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 23rd, 2026
Can’t have snow without cold air.
Everyone’s talking about the huge winter storm powering up in Texas. It’s going to leave more snow in Oklahoma City this weekend than here at Jay Peak Resort.
What good is snow in Oklahoma City?
I guess maybe it makes more people think about a ski vacation in Vermont.
Judging by the look out the window here now, perhaps everyone has already thought of that. What a Friday here at the resort. I’ve been here for the last 48 hours. Midweek skiing is great! It snowed most of the time. We picked up another half a foot anyway since Wednesday. Some nice snow squalls. At times it was snowing as hard as it possibly could. This is the leading edge of our 12th Arctic front so far this winter.
In Oklahoma City it’s the first Arctic front. and the fine people of Oklahoma are going to share that snow with us. Or is it that we are sharing the snow with them?
What’s going on out there across North America? We have air from Siberia now plowing south across Central Canada into the central plains of the United States.
At the same time, there’s an upper level low pressure system over the Baja peninsula with air being fed into the southern United States from east of Hawaii.
It is a clash of the Titans! And even though there’s not a real strong, low pressure center, it is a huge powerhouse of a storm. That is because the high pressure that’s coming across the northern United States is so cold. That is really fueling this storm. Cold air is dense and the higher the pressure, the heavier the cold air is near the ground. It’s the coldest air mass in a couple of years for a lot of the country. The cold undermines warmth in the deep south, resulting in a crippling ice storm south of where it snows.
For us here at the resort, it’s the coldest air we’ve had this winter.
As of this writing just before noon time on Friday, I was just out there skiing in another snow shower. The temperature was still manageable. There’s a great crowd here. All anticipating the finest snow in the nation. And hopefully having packed plenty of warm weather gear.
The eastern flank of the Arctic high-pressure system is pushing in overnight with a few more snow showers. But the big news is going to be how cold it is on our Saturday. It looks like the temperature on the mountain may hold somewhere in the vicinity of 10 to 15 below zero Fahrenheit.
The base area will be a little warmer. The waterpark will be a lot warmer!
As a matter of fact the freezer in your accommodation may be a little warmer, ha ha.
A little TK humor there.
It is something though that we have to take seriously, especially the first part of the weekend.
On a positive note, the worst of the wind is probably happening overnight Friday with gusts past 30 miles an hour as the heavy duty chill pushes in. Then during the day on Saturday, we should have a good amount of sunshine with slowly decreasing wind. Oh yeah, and wall to wall plentiful snow cover. Anyone that looks hard enough can find a secret powder stash in the glades. Mountain ops and lift operators, and all the staff are working overtime to make sure we enjoy ourselves.
By afternoon, the sun should be back out with the temperature pretty close to 10° below zero and the wind from the west probably at about 20 to 25 miles an hour.
A cell of that high-pressure system out over the northern plains comes right over the mountain for our Saturday night. What a stunning view of Jupiter and the crescent moon in the southern sky.
It’s called the snow moon. And it’s going to be lighting up our snowy landscape.
With a clear sky and the wind subsiding a bit further at night the low temperature on Sunday morning is probably around 22° below zero. Pretty close to record cold.
It’s about that time snow will be moving into New York City and Connecticut. So for us, it means sunshine fading behind clouds and the wind is going to be light and the temperature getting back above 0° by a couple degrees.
It’s not a single storm center that we’re tracking with all that snow across the country. It’s waves of energy. The first wave of energy is going to pass south of New England Sunday afternoon and Sunday night with very heavy snow for most of Central and southern New England. For us here at Jay it’s just another snowy night.
We’ll probably pick up close to 10 inches by Monday morning.
A second wave of low pressure is going to pass well to our south during the day Monday. And that’s going to keep our snow going. With light wind and 'warmer' air, along with negligible wind from the northeast ~ maybe 10 mph. Probably another 6 inches of snow during the day. Very low density snow. A powder day.
Then all of that weather is going to push off the East Coast and we’re going to tap the Arctic air again with the 13th Arctic front of the season Monday night.
It looks like next week should continue to be pretty snowy. We’re getting a return of the negative North Atlantic oscillation, the Greenland Block. We’re going to have the arctic front stalled near here. So we’ll probably have continued intermittent snow for most of next week with the pulsing type situation returning. Where we get doses of snow and cold. But they’re very difficult to time and place. But we should get at least a few inches of snow every 24 to 36 hours.
There'll be some periods of sunshine mixed in there. But a very wintry close to January.
It looks like we’re very close to the earliest 300 inches on record.
Stay tuned to our snow reports for the stats on that.
Thank you very much for hosting us this week, it was great to see everybody in person, with so many great turns.
It’s my turn to travel south into the teeth of this ~ most widespread ~ harsh winter storm ~ for the United States ~ that we’ve seen in a couple of years anyway.
Happy weekend!
We’ll talk again on Tuesday.
TK
