Going through autumn I was confident about a good enough winter and cautiously optimistic about a good one.
For the central Adirondacks, this certainly has been a good winter. Compared to most of our recent winters, we’ve had little to complain about.
Now, we press into the Back-9 of Winter. We have the requisite deep snowpack to make a run into March.
Let’s take a quick look at what’s happened and play it forward from there!
Review
Second half of January thru first half of February 2026 was an impressive 30-day stretch of dominant cold over eastern USA, which featured 3 BRUTAL Arctic cold waves.
I was highly confident this time frame would be cold, and at times snowy. But it turned out even better than I thought it would. Akin to golf, it’s better to miss an approach shot near the green for an easy chip shot than to plunk the ball out of bounds for a penalty stroke.
With the parade of Arctic blasts, precipitation was on the light side of CLIMO for ilsnow land. But all precipitation was in the form of SNOW for central Adirondacks, which steadily GREW snowpack.
Stepping back, late autumn through bulk of winter has been colder than CLIMO over northeast USA. That was key to maintaining and building good snowpack for snowmobiling in central Adirondacks, despite the hiccups we had in December into early January.
Modeled snow depth estimate is robust in the heart of Adirondacks and some surrounding foothills. Nothing close to record depths, but at least 1-2 FEET region wide & up to 3 FEET or more in the snow bowls.
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Into back end of February
The prevailing weather pattern we had for the heart of winter is DONE. But that doesn’t mean winter is entirely over for ilsnow land.
February 19-24 time frame appears brutally cold into western Canada with cross-polar flow. Western USA should be stormy with snow piling up in multiples of feet in the various mountain ranges.
Weather systems ejected from western USA should tunnel under the block and place ilsnow land in the battle zone between Canadian chill to the north and warm surges from the southwest. Here in the central Adirondacks, we should be just cold enough to mitigate damage and add more bulk to the already deep snowpack.
In these fast-flow zonal patterns, accurately forecasting weather events days in advance become more difficult than usual.
March?
Looking into worldwide sea surface temperature anomaly patterns:
Focusing on Pacific Ocean basin, top 3 analogues are 1974, 1976 and 2011. Composite of the three years yielded the following composite temperature anomaly for March:
THREE STRONG SIGNATURES
- VERY COLD west-central Canada
- UNSEASONABLE WARMTH Deep South USA into Ohio Valley and middle Atlantic regions
- RELATIVE WARMTH Greenland and North Atlantic.
For northeastern USA, strong warmth AND cold may never be far from us in March 2026. This could lead to very active weather with potentially large temperature contrasts and swings.
Blocking over Greenland and North Atlantic becomes key to dropping back door cold fronts from Canada to tap the brakes on warm surges. Otherwise, March becomes a blowtorch sooner, rather than later.
Composite precipitation anomaly for March 1974, 1976 and 2011 show a precipitation-rich signature from Great Lakes region into northeast USA.
December, January and February represents meteorological winter, the three coldest months in North hemisphere’s temperate climate zone.
March is the beginning of meteorological spring. And we fully engage our losing battle against CLIMO.
CLIMO max/min temperature, Indian Lake, NY
- 33*F/9*F – March 1
- 35*F/12*F – March 8
- 38*F/15*F – March 15
- 40*F/18*F – March 22
- 43*F/21*F – March 29
It becomes imperative to have anomalous cold and/or frequent snow events to keep the good times rolling in March, even for ilsnow land.
Bottom line
I don’t expect maxed-out March Madness like we had in 1993, 1994 or 2014. Temperature anomaly composite for those three years as follows:
BUT I see opportunity to keep track spinning in central Adirondacks well into March as long as Greenland/North Atlantic blocking holds up and prevents the scorch-n-torch.
GET OUT AND RIDE! No matter how good this winter has been, mud season will be here sooner than we want.
And #summersucks is only 4 months away!
For the ilsnow nation,
Darrin
