This Friday’s powder alert will be for the Northern VT, which already started receiving snow yesterday continuing into today, and the Pacific NW starting on Sunday.  The Pacific NW will have implications for a larger portion of the U.S. next week.

Much of the Northeast picked up snow yesterday from the Catskills to the Adirondacks over to the Green and White Mountains.  On average the resorts picked up 4-7 inches as of last evening’s snow report.  There is a second low pressure packed with wind, cold, and more snow moving up through New York today.  The track of the storm will bring the heaviest snow to the Adirondacks and the Western slopes of the Green Mountains in Northern VT near Stowe.

Here is the total precip forecast for today’s storm from the GFS forecast model.  Ignore Maine because that is from the tail end of the departing storm last night.

You can see that 3-6 inches will fall in the dark blue over much of VT with 6-9 inches clipping the NW corner near Stowe.  Lingering snow showers into Saturday morning could add a couple more inches in the Northern mountains.

Now let’s get into some bigger snow.  I thought we should start with a quote from the National Weather Service office in Seattle regarding the storms coming next week:  “THESE STORMS WILL SPREAD SIGNIFICANT SNOW ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS RAISING THE POTENTIAL FOR AVALANCHES AND PERIODS OF DIFFICULT TRAVEL ACROSS THE PASSES.”  We haven’t heard language like that since last season, and this isn’t a bad looking forecast from the NWS for Mt. Baker over the holiday weekend.

The snow will begin to fall in Washington with a cold front moving in from the North on Friday night into Saturday and moisture beginning to flow in off the Pacific.  Snow levels will be down near sea level so we could even see snow down into Seattle.  This first wave of snow will not be that much but with the cold temps places like Mt. Baker could easily see over a foot.  Then the moist flow will continue into Monday & Tuesday bringing several more inches of snow.  Amounts down into Oregon will be less to start with several inches possible.

Then by Tuesday night the first strong wave moves in and lasts through Thursday with another moving in on Thursday and lasting into Saturday.  These storms should affect the Washington, Oregon, & Northern CA mountains and resorts equally with significant snowfall measured in feet.  Here is the total precipitation forecast from a blend of the models through Saturday the 21st from wxmaps.org.

This forecast would be at least 5-6 feet of snow for Mt. Baker, Hood, Bachelor, & Shasta.  Tahoe should pick up snow but it is right on the Southern edge so it is still not clear if it’s several inches or several feet down there.  You can see that the snow also progresses East into Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming bringing several feet to those areas as well the second half of next week.  Northern Utah is on the Southern edge like Tahoe so it is still not clear if it’s inches or feet there as well.

We normally only look out a week on the Friday powder alert, and the forecast models can change a lot beyond a week out, but the pattern could be favorable for the storms to continue into the second week.  Here is the total precipitation forecast from the European model through Saturday the 28th.

Obviously that is off the chart in black meaning greater than 10 inches of liquid or over 100 iches of snow through the 2 week period in Oregon.  Stay tune as we will be updating the forecast as the new model runs come in next week and we should have a better idea of the exact details.  BA