Weather
Warm, windy weather is still the main story across the Northern Rockies, with only a light weekend refresh before another modest round of mountain snow and stronger wind arrives around Wednesday into Thursday. Confidence is highest from Saturday afternoon through Friday morning: expect a mostly dry pattern for Bogus Basin, Brundage, Tamarack, and Sun Valley, while Big Sky, Whitefish Mountain, Bridger Bowl, and Schweitzer have the best shot at small accumulations that top out around 1″-2″ in the published totals through Friday morning. After that, the signal gets much less stable, with warmer-than-normal conditions still favored overall and only a low-confidence chance for a more meaningful late-period storm.
Saturday into Sunday brings the first change, but it looks more like a wind-and-cooldown event than a powder cycle. Guidance is tightly clustered on the cold front arriving Saturday afternoon and Saturday night, and it is also fairly well aligned on limited moisture, high starting snow levels, and gusty west to southwest wind. Snow levels generally begin around 7,000 to 8,500 feet where showers develop, then drop behind the front toward roughly 5,000 to 6,500 feet from western Montana into southwest Montana by early Sunday. That should produce only a dusting to about 1″ for most higher terrain, with the best chance for a slightly better refresh near Big Sky and a few northern mountains. Snow quality is not especially good early, with SLRs often around 5-10 for the first flakes before improving toward 10-13 as colder air filters in. Wind is the bigger ski impact, with many exposed slopes and ridges dealing with west to southwest gusts in the 30-50 mph range and a few stronger ridge-top bursts.
Sunday night through Tuesday is a reset period with drier weather, more sun, and another warmup, then attention turns to a second system late Wednesday into Thursday. The models converge on the broader idea of several quiet days followed by stronger wind and a cooling frontal passage, but they diverge on snowfall intensity, exact onset timing, and how far south the better moisture and falling snow levels reach. The steadiest signal is across Whitefish Mountain and Schweitzer, where upper-mountain snow looks most likely; Big Sky and Bridger Bowl can still squeeze out a light refresher, while Jackson Hole, Grand Targhee, and the southern Idaho resorts are more likely to see only scattered showers or little at all. Wind agreement is better than snow agreement, with widespread gusty conditions likely again Wednesday into Thursday, especially over Montana and the Idaho Panhandle. Where snow falls, snow levels drop sharply through the event, and snow quality should improve from wet and dense in the northern ranges early, with SLRs around 3-8, to more usable 10-13 ratios as colder air arrives. Published totals for the full Saturday through Friday stretch remain modest at only 1″-2″ for the snowiest resorts and about 1″ at Bridger Bowl and Schweitzer.
Beyond Thursday night, confidence drops quickly and the forecast becomes much more speculative. Timing spread opens up, snowfall spread widens a lot, and the southern extent of any next storm is poorly resolved. The GFS is the wet outlier late next weekend, especially for Whitefish Mountain, Schweitzer, Big Sky, Jackson Hole, and Grand Targhee, while other guidance keeps amounts far lighter and preserves the warmer, ridge-favored pattern that dominates the 6-10 day outlook. For skiers, that argues for conservative expectations: mostly dry to occasionally unsettled weather, temperatures that still run above late-March normals, and only a low-confidence shot at something more than a small refresh after Friday. If that colder and wetter scenario starts gaining support, the northern mountains and Tetons would be first in line, but it is too early to lean hard into that solution.
Resort Forecast Totals (Sat Mar 21 – Fri Mar 27)
- Big Sky – 1″-2″
- Whitefish Mountain – 1″-2″
- Bridger Bowl – 1″
- Schweitzer – 1″
- Bogus Basin – 0″
- Brundage – 0″
- Grand Targhee – 0″
- Jackson Hole – 0″
- Sun Valley – 0″
- Tamarack – 0″
