Storm Friday night into Saturday rivals the best of the year so far with 1-2 feet still expected while chilly pattern locks itself in place through mid-March

We've recorded measurable snow at Mad River Glen on 6 of the last 7 calendar days and we have a great shot at making it a 10 out of 11 given the outlook over next few days. With that, seems like its a good excuse to post a video of the Grateful Dead with Bobby in some of the shortest shorts he could find performing Let The Good Times Roll 

Let The Good Times Roll - Alpine Valley '89

Temperatures are expected to hover close to the freezing mark while light snow is falling Wednesday night into early Thursday and the 1-2 inches will be wetter than some of the recent snowfalls early in the ski day, at least at the lower elevations. Guess what though, this little system looks a little more dynamic and when the winds turn and become more northwesterly in the afternoon, temperatures will drop and the window opens for some heavier snow showers. The 1-2 wetter inches early in the day is thus likely to be followed by another 2-4 inches from the Lake Champlain enhanced terrain snow showers in the afternoon. 

The bigger storm will indeed approach on Friday but the ski day itself will be a dry, a large percentage of which will feature sunshine and relatively calm winds. Temperatures will be confined to the 20's but the bluebird conditions will make for a comfortable day.  Clouds should arrive later in the afternoon and the snow by about 11 pm. Recent runs of the GFS have been the monkey wrench in a pretty well-established consensus that this is a very nice looking storm for us. The American GFS model deserves props for its handling of this storm several days ago but now that the forecast window has shortened to 72 hours, the model is reverting to a familiar colder, flatter bias which would confine the heaviest snowfall to southern Vermont. I don't buy it at all; in fact, I am more concerned about a sneaky drier tongue of air limiting heavier snowfall than moisture struggling to move northward. The forecast scenario I am thus sticking with, involves snowfall, occasionally heavy during the overnight hours, continuing into Saturday and then tapering to a lighter snow Saturday night. As is often the case, there will be lulls in the the snowfall but with the Vermont high country seeing such a long duration event, it is very hard to envision anything less than a foot. This is a storm that will make a partial transition from the Great Lakes to the southern New England coastline with the latter storm consuming much of the system's energy and proceeding eastward toward Cape Cod and offshore from there. Sticking with the 1-2 feet as a forecast 8-12 of which will fall before ski day Saturday while the 4 to an additional 10 inches comes after 9 am Saturday. The larger ranges do help account for inherent uncertainties for sure, but also keep in mind that snowfall amounts with many storms are sensitive to even small changes in elevation and this needs to be accounted for as well. Speaking of elevation, I should mention that most of the snow with this event should remain powdery on the mountain though the snow appears wetter as you descend toward 1,000 feet.

We haven't had much of chance to discuss particulars with for the forecast from Sunday March 4th forward except stressing generally that the weather pattern is supported by both blocking and a dramatically different jet stream in the Pacific (-EPO) in contrast to much of this winter so far. Flurries could linger into Sunday but we should see increasing amounts of sunshine to finish out the weekend with temperatures remaining below freezing. More sunshine can be expected for early Monday before clouds from the next potential weather system could arrive. Now, the outlook for next week has appeared drier in the sense that models have not been predicting a big storm. That said, a weaker weather system late approaching late on Monday has the potential to bring snow back to the region and amplifying jet stream later in the week could still spin up a more significant east coast event; in fact, models seemed to be at least hinting more at that possibility today. Even without snow from those two organized systems, moisture is indicated to make a run at northern New England from the north, a not so uncommon occurrence in blocked patterns such as this one. I might also convey that we are looking at an extended stretch of below normal temperatures beginning on Friday. Over the next week the departure from normal is expected to be rather minimal but enough to keep any spring thawing in check. Beyond a week the departures appear more substantial and any precipitation is more likely to continue falling as snow.