Our previous update for Halloween seems to be holding strong, but I've got a bit more detail to help everyone dial in their evening plans. I will also add an update about storm and cold potential in next week but let me cut to the chase and state that modeling has lost the storm that was looking promising a week out and we're likely looking further out for cold and some big dumps.

We are going to keep our updates free to the public until they become actionable, i.e. when you can ride the lifts.

Halloween Evening Weather

We have a storm tracking up the Mid Atlantic Appalachians today with r@!n reaching Southwest PA before midnight and spreading across much of the Northeast by the end of Thursday. This storm is slow moving and it will jump to the coast and then cut northeast across parts of New England during Friday.

By 4PM on Halloween we're looking at r@!n mostly north of the Mohawk Valley in NY, and on the upslope into VT and Northern Whites. Here's a loop of 4PM to 8PM from the NAM3K.

There is a lot of chilly air and just enough to produce snow in parts of the ADK's, Greens, Whites, and even the Longfellows that should move lower in altitude through the night. Titus and possibly some others could be in the 4"-6" range and possibly more before it tapers off late on Friday. It's our best blast yet, but we desperately need more. No snowmaking is expected for probably at least another week.

Temps across the region will be chilly for trick or treaters I'm afraid, with only the coastal areas staying above 50F early in the evening. Here's a loop of the temperatures across the region for the same timeframe.

That chill is going to be exasperated by the wind unfortunately, and it's going to get quite spicy in parts of PA, NY, and Southern New England especially.

The weather is definitely something to consider. Blow up decorations with 40mph gusts are probably a bad idea, and so would be flowy and blow up costumes for the kids. Wind chills are going to be widely in the 30's in the flatter lands also.

It's likely going to be an early and quick night and you will probably need generally a good bit less candy than in an average year. My own plan is to just let the kids take more so that I am not forced to eat the leftovers. Don't get me wrong, I love candy but my snow pants don't.

Snowmaking and Storm Potential

As I indicated in the opening, that storm that was showing promise a week out has taken a turn for the worse in both deterministic and ensemble modeling. Worse meaning not likely to happen from our perspective. That digging trough that we saw yesterday:

...has become disconnected from the southern energy and flattened out. I call this a "missed connection" and it's the most common way that a storm a week out becomes nothing:

Hope is not totally lost as sometimes we see a new wave pop up that that could capture that energy but there's virtually no support for that now.

The morning of Friday November 7th we might see some snowguns start to light up but it won't be very productive as we will be barely in the cold based on current modeling. We really needed that storm to pull a trough and cold air further south.

While the GFS is teasing another coastal storm around the 10th with notable cold behind it, that's definitely fantasy range forecasting and there's no support in the ECMWF for that as yet.

I am seeing some improvements in the 'Screaming Pacific Jet Stream' that we want to see become more wavy and hit the West Coast a bit more slowly. This shows the Jet Stream winds next Wednesday morning for instance.

I'm not ready to call the Screaming Jet threat over, but this is good to see. We have issues getting lasting cold hits and deep cold hits when it is straighter and faster, and when I call it the "kiss of death" for Northeast winter weather when it screams, I'm not overstating that. It's a bad pattern to see, especially at the start of the season when we tend to be too warm for snowmaking more than half the nights.

Right now I don't see an opportunity for opening before November 10th. It's going to be a late start I'm afraid.

-- Matthew Scott

POWDER TO THE PEOPLE!