Snow Prediction Addiction! Part 1 (winter weather resources for those who love snow)

If you're like me and you love playing in the snow, you probably search the internet looking for any sign, any glimpse, that the next big storm is just around the corner. Well, I'm here to share my favorite sites for my snow prediction addiction.

1. National Weather Service Hydrometeorological Prediction Center - Probabilistic Winter Precipitation Guidance - What a mouthful! But this is MY FAVORITE, I mean it's from NOAA for goodness sakes. What I love about this is the fact that it shows the probabilities of certain amounts of snow over specific time frames. It's just three days out, but that's all I really trust anyway. It is also very graphic yet the view is customizable by the user

Screenshot from the HPC Probabilistic Winter Precipitation Guidance by the National Weather Service. A simple, intuitive, and most importantly informative site.

2. Snow-Forecast.com - This is another site where you are able to view the amount of predicted snowfall over a certain time frame. This site let's you view the snowfall for a six hour period and also shows where it is expected to rain. Having this info in one graphic can help decide whether your location will get white or wet. Another great feature of this site is the fact that you can go seven days out. Here's the link to the Northeast map.

I like that this map displays shorter segments of time and shows rain and snow on one map. It also looks ahead seven days, which can be helpful when planning a ski trip.

3. Intellicast Ski & Snow - The intellicast maps are static, but you can look at a 24 hour forecast and 48 hour forecast along with predicted amount. I love the fact that you can also look at snow cover, which will give you an idea of whether you'll be skiing dust on crust, pow on mow, or slush on mush. You can also get very location specific with cities throughout the country. Intellicast also has other travel weather information that may be helpful in planning a trip.

This is from the 48-hour snowfall forecast with the region centered around Rutland, Vermont. Intellicast provides nice maps for your area. (Damn you Jay Peak, you always grab a piece of those Canadian Clippers!)

4. The Single Chair Weather Blog by Joshua Fox (Vermont Only) - This dude doesn't have any fancy maps or graphs. He's the appointed weather guru for Mad River Glen. As MRG's terrain is almost entirely on natural snow, and the terrain there is excellent, weather prediction is taken seriously there. And Josh knows his stuff. Sugarbush and MRG have unique weather, but it gives a good idea about weather throughout the northern spine of the Green Mountains. Plus, I love his "favoribility index" which gives us his rough idea of how bright (or white) the future is looking. He monitors Arctic Oscillation (AO), the Pacific-North American Oscillation (PNA) and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) among other things.

Usually updated a few times per week, once the season get's going, Joshua Fox's Single Chair Weather Blog gives detailed and interesting long and short term forecasts for Mad River Glen.

Okay, that's all for tonight. More to come!