New England Daily Snow

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By Plymouth State, Forecasters Posted 7 years ago January 16, 2017

Things are Shaping Up

Summary

High pressure will bring sunny skies and warmer temperatures to the mountains today. Expect temperatures to be around 10 degrees warmer than they were this weekend. Our next system will arrive on Tuesday, spreading mostly as snow across New England. Accumulations between 3-5” are likely, with locally higher amounts across the Whites. Another small system on Saturday will bring another shot of snow to the region. Next week, a potential nor’easter could affect the beginning of the work week.

Short Term Forecast

A sunny and chilly start to the day this morning, with temperatures in the mid to lower teens across many area resorts. Currently in Plymouth, we are sitting at a brisk 8 degrees. These colder temperatures at lower elevations are due to an inversion over New England, making for warmer temperatures at higher elevations than many valley locations. The Current Summit Conditions page provided by the Mount Washington Auto Road really shows this inversion off well.

Current summit conditions page courtesy of the Mount Washington Auto Road and Mount Washington Observatory. Clear inversion can be spotted in the Auto Road Vertical Temperature Profile, where it is 20 degrees at 4000'.

Temperatures will warm quite a bit throughout the day today, with high temperatures in the mid-30s down south and around 30 up north. Calm winds early will make for pleasant skiing conditions, before winds increase throughout the day today. Expect gustier conditions across the eastern White Mountains into Maine, where wind gusts could exceed 40 mph later this afternoon into the early evening.

A broad disturbance in central Quebec could lead to a few snow showers across the VT/NH/ME/CA border this evening and into the overnight hours. Accumulations, if any, should be light.

Last week, we talked about the potential for a significant rainstorm Wednesday of this week. I mentioned the possibility, with cold air lingering so close, that this system could end up producing snow instead. Well, it looks like our pleas for some snow were answered by the Snow Gods, as this system is shaping up to be a pretty decent snowmaker.

Here is the latest run of the NAM 12km:

NAM 12km valid 2pm Tuesday through 1AM Thursday. Image provided by Tropical Tidbits

Timing of when snow will start may change as we get closer to mid-day Tuesday, but right now it looks to begin snowing for portions of Vermont in the early afternoon on Tuesday (around 3pm), with eastern locations following. Snow will likely fall throughout the day on Wednesday, before tapering off overnight into Thursday.

Pretty decent snow totals should be expected from this system. The National Weather Service (NWS) in Gray, ME is currently working with an experimental probabilistic snow total forecast, which can be found here: http://www.weather.gov/gyx/winter. This web resource shows you a spread of how much snowfall could be expected from a given storm. The center graphic on the webpage shows snow totals most likely from this storm, with the left image displaying the lowest possible amount, and the right image showing the highest possible snow totals.

The 3-day NWS total snow forecast for this storm is shown below:

Extended Forecast

Following our system on Wednesday, cold air looks to remain in place for higher elevations through the remainder of the work week. Another disturbance could bring some additional snowfall to New England on Saturday, but accumulations should be relatively light (1-3”).

A potential nor’easter could be in the works for early next week, but model agreement is poor at this time on timing, type of precipitation and track of system. We will keep our eyes on the development of this storm throughout the week and bring you updates as we know them.

I’ll leave you today with a look at the GFS total snowfall accumulations through 2pm Sunday, January 22. Compared to the outlook this time last week, things are looking up around here. For all you snow lovers out, keep doing what you’re doing, it seems to be working.

GFS snow totals through Sunday, January 22, courtesy of Tropical Tidbits.

Andrea LaRocca Graduate Student, Plymouth State University/New England Daily Snow

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