Happy Sugarbush opening day and MRG opening for Saturday ! The recent stretch of cold weather accompanied by some snow helped all of the Vermont mountains make progress on snowmaking. The upcoming snowfall which will begin late Wednesday and continue sporadically through Thursday evening will also help and sets northern Vermont up well for what should a nice first full weekend of December. The snow is associated with a feisty clipper system which is projected to pass right along Vermont's Canadian border early Thursday. The fact that this storm is passing so far north does negatively impact our snowfall potential some and also slows the coastal strengthening many of these systems undergo. Ultimately, the storm will get pretty wound up near the Gulf of St Lawrence and will help a nice surge of arctic chill envelop the region late Thursday into Friday.
As for the snow. much of it will be light and sporadic beginning Wednesday evening and persisting through a good part of Thursday. Clearly we are not in the best conveyor of moisture in this time frame and there will be intervals where snow is either very light or not falling at all. As the storm begins strengthening to our northeast and the flow turns west and then northwest, the snow will intensify and we should expect a few hours of occasionally heavy snowfall on the mountains Thursday evening. Given how warm Lake Champlain remains as of early December, the corridor from Sugarbush northward to Jay Peak could do extraordinarily well before the ski day Friday. As for the particulars on amounts, I am a bit pessimistic on snow totals Wednesday night and early Thursday when 1 to as much as 4 inches is the likely range depending on your elevation. I am optimistic on snow totals Thursday evening when 3 to as much an additional 10 inches is the likely range, again depending mostly on your elevation. Expect winds to increase late Thursday and become very blustery by early Friday. Winds chills will be well below zero with actual temps hovering in the low teens for much of the ski day. Wind gusts could reach 40 mph or more closer to summit areas. It will remain windy and cold through Saturday though with a bit more sun and a less intense wind before clouds and moderating temperatures return for Sunday.
Going forward, we continue to see an adverse trend in the weather pattern. I was pleased to see the various teleconnection indicators neutralize and indicate a potential return of colder weather as we approach the winter solstice, but ensembles are indicating two surges of milder weather over the next 12 days. The first of which comes Monday and though we may dodge the worst of this mild weather, we should anticipate a bit of mixed precipitation and rainfall in the early part of next week. Colder weather is expected to return between December 11th and 13th before another and potentially bigger surge of milder weather threatens us around the 14th and persisting through the 16th. Not at all atypical to get rather erratic weather conditions in December and I've come to expect it, but it has been strange that so many of our recent winters have had these great teaser weeks in late November or early December only to give way to milder weather on or before the holiday.
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