October has arrived and we’re keeping our eyes on the cold, though it’s going to be hard to come by for a while. There’s not much excitement in this week’s long term views, as I don’t see much in the way of any cold in the next two weeks. Frosts are going to be late this year, possibly record late dates given the current forecast.
As we saw last fall as well, an active tropical pattern is not conducive for cold intrusions. Models have notoriously over-amplified early season cold in the 5-7 day range while tropical systems are still moving and grooving in the Atlantic. This is still an apparent bias, as initially it looked as though 850mb temperatures were going to drop below 0C at some point in the Thursday-Sunday time frame, and we’ve done a complete 180 on that as we approached the 1-3 day range.
Tropical activity stays active through mid-October, therefore I don’t have much good news to spread in terms of early season opportunities for snowmaking, or even much testing.
I’ll continue to post a look at the week ahead on Monday’s and long term views on Friday’s until things start getting interesting. Then we’ll certainly kick up the frequency.