New England Daily Snow

Heads up, there may be fresher snow! Read the latest New England Daily Snow

By Plymouth State, Forecasters Posted 7 years ago December 6, 2016

Winter Chill

Summary

With yesterday’s system bringing some fairly significant snowfall totals to portions of New England, it seems to be shaping up to be a much better season this year with regard to skiing - some resorts are announcing more than a foot of snow depth after yesterday’s storm. With more unsettled weather on the way later this week, it looks like the rainy start to the season has finally ended for now.

Short Term Forecast

With the recent snowfall, resorts can now boast a fair amount of base depth. The highest we’ve seen is Jay Peak, ranging from a 1 1/2 ft to 30”+, and now have 23 trails open to the public. In addition, Smuggler’s, Stowe, Sugarbush, and even Whiteface in NY have between a 10-20” of base depth, and about a quarter of their trails open. The clustered mountains of northern NH have also seen some fairly decent snowfall, including Wildcat, Cannon, and Loon, but with many of their trails are still yet to open. Below is the current snow depth across New England, which gives cause to the increase in snowpack for many of these ski resorts.

Courtesy of the National Weather Service

As yesterday’s system moves offshore, it leads the way for a high pressure to move into New England, bringing with it a brief period of fair weather and slightly warmer temperatures than we saw the past few days. Highs for today will range between the lower to mid 30’s, while southern regions may see highs near 40. However, overnight temperatures continue to stay in the mid to upper 20’s, meaning there will be no trouble making snow.

After this high pressure quickly moves through, it will be overtaken by a few weaker systems that will move in Wednesday morning, bringing snow showers to northern New England and some rain showers for the extreme southern region, with a small amount of accumulation expected. Snow showers will persist throughout the day Wednesday, followed by more snow showers as a result of northwesterly winds inducing upslope flow into the next few days and the start of the weekend.

Extended Forecast

After picking up a couple inches of snow on Wednesday, the conditions at open resorts in the Northeast should continue to improve. Cold temperatures will persist allowing the continuance of man made snow.

Thursday will consist of partly sunny skies with temperatures in the upper 20’s-low 30’s at mountain bases in the afternoon. As a low pressure system passes New England to the north on Thursday afternoon, instability associated with this system may produce isolated snow showers in eastern New York and northern New England. The GFS model is suggesting this to be an isolated event while the NAM is expecting a wide spread occurrence of snow fall.

Courtesy of Tropical Tidbits

As discussed yesterday, this low pressure system to our north is expected to produce northerly flow over the mountains of northern Vermont/New Hampshire from Friday morning/Saturday morning. With enough moisture, this flow will allow the production of snowfall via up-sloping in this region during this time period (1-3 inches).

A couple more inches of new snow at the end of this week is still suggesting the strong possibility that the conditions this weekend will be improved from last weekend. As positive reports were coming out of a lot of mountains last weekend, I’d expect this weekend to be a fun one as well.  

Temperatures will be significantly colder this weekend (mid 20’s at the base), so despite the fact we’re still early in the winter (or late in the fall), remember to bundle up. Wind chill will make the air feel much worse, especially towards the peaks!

The GFS is picking up on a potential big storm early next week. We’ll keep you posted with updates as we draw closer.

Have a great day!

Julia Moreland, Undergraduate Plymouth State University/New England Daily Snow

Rob Megnia, Graduate Plymouth State University/New England Daily Snow

About Our Forecaster

Plymouth State

Forecasters

Free OpenSnow App