Weather
This forecast is brought to you by Smugglers’ Notch.
A compact Friday night through Saturday storm brings Smugglers’ Notch a useful refresh, then the forecast flips toward wind and sharp temperature swings before colder weather settles back in next week. Confidence is highest from Friday afternoon through early Sunday, March 13-15, when timing and snow levels are most consistent. Expect a mostly all-snow clipper with a resort-wide 5″-6″ forecast, a rough, very windy Sunday night into Monday warm surge, then a colder stretch with smaller snow chances and a still-uncertain chance of more accumulations late next week and next weekend.
Friday afternoon through Saturday night is the cleanest part of the forecast, with guidance tightly clustered on a modest but useful all-snow event. Snow should fill in during the second half of Friday, peak Friday night into early Saturday, then turn more showery on Saturday with another upslope push before tapering early Sunday. Snow levels stay below the 1,100-foot base throughout and mostly remain near the valley floor, so elevation is not a limiting factor. Most guidance lands in the 4″-8″ zone for the resort, and the forecast call is 5″-6″. Ratios look near 10-14:1 during the steadiest snow, which points to moderately dense new snow at first, then they improve into roughly 14-18:1 late Saturday as colder air arrives. Southwest to west winds also ramp up, with gusts commonly in the 45-65 mph range on exposed terrain, so Saturday should ski better in sheltered pods than along the ridgeline.
Guidance then converges strongly on a very different setup from Sunday night through Monday, with little doubt about the wind and warmth but much less agreement on the backside snow. South winds increase hard Sunday night, and Monday looks rough on exposed lifts and ridgelines, with sustained ridgetop winds in the 35-50 mph range and gusts into the 60s and 80s. Snow levels surge well above the 3,640-foot summit, so any precipitation during the warmest part of the system falls as rain. The sharper cold front comes through late Monday into Monday night, and that is when the spread opens up. The colder, drier outcome is just a coating to a couple of inches after the wind shift, while the wetter camp produces something closer to 4″-8″ by Tuesday. Ratios during any lingering warm-sector precipitation are poor, roughly 0-7:1, then rebound into the 12-18:1 range once colder air takes over.
Tuesday through Thursday trends colder and more seasonable again, with lighter snow chances and a better surface than the wind-whipped warm spell leaves behind. Guidance is reasonably close on scattered snow showers Tuesday and a mainly quieter Wednesday, then comes back together for a modest Thursday night into Friday refresh, generally around 2″-4″ if current timing holds and with snow levels near or below the base. Beyond that, next weekend still has upside, but the spread is large. The broader pattern keeps the Northeast on the colder side, which supports more snow chances than rain, yet the range of outcomes widens quickly after Friday. A conservative read is for another 2″-6″ of additional snow potential between next weekend and early the following week, while a few snowier long-range solutions would do better than that. For now, expect periodic refreshers rather than a locked-in major cycle.
Resort Forecast Totals (Fri Mar 13 – Sun Mar 15)
- Smugglers’ Notch – 5″-6″
