Much like it did when the 2023-2024 season closed several months ago, the weather intends to fully cooperate with the December 7th/8th opening and that includes some snow Saturday night that's taken me by surprise. Several days back, I had made mention of a second weekend clipper system bringing some weekend snow potential only to watch models almost entirely remove it from the weather map the next day. I've been doing this long enough that I try to leave myself some room to be wrong or to correct and this is one of those instances.
The Mad River Glen opener appears to be a cloudy one with a dusting of new snow, temperatures well below the freezing mark and substantially less wind than Friday. The clipper system is back from the dead as a warm advection event. Snow from this should begin well after the ski day Saturda,y late in the evening and is set to continue until the Sunday ski day beings. Expect a powdery 3-6 inches but one should also expect temperatures to warm close to the freezing mark Sunday afternoon. I mean it sorta goes without saying in any snow event, but those looking for the coldest snow will find it early in the day. Most of the ski day Sunday will turn out dry with some clearing later in the day assisting that milder push of weather.
The Saturday night clipper is not the only turn in the short term outlook. Colder air is expected to battle for some interior New England presence early next week making the temperature outlook colder overall though we are still expecting a mixed bag of weather. Monday's temperatures are no longer in the 40's as chilly high pressure in Canada is expected to turn the flow more northeasterly by Monday. Precipitation on the front end of a big storm system near Lake Superior will collide with the aforementioned area of cold setting the stage for a nice front-end thump situation Monday evening that includes some snow or at least a snow/sleet mixture. Ultimately, a stronger pressure center is expected to organize across the southeast US and bring more significant amounts of moisture and a warmer mid-level environment to Vermont, but I am no longer so convinced surface temperatures will be all that warm at any point next week. We could certainly get wet for a time and experience a period of above-freezing weather, but I am going to leave some room for more changes on this one. This has moved in a nice direction over the past 48 hours and its quite possible to score some points on the back end of this as colder air enters the forecast picture Wednesday night into Thursday.
The longer range has some positive developments way out on the horizon but the progression appears similar to the last update. Colder weather follows the big storm system on Wednesday, and should temperatures well below the freezing mark on the mountain through Saturday December 14th. Ensembles continue to hammer away at us with a mild period between the 15th and 18th of the month. After that however, the EPO index is expected to drop again allowing for jet stream ridge to potentially reestablish itself over western North America which would allow for a colder outlook closer to the winter solstice.
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