Snow-Forecast Outlook – National Roundup (Yeehaw!)

(11/09/2008) - Well the US snow season is getting off to a good start…I am already seeing some reports of resorts starting to open across the country...hell some of them are reporting that they are starting operations earlier this year than they ever have before. Here check out this link from one of the other Fuel.tv bloggers…

FiveSpot: Snowboard Season Has Started!

Anyway on to the forecast.

Right now we have a couple of storms/cold fronts pushing across the US…in particular there are two areas of severe weather, one over the Northwest US and the other holding over the Northeast, that are showing some potential for snowfall. Check out the weather.fox.com HiDef radar…you can see that the storm in the Northeast is cropping up activity in areas that traditionally get some lake effect weather.



Over in the Northwest we have a good sized low-pressure moving out of the Gulf of Alaska and over the US mainland…stretching the bad weather from the Pacific NW out to the Rockies.

What makes this storm even more interesting is there is a warmer mid-latitude low-pressure starting to interact from the Southwest that is helping to add some energy into the colder storm in the north. This dumps in a lot of extra instability in the atmosphere as the two lows merge…instability is good because it means more winds, more moisture, and more potential snowfall.

What this means for us shredding…

Right now neither system looks like it will dump a ton of snow, probably around an inch in both regions (naturally the higher mountains and areas that help concentrate snowfall will see a bit more). But the mix of stormy weather, cold air temps, and already increasing base depths will definitely enhance snow-making capabilities of the affected resorts.

Long-range Forecast

Right now it looks like the low affecting the Northwest will move off the rockies and push over the great lakes and start to lose some of its energy. Not much is expected from that system as it pushes further up into Canada later this week.

The next potential snowmaking system moves in around midweek…this will be another storm moving out of the Gulf of Alaska and pushing over the Pacific NW. Most of its energy is going to be focused on Washington (the State) and some of Northern Oregon as well as British Columbia.

The center of the storm will track across Canada but we can expect the lower latitude portions of the cold front to pass over most of the northern US states potentially brining another inch+ of snow for the high mountain areas in those regions as we head into the second part of the week.

The forecast breakdown

So while we aren’t seeing any storms completely dumping anywhere in the US anytime soon we are seeing enough activity that we can continue to build on the layers that have been laid down over the last couple of weeks. Keep your fingers crossed that ol’ mother nature can keep up the pace.