Weather by Tim Kelley

“Tower, this is Ghost Rider requesting a flyby.”

“Negative, Ghost Rider, the pattern is full”
“Sorry, Goose, but it’s time to buzz the tower”

For adrenaline junkies, the weather pattern does not get any more full than this.
I’m almost at a loss for words. Good thing I practice speaking all the time... And sometimes can’t stop.

Just like the snow globe weather here, it just will not stop flaking!
This week went over the top!
Every time I look at the web camera, or get a call from a friend ~ all we are seeing and hearing is that "It Is Dumping!"

A couple of times we even saw the sun, but it still looked like a blizzard.

This kind of storm, with all the snow and wind, is almost impossible to measure. We have to have at least 3 feet of snow since Tuesday. Close to three times what I was thinking.
If I’m going to get a forecast wrong, I am happy that it’s in this direction.

You probably don’t care about a long diatribe on how it happened. So I’ll just say that a storm went by stalled to our northeast, tapping water vapor from north of Bermuda, south of Greenland, and Hudson Bay Canada. And wrapped it all into a polar vortex which happened to be situated over Jay Peak resort. The Jay Cloud on roids!

It was a blizzard!
That's fun, but it's difficult to operate high elevation lifts during blizzards. That wind and all... We like to be safe y'know.

So how about we get rid of the blizzard (temporarily anyway), enough so that our lifts should make it to the summit this weekend. It may even stop snowing for a minute or two here or there.

Just as quickly as this storm to our northeast pulls out, there’s another one tracking to our north for the weekend. Wind shifting in from the southwest should push our temperature back up into the 20s, with another batch of snow, if this one even stops, resuming Saturday afternoon. Hopefully the wind is only 20 to 25 miles an hour. Another few inches of snow, if anyone’s counting, likely during the afternoon.

Then yet another Arctic front comes in at night and Sunday. The talk of a Sunday Nor'easter, for the second time in a row, has disappeared this Sunday. There will be a weak low pressure system, bringing some snow to Cape Cod while we are going to have another Jay Cloud with more snow than expected by Sunday afternoon. Hopefully a brief lull in the wind in time for spinning lifts Sunday morning without hold issues.
At least that’s the plan. But it is another polar vortex and the temperature is going to be falling from the teens into the single numbers Sunday afternoon.
Probably about another half a foot of blower POW by sunset.

The low pressure system generating snow on Cape Cod is going to deepen rapidly as it pulls away fairly quickly. But the combination of that low pressure moving into Southeastern Canada, and a new arctic high pressure system tracking into the southeastern United States will make for a fairly biting breeze on Monday morning. Overachieving Sunday night snow too.

Snow will be blowing around, but we should also see a little bit of sunshine.
A weak wave in the upper flow should bring us another batch of snow Monday night into early Tuesday. It’s the beginning of a little bit of a warming trend for next week. But it’s not going to be warm. It’s gonna become windy again on Wednesday with another Arctic front coming our way Wednesday night and next Thursday.

It’s a fairly low confidence forecast for what’s going to happen for the second half of next week. Warmer air is going to be coming across the country. You probably heard about the atmospheric river bringing that disastrous rain to Washington state. But you may not have heard that it’s record cold just to the north of that in Canada. That battle between warmer weather coming in off the Pacific and Arctic chill in Canada, combined with a parade of storms off the Pacific Ocean, is going to keep it exciting around here until further notice.

I don’t recall such a stockpile of Arctic Air across Canada and such a parade of Pacific storms both happening at the same time, especially so early in the season, in my career.

You would think something has to give. At some point something has to give. But for now we just get more snow and cold.

The lowest sun angle of the year, and these thick clouds mean we’ve been skiing practically in the dark. One thing I do know, though, is that the earliest sunset of the year is right now, and this weekend we start gaining a tiny bit of sunlight at the end of the day. Even though we keep losing it in the morning.

And with all this weather, we are burning the candle at both ends so to speak.

Happy weekend riding!
We all feel the need for speed!

Talk again Tuesday.

TK