Light snow is crossing Southern New England on Thursday morning that won't produce much (if any) accumulation for resorts in the region, perhaps a maximum of ~1" in the Berkshires.

Radar animation courtesy the Weather Channel.

Thursday should be otherwise a cloudy day with temperatures topping out in the low 30s across the region. We drop back into the 20s overnight with some sunshine early Friday before clouds increase once again ahead our next system.

The storm on Friday night and Saturday continues to look like a snow-to-mix and rain event for much of southern and central New England with elevation-driven snows across Vermont, northern New Hampshire, and western Maine. As the storm pulls away, everything changes back over to snow with persistent upslope snows in favorable locations across Northern Vermont and New Hampshire. 

Timeline and details:

• Precipitation starts before daybreak on Saturday across southwest regions of New England as rain and a mix of rain and snow across the interior, and shortly after daybreak across central and eastern New England.
• Precipitation will likely start as all snow at elevations above ~1500 feet up and down the Green Mountains in Vermont and across the White Mountains in New Hampshire. 
• The snow level will bounce around between ~2000 and 2500 feet early on Saturday before crashing back down across the region in the afternoon. 
• Areas that remain all snow in far northern New Hampshire and western Maine, and locations above ~2500 feet in elevation could see heavy wet snow accumulating at ~1" per hour during the middle of the day. 

Below is a comparison of four different forecast models for Saturday morning all pointing toward similar, but slightly different, outcomes. Each model favors snow across the higher terrain of Vermont and New Hampshire, and the potential for some mixed precipitation. Notice that I included the new GFSv16 model in the comparison and not the "regular" GFS model. For what it's worth, the new GFSv16 model has been doing fantastic this winter with snowfall forecasts, especially with that 40" storm we had back in December.

I'm thinking the OpenSnow snowfall forecast is a pretty good blend of the different model solutions that we have right now. The spatial distribution looks good with 8-12" amounts possible in the higher terrain and resort **summits** across Vermont and New Hampshire with jackpot amounts >12" possible in the highest terrain of the White Mountains near Wildcat and Tuckerman Ravine and at Sugarloaf in Maine. Some notes:

• The Tuckerman value over 20 inches seems a bit high, but is not "out of the question". The elevation we forecast for at Tuckerman is 4800', which should be all snow in this event.
• Based on the snow levels resort bases may only receive a fraction of these totals.
• These are five-day totals and will include snowfall "on the backside" of the storm through Monday, which may not be captured by other forecasts you see out their on the web for this storm (if these numbers seem a bit high - especially in Vermont)

What could go wrong?

There are a lot of factors that could influence the forecast, including the exact precipitation amount and the temperatures (both spatially and vertically). Currently there is uncertainty in all these forecast parameters. Below is the GFS ensemble uncertainty in the precipitation forecast in Montpelier Vermont showing a range of ~0.25" to ~0.75" of liquid equivalent that (if all snow at 8:1 ratio) would result in a range of ~2 to 6 inches. 

Here is the latest snowfall forecast for New Hampshire and western Maine from the National Weather Service, highlighting the "low end", "expected", and "high end" snowfall possibilities. The expected and high-end possibilities are in line with the OpenSnow snowfall forecast totals above, whereas the low-end possibility likely represents a warmer (more rain) and less intense scenario.

Check here for similar graphic for Vermont: https://www.weather.gov/btv/winter

I'll be back tomorrow with another update to the weekend forecast and more details on the week ahead.

-Dr. Jay | New England Daily Snow