Weather
The Northeast is headed into a mixed, mostly modest refresh through Friday, with the best shot at soft turns focused on Mont Sainte-Anne, Jay Peak, and a few of the northern New Hampshire and Maine peaks. Most areas start with a little dense snow late Wednesday night and Thursday morning, turn milder and wetter Thursday, then squeeze out a lighter backside snowfall Friday as colder air returns. Confidence is strongest from late Wednesday night through Friday afternoon, and after that the pattern turns colder for the weekend before a much more interesting but far less settled late-week snow signal tries to develop.
From late Wednesday night through Friday, guidance is converging on two weak waves with a warm, wet middle and only modest mountain snowfall overall. Light snow breaks out first late Wednesday night into Thursday morning, but it comes in heavy and sticky with SLRs mostly in the 3-8 range, so lower elevations will have a slushy look while upper mountains do better. Snow levels generally rise to around 1,500 to 3,500 feet in northern New England during the Thursday warm push, and exposed terrain will be dealing with southerly ridge gusts of 40 to 70 mph. Most open New England resorts look lined up for a 1″-3″ refresh by Friday, Jay Peak is closer to 5″-6″, and Mont Sainte-Anne leads at 7″-9″. The main disagreement is on the Friday backside, where one camp is much snowier while most guidance keeps the extra accumulation limited; as colder air returns, snow quality improves into a more usable 10-16 SLR range.
Friday night into Sunday is the cleanest part of the forecast, with colder and drier weather favored region-wide. That should lock surfaces back up after Thursday rain, preserve the modest Friday refresh at the higher mountains, and bring the coldest ski weather of the stretch Saturday morning with many mountain lows in the single digits and teens. Guidance stays fairly well aligned on only spotty snow showers after that, although a minor Sunday night into Monday brush could dust up a few northern hills while bringing another round of westerly ridge gusts in the 45 to 70 mph range. Mt. Bohemia follows the quieter side of the pattern through the weekend, with just minor clipper snow early and then mainly cold, dry conditions.
By the middle to latter part of next week, the active pattern is still there, but the forecast confidence drops off sharply because the individual models diverge on just about every detail. The spread now covers timing, intensity, how quickly snow levels fall, and whether late-period winds are just annoying or more disruptive. There is enough support for another northern New England round of snow sometime from late Wednesday into Friday, and the conservative read is still several inches with the possibility of something closer to a foot if the colder, snowier solutions win out. The warmer or drier camp would leave some mountains with far less, so this is not a storm to lock in yet. The same idea applies to Mt. Bohemia, where the spread still runs from nuisance snow to a much more meaningful hit late in the period.
Resort Forecast Totals (Thu Mar 26 – Fri Mar 27)
- Mont Sainte-Anne – 7″-9″
- Jay Peak – 5″-6″
- Wildcat – 3″-4″
- Cannon Mountain – 2″-3″
- Stowe – 2″-3″
- Sugarloaf – 2″-3″
- Killington – 2″-3″
- Bretton Woods – 2″-3″
- Smugglers’ Notch – 2″-3″
- Loon Mountain – 1″-2″
- Sugarbush – 1″-2″
- Sunday River – 1″
- Mt. Bohemia – 1″
