Good Morning from central NH!

Ski resorts across New Hampshire and Maine picked up anywhere between 1-3" of new snow in the last 24 hours with low pressure that is now well out to sea. Some snowfall totals being reported at local ski resorts are:

• 1" at Holderness School Cross Country (that is where I'll be in about an hour)
• 1" at Loon Mountain
• 2-3" at Bretton Woods
• 8" at Gunstock in the lakes region of NH 
• 8" at Wachusett in Massachusetts

Most ski resorts "up north" are reporting heavy snow making activities, machine groomed trails, and frozen granular. The ski conditions won't be fantastic up in the north country today, especially at regions with thin cover and your typical icy spots.  Snowmaking will help offset the thin cover and we expect some snow showers and more light snow to help add cover on Sunday. The best skiing this weekend will be at more southerly ski resorts such as Gunstock, Ragged, Sunapee, Wachusett, and Blue Hills. 

Snowfall totals across southern New England include widespread 9-12" amounts across eastern Connecticut, 5-7" amounts across Cape Cod, 8-10" amounts across the South Coast of Massachusetts and the North/South Shore of Massachusetts, and up to a foot out in Worcester County. Snowfall totals across central and eastern New England include 6-10" amounts across much of southern and western in Maine, and anywhere from 1-10" from north/central to southern regions in New Hampshire. 

Weekend Forecast

Snowmaking will be the theme of the weekend with temperatures returning back to more reasonable and more seasonable levels. Temperatures as we start the day are in the teens and low 20s across the region, and we expect high temperatures today to reach near 30F at the ski resort bases, remain near 20F at summit elevations, and drop into the teens at the highest elevations.

Webcam Image courtesy Plymouth State.

We have mostly sunny skies across the region thus far this morning, but that will change throughout the day. We expect increasing clouds as weak low pressure (the Alberta Clipper we've been talking about on here for days now) passes by. It is already snowing across northern New York in the Adirondacks and snow showers are beginning across northern Vermont.

Radar animation courtesy Intellicast.

Snow showers will over take ski resorts in all of Vermont and New Hampshire later today, and into Maine tonight. Snow showers will continue into Sunday on stiff northwesterly winds with. Light snowfall accumulations are expected; the NWS snowfall forecast is for 0-1" across much of north-central New Hampshire with 1-2" amounts possible across northern Vermont (Jay Peak), the Adirondacks (Whiteface), far northern New Hampshire, and over in Maine at Saddleback and Sugarloaf. 

NWS snowfall forecast created using NDFD data, updated twice daily at 7AM and 7PM on Plymouth State's Meteorology Server. See the latest here.

Long-Range Forecast

We enter an unsettled period of [snowy] weather this upcoming week. Organized low pressure will likely be found offshore -- along with most of the heavy snows. We talked a lot this past week about the importance of phasing between a low pressure system coming east from the Great Lakes and low pressure developing along the East Coast.  We'll wave at an ocean storm that clips Cape Cod on Monday, and we'll get the squeeze play between an unphased coastal storm and Great Lakes storm on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The unsettled weather in this squeeze play should yield high probabilities of snow showers and relatively difficult-to-forecast snowfall totals between 3 and 7 inches region wide.  Below you'll find the sea-level pressure and precipitation map for 7PM on Wednesday courtesy Levi Cowan over at Tropical Tidbits and a GFS snowfall forecast for the next 7 days (thanks to Plymouth State graduate student Rob Megnia for motivating me to create these maps from more than just the NDFD data; Rob will be helping with forecasts starting on Monday). 

Forecaster Note

Have a great weekend on the slopes. There is no scheduled forecast for tomorrow (Sunday). The next update will be on Monday morning. Starting on Monday, I will also be having Plymouth State Meteorology students helping with these discussions. They are Rob Megnia (a graduate student in our MS Applied Meteorology program), Michael Wessler (an undergraduate student in our BS Meteorology program and intern for the Mount Washington Observatory), and Christopher Hohman (an undergraduate student in our BS Meteorology program).

Jay Cordeira - Plymouth State University/New England Daily Snow