SnowBrains Forecast: Warm Start Then 5-10 Inches for the Northeast Through Saturday

Spring warmth gives way to a much more wintry stretch across the Northeast ski hills, with a messy mixed round Wednesday into Thursday, a cleaner all-snow refresh Friday into Saturday, and another lower-confidence storm chance late Sunday into Monday. The first round is more about rain, sleet, freezing rain, and a hard refreeze than powder at the southern and lower-elevation hills, while the Friday-to-Saturday wave looks like the better window for softer turns. After that, guidance still favors a cooler, unsettled Northeast pattern next week, but the details loosen up quickly after Saturday night.

Tuesday and much of Wednesday stay springlike, with mountain temperatures pushing well into the 50s and even 60s before a sharp battleground sets up Wednesday afternoon and night. Guidance is tightly clustered on the timing of that change, but it still diverges on how much precipitation reaches each mountain and how far south the shallow cold air hangs on. That keeps the first round messy: northern Vermont and the White Mountains have the best shot at sleet or freezing rain early, while farther south and east the warm layer favors more plain rain before colder air sweeps through Thursday. Snow levels during the steadiest precipitation generally sit around 2,000 to 5,000 feet at the southern hills and lower farther north, so most resorts only squeeze out around 1 or 2 inches of dense snow from the backside. SLRs mostly run 5-10, and Thursday also brings a fast firm-up with west gusts commonly near 30 to 40 mph and higher on exposed ridges.

Confidence is strongest from Wednesday afternoon through Saturday night because the guidance agrees on the warm start, the Thursday cooldown, and a colder snow window from Friday afternoon into late Saturday. The Friday-to-Saturday wave is not a lock on exact placement, but the models are better aligned on timing, intensity, and snow levels than they are with the later Sunday-Monday system. Snow levels stay near the deck for this one, so it falls as snow at the open resorts, and snow quality looks better with SLRs mostly in the 10-16 range, from moderate to fairly light rather than cement. The northern Whites, northern Vermont, and Sugarloaf have the best chance to land around 5 inches from this wave alone, while Killington, Sugarbush, Loon, and Sunday River look closer to 3 inches. That should set up the best skiing of the forecast cycle, especially by Saturday morning after the Thursday refreeze.

From late Sunday into Monday, the signal for another storm is real but the details are not settled enough yet for a tight call. Guidance converges on another wetter period reaching the Northeast, then diverges on track, intensity, wind, and especially the amount of warm air aloft. In the colder camp, northern Vermont and the northern Whites cash in with a solid reset; in the warmer camp, southern Vermont and the lower-elevation New Hampshire hills spend more time mixed or rainy before any change back to snow. Snow levels in the spread range from near valley floors to roughly 2,500 or even 4,500 feet at times, and the snow that does fall would likely start dense with SLRs near 5-9 before improving if colder air wins late. The conservative read for now is several inches rather than a blockbuster, with the broader pattern still leaning cooler and at least somewhat active across the Northeast beyond Monday.

Resort Forecast Totals (Thu Mar 12 – Sat Mar 14)

• Bretton Woods – 6″-9″
• Cannon Mountain – 5″-8″
• Sugarloaf – 5″-8″
• Jay Peak – 5″-8″
• Wildcat – 4″-7″
• Loon Mountain – 4″-7″
• Stowe – 4″-7″
• Sunday River – 3″-5″
• Killington – 3″-5″
• Sugarbush – 3″-4″