Name: Early snow possible in high elevations of Northeast and Adirondacks
Uploaded: 2025-11-01T21:25:55.012Z
Duration: 6 min 18 s
Description: Forecasts indicate a chance of early season snow in the highest elevations of the Northeast, including the Adirondacks, Green Mountains, and White Mountains, following record rainfall in the region. Most lower elevations will remain unaffected, with snow limited to areas above 2,000 feet.

Forecasts indicate a chance of early season snow in the highest elevations of the Northeast, including the Adirondacks, Green Mountains, and White Mountains, following record rainfall in the region. Most lower elevations will remain unaffected, with snow limited to areas above 2,000 feet.

Meteorologists are forecasting the potential for early season snow in the highest elevations of the Northeast United States, particularly in the Adirondacks, Green Mountains, and White Mountains. This follows record daily rainfall on October 30 in parts of New York City and surrounding areas, with precipitation now shifting to colder conditions and higher altitudes.

Snowfall is expected to be light and limited to regions above 2,000 feet, with some model forecasts suggesting up to three to five inches atop the highest peaks. Most cities and communities at lower elevations will not see snow, and the window for snowfall is expected to be brief, exiting by Saturday afternoon.

Early snow possible in high elevations of Northeast and Adirondacks

In tonight's forecast feed, we do want to take a look at the potential for just a small crowd in the New England states and the Adirondacks who may see just a little hint of some early November snow or end of October snow here. You know, it was a few years ago that we had a little bit of a blitz of some light snow on Halloween night into early November 1st in parts of the Great Lakes and into the Northeast. And we may see something kind of similar this time around. This however will only impact the highest elevation. So here as we take a look at the big picture, here's our forecast map for tonight into early Saturday. And the storm system that's been cruising through the region has been bringing some soaking rain. We saw record daily rainfall, wettest October 30th in the books, on October 30th in parts of New York City at Central Park to areas like LaGuardia, Newark, places like Williamsport PA broke records for rainfall specific to the October 30th time frame. Now it's colder and most of the precipitation is out of here. You'll notice that the rain generally is restricted to areas near and west of the spine of the mountains. So the anatomy of the Northeast here with the highest elevations, generally the highest elevations here kind of separate those who see upsloping versus downsloping. Because on the west side of the mountains, the flow comes and actually increases it. It ascends from the elevation of the Great Lakes a few or several hundred feet above sea level up to the high elevations, around 3 or 4,000 feet, some of the high peaks of the Adirondacks. So it's pretty good lift. Once you get east of the spine of the mountains though, the atmosphere dries out. So that's why we tend to see brighter skies behind a cold front in Harrisburg, Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, DC. These areas, again, dry descending air is going to carve away any chance for precipitation. So you can see we are including a little bit of blue on the map here. In fact, we had a little bit of a dusting of snow in parts of eastern West Virginia this Friday morning, this Halloween morning. The Adirondacks, the Green Mountains, the White Mountains, you're going to see a little bit of light snow into Saturday morning, snow showers. You notice that we are kind of being a little more restrictive with the true snow where we're unabashedly just calling it snow as opposed to snow showers, mainly north of the St. Lawrence Seaway. So let's look at some models and overall here we have a big dip in the jet stream and that pouch of colder air upstairs. We'll focus this in on maybe the late night hours here, the late evening into the early part of the overnight. This big low pressure system aloft, that's where we find some colder air upstairs. And it's a puddle of cold air, again, cold enough to support some snow. So how high up do we need to go? Not necessarily above ground level, but how high up do we need to go above sea level to find anything that's cold enough for snow? By the way, this exits pretty swiftly here on Saturday afternoon. So the narrow window of opportunity for snow in some of these high elevations is limited. And again, this is not like a winter storm. This is not a snowplow situation except for maybe a few spots above 3,000 feet, way up above most of the towns and communities. So this is kind of a trivial point. But again, this time of the year, I think there's always a bit of interest here in the first flakes for some. You can see as we get deeper into the evening, that principle of generally precipitation being restricted to areas west of the eastern continental divide being true. Where we're not going to see any rain in areas near Harrisburg or even in Scranton tonight or into areas near Poughkeepsie. But you need to be up to the northwest, up into areas near Warren, PA or Bradford, PA or up into areas near Oswego, New York, maybe into areas around Watertown. The west side of the mountains, closer to the Great Lakes, and then certainly the west slopes of Vermont and New Hampshire's mountains, that's where you're going to see some activity. You'll begin to notice that we do see that blue line here. This is the 540 thickness line, an old-fashioned rule of thumb in the world of meteorology. When the atmosphere is colder, and the 540 thickness line in decameters is basically the thickness of the atmosphere between one level of pressure and another level of pressure. When it gets constricted, that's a sign of colder air. When it expands, it's warmer air. When that blue line steps into your neighborhood, maybe begin to think about some snow falling if you are approximately near sea level. If you're above sea level by a big margin, you might get a little snow even when the blue line is to your north. You'll notice a limited amount of precipitation on the back side of this, north of the blue line. That's when you get into these snow showers here into Saturday, Saturday night in some areas. Now, this map here shows the freezing level in feet above sea level. As we get into this evening and tonight, when you get into the yellows, that's around 2,000 to 3,000 feet. In fact, 2,000 feet above sea level is where you're going to have the freezing line. Most cities and communities in the Northeast are above or below 2,000 feet elevation, but if you're above 2,000 feet, you got the chance of seeing a few snowflakes out there later on tonight. A quick look here at our forecast. These are a couple of model forecasts here for snowfall amounts. Now, again, we can't take these too literally. Models don't do really, really, really well with snowfall forecasting on a hyperlocal scale, partly because of the resolution of the models and the localized variation far smaller in resolution in the real world. But here's the GFS model, and you can see some of those little purples up there in the high peaks of the Adirondacks, a hint that maybe, maybe, maybe atop Whiteface Mountain, there could be three, four, five inches of snow just up at the top, not at the parking lot. It varies so much. And some areas with more than two inches of snow, up where there are a few actual roads there, maybe a few of the passes through the Adirondack Mountains. That's one model depiction. Here's another one. This is the NAMM. Here you can see some actual communities where in the highest elevations of the Green Mountains, the White Mountains, there's potential for three inches of snow up there. And then something kind of similar with the European model. So it is that time of the year where at least we can begin to think just a little bit about some high elevation snowflakes.

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