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.
The sun is out and I see snow guns are firing!
It's weather whiplash here at Jay Peak Resort.
We have another Arctic air mass settling into the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont this final weekend of March. Arctic air masses are usually a little less intense this time of year than, say, the middle of January. But it’s pretty cold. Let’s emphasize pretty!
I saw a fan gun blowing snow on the Stateside webcam with the sun shining here midday Friday, and I believe I could see smiling all the way through the webcam too. Groomers did a great job handling that little bump of a warm-up with some Thursday evening rain. It seems like we’ve had one of those weather hiccups each week this month, but they’re getting less and less impactful. Our snowpack is incredibly resilient!
The coldest of this air mass is actually moving in overnight Friday into Saturday morning. And there’s a little surface trough. Little surface troughs can generate a little bit of snow. Clouds and a breeze actually help keep the temperature from free-falling. We’re probably cooling to about 10 or 15° first thing Saturday, with a dusting of snow possible. The lower atmosphere is going to be very unstable, meaning any bits of sunshine we get will generate more clouds and some snow flurries or snow showers. Wind is a bit active from the northwest at 15 to 25 mph, with a high temperature in the mid 20s. We are dressing for winter instead of spring.
I would say it’s fast and firm much of the day, but anywhere we can get any sunshine, and especially lower aspects, should soften up. I don’t think we will get corn snow this weekend. There’s a slight chance, maybe on Sunday.
There’s a warm front coming through Sunday, and that is also going to contain a few snowflakes. Maybe another inch or two of snow Sunday morning, with a mixture of sun and clouds. The temperature gets back up to 32° Sunday afternoon. The air is coming around more from the southwest at 15 to 25 mph.
By Monday, we have the Arctic high-pressure system moving off the East Coast and the return flow of less cold air, along with another warm front Sunday night that could generate another inch of snow for Monday morning. So I think by then we’re just a cat’s whisker away from 400 inches for the season.
The big-picture weather pattern for next week is fairly similar to how it’s been the last several weeks. The extreme heat dome continues in the southern and western United States. At the same time, we have record cold air day after day from coast to coast in Canada. Here at Jay, we have been in the line of fire for energy racing off the Pacific Ocean across North America and right across northern Vermont for the last several weeks. Next week looks no different, except we’re going to change from March into April weather. You would think the warmer air will start winning out more often than not, but it’s going to be close.
Warmer air likely comes in by Monday afternoon as a weak low-pressure system passes to our north and air comes in from the southwest, with a high temperature in the 40s. But then the colder air presses back south Monday night and early Tuesday, with a fast-moving wave of low pressure bringing in another wintry mix for Tuesday, March 31. I would say it will qualify as March “going out like a lion.” It’s a 50-50 coin toss on whether we get frozen precipitation or liquid precipitation Tuesday. It’s an incredibly tight gradient, with an additional low-pressure system tracking very close to here on Tuesday.
But it’s just another in an endless series of waves of low-pressure systems. There’s going to be another one on Wednesday. There’s a better chance that Wednesday, April Fools’ Day, we do get on the warmer side of that boundary, with a chance of rain. But it’s just a chance. There’s still a chance it could snow, but I would say this time it looks more wet than white. Sort of the same thing we’ve been doing for the last several weeks, right?
Then on Thursday, we will have high pressure to our north, with marginally cold air coming back before next weekend. And then next weekend, another amped-up system is aimed at the Northeast, with more wintry mix for the first weekend of April.
I hesitate to say it will be a bunch of snow, but there’s equal hesitation to say a bunch of rain. The one certainty is, it’s not boring!
Seeing that snow gun going this afternoon as I’m writing this post really lifted my spirits. We are going to keep winter going here well into April, regardless of what Mother Nature has in store for the near term.
Hats off and a shout-out to Mountain Operations and everybody doing such great hard work here.
Eventually, we are going to get a day or two of 70° with sunshine and corn snow.
We’ll talk about those prospects again here on Tuesday.
Happy weekend!
TK
