Got a couple hours early Saturday to enjoy the new snowfall before the wind and bitter cold arrives

Another weekend arriving and another bombing offshore storm will have a big say on weather conditions. In the meantime, we start out chilly Friday and then temperatures moderate under increasing cloudiness. Wind speeds will stay tolerable and readings in the teens will make it feel rather nice and a striking contrast to weather conditions Saturday. The clipper system dropping over New York state will spread light snow over Vermont Friday night. I expect 2-4 inches of of the light and fluffy stuff and then continued light snow through much of the ski day. I've got a very important clarification or call to make regarding this. If you plan to ski Saturday, get out early. We have a few hours until about noon where wind speeds will be management and temperatures will hover in the 5-10 degree range. In the afternoon winds are expected to increase dramatically and this will coincide with a big drop in temperatures. I expect readings to finish the day below zero. Meanwhile, we can expect another 2-4 inches of snow during the day Saturday and perhaps an additional inch Saturday night ahead of what will be a cold mostly subzero Sunday. I was hoping winds would diminish Sunday yet they will continue to be blustery throughout the ski day. 

This is the last blast of intense chill for a while I think with the EPO change forcing a retreat and repositioning of the arctic cold. All that said, winter in Vermont will hold its ground through the 2nd week of the month. Monday starts out cold before recovering into the low teens thanks to bluebird weather. Tuesday should be a milder version of Monday. Pushes of milder weather, especially those that ultimately fail to bring said mild weather to Vermont often result in some snowfall and I expect we see some around the Wednesday time frame. This does not appear to be a significant storm and I still think several inches are possible. The of the week does not appear to have any material mild threats with garden variety temperatures expected consisting of 20's for highs and near 10 for overnight lows. 

At the current time, the longer range ensembles are confining the storminess on the President's Day holiday offshore. We continue to see models sporadically show a storm in that time frame, but the Davis Strait block is shown to migrate closer to the Hudson Bay in that time frame which supports more of a fair weather jet stream for New England. Temperatures on the mountain should remain below freezing and there is little risk of the bitterly cold temperatures which have dominated the recent weekends such as the upcoming one. 

The adverse impacts of the EPO continue to elevate the risk of milder temperatures in the third week of February. Ensembles have yet to indicate or warn of a blowtorch however. For now it looks like a standard run of above normal temperatures which, at face value, is certainly something we can handle.