40 in the valleys and 30's across the high country.
Ensembles have a wound up system tracking north of Lake Huron on Thursday, December 18th and with that comes our first real test I was speaking about. We are going to need this system to be weaker, farther south or come at us in a few disjointed pieces or else some rain and a period of mild temperatures is likely. Right now, this is tracking as a Thursday night to early Friday rain before temperatures turn sharply colder Friday morning.
The longer range outlook consists of a lot of mild weather which is expected to dominate the middle part of North America, at least the United States portion around and after the winter solstice and through Christmas. Vermont and the rest of New England is never really expected to be at the center of this warmer outlook and arctic air is expected to remain close by in Canada. Though some rain seems probable prior to solstice weekend, we will see cold weather throughout that weekend and my preliminary thinking is that we remain on the colder side of this battle into Christmas and some winter weather is possible. This pattern is certainly capable of sending another wintry mix type system at us again. We might as well go for the inverted mush at this point regarding the holiday. We've managed to get some sort of mild intrusion almost every winter it seems so if we work that into our expectations, we can only get surprised in the right direction. Enjoy the weekend.
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