Tim Kelley is back for winter 25+26 with his thorough, entertaining, and exciting weather reports. Watch this space for news about incoming weather and snow.
January 13th, 2026
“A dinger of a midweek day!”
Does anyone mind if I just plagiarized the Tuesday snow report from here at Jay Peak resort. I can’t just say midweek skiing is great if you can get it every week after week ~ even though it is the truth. So I changed the line to something more original. But I love the report this morning. We finally got double digit snowfall to return this week.
That cold and windy Monday morning relaxed in the wind and cold department, but it kept on snowing Monday night and didn’t really stop until the first thing Tuesday.
Now we are riding another little warmer wave into the mid week. So it’s soft snow with intermittent, mostly light, mixed precipitation here on the mountain for our Wednesday into first thing Thursday.
You’re probably tired of me saying good base material right.
But how about if we get another one of these layers during the mid week, and then cover it up with more regular snow before the weekend. How’s that plan?
OK, here goes.
Our little Monday cold snap was on the backside of another bomb cyclone that raced out into the north Atlantic. The wind over Newfoundland on Monday was sustained at 79 mph gusting to 94 mph, truly a winter hurricane in eastern Newfoundland and Labrador.
But with the Greenland block now having dissolved again. That storm moved out very quickly. Taking our Jay Cloud with it, opening the door for a warming trend here.
We have a Bermuda high-pressure system, January style, pumping warmer air (wind) in from the southwest. The heavy cold air is not that far away, and it’s going to make a stand against the warmth. So this little battle between warmer air trying to come in from the south and cold offering resistance over southeastern Canada, results in precipitation for most of our Wednesday.
Prior to this, we do have a little bit of, perhaps 1 or 2 inch snowfall Tuesday evening. The temperature is going to hold steady or even rise to freezing overnight Tuesday.
A fairly strong, low pressure system is tracking across Ontario during our Wednesday with intermittent mixed precipitation at the base and snizzley snow up higher.
The temperature and dewpoint are both going to be together in the low and mid 30s for most of the day. That means fog and drizzle also in the mix.
The low pressure system is going to tend to strengthen as it passes to our north and east Wednesday night. That opens the door for new cold air to rush back in during the day Thursday.
While wind does not look like a factor for our Wednesday, it may be a factor Thursday.
It’s called cold air advection wind, from the northwest gusting past 35 mph. With the temperature falling from the 30s in the morning, close to 10° by sunset Thursday evening.
Oh yeah, it’s going to snow all day long.
Let’s try and do the math on this one. Snow should increase in intensity and become dry between 4 and 7 AM Thursday. Likely falling at greater than 1/3 per inch an hour through about 5 AM Friday. So that’s 24 hours where it’s snowing most of the time. It looks like an easy 8 inches, perhaps 10-12" if we catch a break. Several of those inches having accumulated by 4 PM Thursday
Friday looks like it’s mostly dry and pretty cold. Temperatures start off close to 0° rising up to about 10° during the day. Wind will be diminishing from the west 25 to 30 miles an hour early to lighter for a time midday. We should see a good amount of blue sky also.
With the lack of a Greenland block in place things are moving right along, and warmer air is returning fairly quickly Friday night. Wind will be out of the south at 20 to 30 mph again by Friday evening. The temperature continues upward Friday night as a warm front passes, with a couple more inches of snow and temps in the 20s Saturday morning.
While all this is happening, there’s been some pretty darn cold air in Alaska. In January cold air in Alaska is about 35° below zero. That air is releasing across Central Canada and is aimed at us perhaps this weekend. The timing has been really erratic on how this is all going to evolve. At one point, we thought we would see some pretty good coastal storms. But now Mother Nature just wants to send that Cold in here in a pulsing fashion. Sort of like how we started off the year a couple of weeks ago, with periods of snow that are very difficult to time, on and off, through the weekend.
The temperature on Saturday should be trending down from the 20s into the teens. All these transitions from warm to cold, and cold to warm, lather rinse repeat, comes with a few inches more snow. So we might as well call it a few more inches of snow for Saturday into Sunday. From this far out, it’s very difficult to time it all out, both the snow and the wind. But I think it’s safe to say that Saturday is more comfortable temperature wise. And the snow might be a little better texture wise, on Sunday as the cold comes back again.
We may double down next week in the cold department, along with more intermittent snow. But we can’t seem to get an organized storm. I guess the most optimistic thing we can say is there should be no other resort in the east that gets more snow than Jay Peak, yet again, heading into the fourth week of January.
We got that going for us!
Talk again Friday.
TK
