Monday, February 19, 2024

Bluebird weather through Wednesday and less potential for late this week

 The snow drought was broken the past several day with over a foot of new snow falling over a 3-4 day period. Even Sunday the clipper system on Sunday night, which passed deep into Quebec manage to deposit a few inches of snow for Monday as a cool, dry high pressure center builds across the region. We've got three bluebird days lined up for the start of the upcoming week and though we are still running a bit behind for the month in the snowfall department, at least the sun has returned for this month. Monday and Tuesday will feature light winds with chilly sub-10 degree morning temperatures warming to the 20's each afternoon. Wednesday will start out in the single numbers as well before stronger southerly winds boost temperatures into the 30's. Snow conditions should stay dry even on Wednesday thanks to lower dewpoints, at least on most of the mountain. 

We've been keeping our eye on the potential snow for late week for a good while now. Unfortunately the trends haven't been optimal with the hypothetical storm exhibiting some "failure to launch" issues. This is something the Euro model and ensemble have been showing for a few days, basically pushing a disorganized area of southern stream moisture eastward out over the open waters of the Atlantic Ocean while an incoming push of polar energy manages to squash the whole thing before any storm materializes. Other model simulations have been indicating a more promising outcome and have continued to do so as of early Monday though they also have moved in the wrong direction.  I am hopeful the polar jet impulse can at least provide a burst of snow late Friday or Friday night ahead of the last weekend of February but I would certainly like to convey in this update that our chances for big snow in this time frame have taken a hit. We can expect clouds to increase Thursday with milder temperatures followed by some wet snow early Friday and then a cold and blustery Saturday with temperatures falling back into the teens and 20's. Another clipper system will bring clouds and some light snow back to the region Sunday night, but both ski days this weekend appear generally free of accumulating snow. 

Longer range ensembles have moved toward a slightly less bad outcome for late February and early March with the American GFS /Canadian model and its accompanying ensembles indicating much more in the way of storminess as opposed to warmth. The Euro ensemble continues to pound away at the mild outlook for early March. All of the varying solutions indicate a big modification in temperatures early next week and a few spring like days somewhere around our leap year day of February 29th. By the first full weekend in March, there are some indications that potential storminess could get slightly interesting and teleconnections indices which will certainly turn universally unfavorable for the last few days of February, clearly neutralize by March 2nd or 3rd.

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