Tuesday March 17th, 2026
Where have we seen this before?
Another Mother Nature Midnight Run at Jay Peak Resort.
We went to bed Monday and it was mild and windy. We woke up on Saint Patrick's Tuesday and it was cold and windy. Similar to last Wednesday-Thursday, but this week it happened on a Monday-Tuesday and was less extreme in the rain and warmth department.
Last week we picked up close to a foot of snow by the weekend.
This week ... Um ~ Ahh … I’m not quite sure if we can do that again.
There have been snowflakes in the air on and off for our St. Patrick’s Day. I’m looking at the WebCams, I do not see any bare spots. So we survived another dose of Mother Nature‘s March '26 Shenanigans.
That was Arctic front number 17 since December 1st bringing an abrupt halt to melting snow, again. Also an abrupt hardening to what was wet snow. Our backside of the front snow cloud was meegar at the best. But it's nice to see the Jet lift spinning with people enjoying the great deep layer of snow supplied by both mountain operations and mother nature ~ that has made this month survivable ~ so far.
It’s not your imagination. March used to be a very snowy month, but things have definitely changed. Thank goodness we had such snowy months of October through mid February.
The storm that brought that front through midnight Monday was attached to a bomb cyclone moving into northern Quebec. That was the third blizzard in North America in the last week. This one dropped close to 40 inches of snow in the upper peninsula of Michigan. But the track wasn’t right for us.
So let’s try and get back on track, easier said than done. This cold air mass is going to result in temperatures cooling to the single digits overnight for a cold bright start to our Wednesday. With some sunshine, the temperature recovers back to the 20s in the afternoon with wind becoming nearly calm. So it’s not a bad looking Wednesday.
Our heroic mountain operation crews are out there doing their best to till out that bit of a hard layer that reformed. Fortunately rainfall was minimal and we did have that helpful snow over the weekend. So firm and fast is the forecast.
High pressure is going to be moving east and out of New England Thursday with the air coming back in from the south pushing the temperature back up to freezing by Thursday afternoon. There’s a warm front that will probably bring some snow in by late in the day.
Low pressure is going track to our north at night pushing a cold front through here Friday morning. Friday is the Vernal equinox. That’s when the calendar springtime catches up with meteorological springtime. And it looks like a pretty nice day Friday with another little short wave coming at us. It may snow a little bit by Friday afternoon and night. There’s quite a boundary setting up between the lower 48 United States and Canada. There’s an extreme heat wave setting up in the southwestern United States. At the same time there’s a reload of Arctic air in central Canada. The boundary between the two extremes will be very close to the mountain this weekend. It’s a nearly impossible forecast, but that trend has been for us to stay on the colder side of the front with several waves of energy coming along. So I think that we may nickel and dime our way to a few inches of snow by Sunday.
But because the boundary is so extreme and we are right on the edge it's a tenuous predicament, I am cautiously optimistic that it’s a pretty nice weekend. We’re pretty confident that there’s no big storm. But as for the cold air winning out, that is only medium confidence.
If I try to add up how much snow we may get, I would say a couple of inches Thursday night. Another couple of inches later Saturday into Sunday morning. Then a couple more inches Saturday night. Optimistically ~ we’re looking at 6 inches of snow by Sunday afternoon. Wind speeds look fairly negligible until about Sunday night and Monday, when it looks like it may get colder and windy again.
Even though some of the guidance has us near 50° next Monday, I’m thinking more toward the colder guidance which has a wintry chill to start off next week here.
Next week continues a very busy weather pattern March '26 style.
So we’ll have plenty to talk about again on Friday.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
TK
