Weather reports on the radio this morning mentioned a possible storm for next week. This was confirmed by the snow report I received from Snowshoe:

Cloudy skies Monday morning with
snow showers likely in the afternoon. Temperatures on Monday will be
falling throughout the day. Snow on Tuesday with highs in the mid 10's. 5" -
7"
expected on Tuesday. Partly cloudy on Wednesday with highs in the mid
10's.
The cold air returns on Monday and will stick around for the next 10
days.

It is not unusual for the mid-Atlantic (and New York and New England) to get the best skiing conditions of the season in March, even after a warm snowless February. In fact, my recollection is that Canaan Valley got about 60 inches of snow in March last year, providing the best cross country and downhill conditions of the season. The current forecast indicates that we may see a repeat of that this year! Unfortunately, many skiers give up on skiing by the end of February regardless of conditions, and so in past years many resorts closed in March with excellent conditions just because of lack of business. So my plea to all you skiers out there: don't give up yet, and patronize the local resorts if conditions improve in March, they need your business to survive!

Being a bit of a weather nerd, I just wanted to say that it is highly speculative to post accumulation totals this far in advance.

This winter's forecasts have been littered with potential storms 4 or 5 days out in the forecast that didn't appear.

That said, it seems like a pattern of colder weather and some precip is coming our way, and if anyone gets some decent snow, it will probably be Snowshoe.

I agree that 10 inches may be optimistic, but Herb Stevens (www.skiingweatherman.com) just backed up Snowshoe's report with his most recent post:

"By the first of the week, the arctic airmass will have spread into the Plains and Great Lakes, and the boundary will be pressing into western New York. Showers will accompany the passage of the front, and those showers will turn to snow on Monday from Buffalo down to Pittsburgh and on into the central and southern Appalachians. Tuesday and Wednesday will produce some significant lake effect snow in these same areas. "

For those thinking of taking some time off, next week might just be perfect. Snowshoe, 7 Springs, and other local resorts have some great midweek, ski and stay packages!

Like I said, the pattern is setting up. But predicting a snowfall amount at this point is pretty shakey. You might as well use a dart board.

Already this year, there have been 3 storms where they were predicting up to 4-8 inches of snow for Western Fairfax County just 2 days before the expected event. The most we've had has been a little more than an inch. There have been more storms than I can count predicted 4-5 days out that didn't appear at all.

I grew up near Snowshoe. They will probably get some snow. I'm just saying that spouting numbers at this point is premature. They might get an inch, they might get 2 feet. But since one inch of what would be rain if it was above freezing can be anywhere from 8-15 inches of snow, means that a very small change in moisture and other factors can make a very large change in snowfall. None of the various computer models are that good at predicting a storm several days out. And as Herb Stevens also said, the models have been off more than usual this winter.