I took my snow tires off on Wednesday. You all can thank me later.
I've been watching what looked like a disorganized wet mess in the modeling coming at us for this weekend since last Friday, and it's starting to look more organized and pretty promising whether it means snow or at least dry conditions. I didn't want to put out any guidance on Wednesday because all it would have basically said is that it could be snow and it could be r@!n, and that wouldn't really have helped anyone, but as of the 0z run this morning models have swung into better agreement and things went the way I was leaning and of course hoping for, which is very likely a snowier and far less wet solution. After a string of countless difficult weekends, this one may turn out to be one of the best in weeks following a pretty sizeable dump up north that will be topped off by two systems with a more southern focus in the next two days!
How much snow is possible across all three days? It probably will top off somewhere around 10" on Friday and Saturday at single locations, but that won't likely be seen that broadly. I'm wondering if I put my snow tires back on and then take them off again to achieve an even better outcome?
I'm going to show the ECMWF for the broad view covering the 5PM Thursday through 5PM Sunday timeframe as this is both the more conservative of the top two medium range models and I happen to think it is most likely to be correct.
I'm going to break this up into the Friday Outlook, and then the Saturday and Sunday Outlook as this is really two different yet connected systems. Also keep in mind who is open this week:
I should note that Holimont in Western New York which is not on the map but located next to Holiday Valley is open through Sunday and tickets are available to the general public. Belleayre and Snow Ridge will be open just Saturday, and I believe everyone else shown in yellow on the map will be open at least Friday through Sunday with the exception of Sutton which is only open Saturday and Sunday only. Still plenty of great choices and this will be a fantastic weekend pretty much everywhere.
