Temperatures on Friday are moving in the right direction, but it remains damp and cloudy with terrible visibility and very little snow on the ground. Add this holiday to the large list of rain-drenched Christmas holiday thaws we have seen this century. Very strange how that works.
A swath of moisture over Quebec will rotate southward in association with the last of this recent train of low pressure areas. This particular storm, had it manage to strengthen faster, could have reinvigorated the wintry spirit for New Year's weekend. It won't do that, but temperatures will slowly cool, enough to allow rain to change to snow over the high elevations Friday evening, base areas later in the evening and even valley locations by Saturday morning. The mountains should see a several hour period of snow from this extending through midday Saturday and this means an elevation sensitive 2-6 inches before we close out the ski day on 12/30. The snow consistency should remain relatively wet in most places, but certainly an improvement over the rain. Another improvement in the short term outlook relates to the cloud clover. A clipper system diving through the Great Lakes Sunday appears a little better defined and will move south of Vermont. This should suck some of the cloudiness with it and allow for a few breaks in the overcast to appear on New Year's Eve. As the storm intensifies offshore on New Year's Day, it will help produce what I think will be a predominantly sunny day to start 2024. Temperatures on Saturday will be in the 30's under the clouds, near 30 Sunday under less clouds and upper 20's with excellent visibility Monday with the sunshine.
We remain stuck in the Pacific air to start 2024 so temperatures will remain mild in a relative sense, though mostly below freezing on the mountain. More clouds are expected to return for Tuesday and Wednesday and some light snow could accompany that on Tuesday. The more important item on the weather map is a potential storm for Thursday. This would result from the split flow setup I've been excited about for well over a week now. We've got a southern streamer near the Gulf Coast and a clipper near Lake Superior late Wednesday evening (Jan 3) that will try and merge and do so something special for us for Jan 4. Models have struggled to get on board with this idea but have finally begun to show a possibility for such an occurrence. It remains "a chance" for now, but certainly not yet likely. At the very least, the clipper system and cold air behind it ensures sub-freezing temperatures through the first full weekend of January.
Thanks to the support of the AO particularly a blocking ridge indicated to set up just north of Alaska in the Arctic Circle, we finally have a mechanism in place capable of bringing polar air into Canada. The Hudson Bay is set up to have its latest freeze (on record I believe) thanks to all the mild air, but arctic sea ice has actually been closing in on a 20-year high thanks to a healthy buildup in areas not near the Hudson Bay. In spite of the Canadian chill down, we still have some conflicting indicators in the teleconnection indices with a slightly charged Pacific and a negative PNA. Lots of storminess is expected to descend on the west coast late next week and then Rocky Mountains for the weekend of the 6th and 7th. The American GFS has repeatedly shown this evolving into an inland runner for us to contend with around the time of January 9th, though other ensemble guidance has shown some potential here. Our best defense against an inland runner is the -NAO and we have that working for us by January 8th, so we could certainly turn any potential storm into something positive at our latitude. It will certainly help to have a bit more cold nearby though it would certainly also be nice if the Great Lakes aggregate was colder and would be less of a northward drag on storms.
Beyond January 9th has a colder look, at least for a few days with some of the Arctic air over Canada indicated to move south into the United States.
Agreed the outlook is more active and promising than the past couple of weeks (which isn't saying much) but GFS won't give up the surges of abnormal warmth until MLK weekend. 60F predicted for Central Park on January 10th. Without a longer lasting pattern shift, in the immortal words of Yogi Berra, it's going to "get late early" for this so called winter.
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