Hurricane Season Ends, Snow Season in Sight

We had a few inches of snow in the mountains yesterday, with Jay scoring 6" new. But this is no match for the 10 FEET at Kirkwood California this week. In Boston, the low temperature of 28° this morning, Sunday November 28, 2010, is the coldest since 25° on March 27th.

This month has had many disappointing 'inside runners'. An inside runner is a storm that tracks west of The Connecticut River putting us on the warm side of the storm with mild southerly wind and rain. We need some 'outside runners' to build up our winter snow pack. Right now we have 2" at the Stake on Mt.Mansfield Vermont, and 5" at The Stake at Hermit Lake on Mt.Washington New Hampshire.

Thankfully, the temperature has been cold enough for 20 of New England's Ski resorts to open in November. So when is the big snow for all.. how about December 7-11?  The persistent trough West, Ridge Southeast will hold again this week, then changes begin.

  We have weak (998 mb) low pressure in Nevada this Morning with heavy snow in NV and UT. This low is feeding on the 'old cold' that set records from CA to MT this week. That low will track to Lake Superior Wednesday Night as it deepens to 990 millibars and stalls in Ontario by Thursday Morning.

The cold front with that storm will produce severe storms and flooding from Mississippi to Ohio, with heavy rain and warm air into New England Wednesday. Monday and Tuesday are dry and seasonable, Wednesday we get 1"-2" of rain with a southerly Gale over the Ocean, driving the temperature to 50°-60°.

On Wednesday Night a cold front will extend from the Ontario Storm all the way to Florida. This is a deep trough and may send a freeze to Florida Thursday Morning, even as the temperature in Eastern New England is still near 40°. But this trough will get stuck on the East Coast, and for the first time in a Month we will begin a period of wet, and colder than normal weather.

Meanwhile out at sea, the upper low that brought our bit of Saturday Snow is running into a road block (the Strong Greenland Block, also know as Negative North Atlantic Oscillation), and will circle south of Newfoundland, possibly meandering westward. This 'retro-grade' will then allow the new trough arriving on the east coast Thursday, to dig and stall. After that we 'should' beginning the series of 'outside runners' with a series of mostly snowstorms to cross New England. The first snow storm may be one that backs in from the east this weekend.

So by late Sunday, or Monday we may have a back door warm front in Maine with rain in Maine and snow in Massachusetts and Connecticut, similar to that November 8th storm. This merger of deep trough at Sea with New trough from the west will set the stage for Possible full latitude storms running from the Gulf Of Mexico to New England December 7-11, and (hopefully) beyond.

The Hurricane Season Ends Tuesday. With 21 Atlantic Tropical Cyclones, it was an exceptionally busy season, amazingly, not very costly for the United States. Central America took a beating though.  As one last hurrah, the retrograding storm south of Newfoundland may give us a final fall swell to surf by early next week.. just as ski season really takes off!