In case you forgot, that white stuff outside is called snow. And that feeling in your bones? It’s the cold.
For the most part, winter has been hiding in recent years, but this year — in the last few weeks, at least — it feels like it’s back. Across the region, winter sports recreation areas, from ski mountains to outdoor ice rinks, are among those celebrating.
At Wachusett Mountain, in Westminster, there’s more early-season terrain open than they’ve seen in recent years, according to Chris Stimpson, spokesperson for the resort. “We even had snow on Christmas,” he said. On Wednesday, the mountain had 26 of its 27 trails open, and boasted between 43 and 48 inches of base depth.
It’s not just the freshly fallen stuff that’s helping. Prolonged cold temperatures also mean the mountain has been able to blow manmade snow, technology they have invested in in recent years as winters have trended warmer in the area. “It has to be below 27 degrees and low humidity for us to make snow,” Stimpson said. “And we’ve had a great stretch of days where we were able to cover the whole mountain.”
It has felt like a complete throwback up in Fairlee, Vt., home to the Lake Morey Skate Trail, the longest wild ice skating trail in North America.
The nearly 4.5-mile loop, which travels around Lake Morey, was only able to be opened about three weekends last year.
This year? “We’re probably going to get seven weeks or so,” said town administrator Ryan Lockwood.
For Fairlee, the significance of the skate trail goes beyond a fun recreational activity. “It’s a huge driver for tourism for us. People come up and they eat at our restaurants, shop at our local shops,” said Lockwood. “And it’s a free outdoor activity. You can’t find that very often anymore.”
But the snow and cold didn’t arrive everywhere at the same time. Through mid-January, Linda and Dave Bacon, the long-time owners of Canterbury Farm nordic center in the Berkshires, were looking out at snow-free trails.
“Last winter, we were only open for 30 days, and the year before, it was about the same,” Linda Bacon said earlier this month. “So I’m not too positive about this season.”
Then the snow came. Over the weekend, about a half-foot of the fluffy snow arrived, and by Monday, roughly 70 skiers were out on the trails. Outside, it looked more like the earlier days, when skiers around the region would flock to the farm on the weekends. It felt good, even if it’s fleeting.
“The reality is, and we’re all quite aware of it, that the climate has changed to the point where it rains more often than snows, and winter starts later and finishes earlier,” said Dave Bacon.
After 30 years in business, the Bacons would love to sell Canterbury Farm and pass it on to a new generation of owner-operators. Ideally, they said, some young couple would come take it over. “But if they get into it, they’ve got to realize that it’s not like it used to be,” said Dave Bacon. “It’s very inconsistent.”
That knowledge of the fleeting nature of winter — and the need to enjoy it while it’s here — was top of mind in Fairlee, too. There, as they relish in the full parking lots, the ice fishing huts dotting the lake, and the skaters enjoying laps, Lockwood said they’re taking pleasure in what they’ve got “and not talking about the possibility that it just might be a blip.”
‘Pretty incredible’
Large-scale weather patterns help shape the type of seasons we see here in New England. And right now, we’re experiencing a weak La Niña climate pattern that tends to draw in cooler, below-average temperatures into the region and boosts precipitation a notch. La Niña is the opposite of El Niño, but both are natural climate phenomena thousands of miles away that influence the jet stream position, ultimately impacting the type of weather we see.
“I’m not completely surprised by the type of winter we’ve had. We were not expected to have a similar winter pattern compared to last year due to strong El Niño years” that triggered New England’s warmest winter on record, sending temperatures well above normal, said Donald Dumont, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Gray, Maine. “With that being said, having a prolonged back-to-back below-average monthly temperatures has been very rare. Eight out of the past 10 (New England) winters have been above normal, so it is hard to expect below-average temperatures over the winter months.”
But that’s just what New England has experienced so far this winter: Much colder temps with biting wind chills. Arctic air flowing into the Northeast has plunged New England into several bitter cold snaps in December and January, especially this week, sending temperatures 5 to 15 degree below-average at times. In fact, Wednesday marked the 13th day below average this month (nine days have been above normal).
“It’s been pretty incredible that it has been so cold in the United States lately and it’ll be interesting to see what the January climate stats look like,” said Jared Rennie, a research meteorologist for NOAA.
Large fluctuations will continue to bring pockets of above and below average temperatures to close out January. But as we’ve seen in the past few weeks, temperatures may ultimately continue to trend below average by the end of the month — keeping pace with how December ended.
New England has definitely seen more snow than the past several winters. About a foot-and-a-half of snow has fallen since Dec. 1 in Boston this season compared to about 8 inches by this time last year. Overall, Boston got only 9.8 inches last winter, the city’s fourth-lowest snow total on record, dating back to 1890.
Other factors can also influence the type of winter weather we see. The North Atlantic Oscillation index measures the strength of the pressure difference between systems from Iceland to the Azores in the North Atlantic. These pressure differences give meteorologists clues to where the jet stream will set up and if New England will see colder or warmer air, or an increase in precipitation or not.
“The NAO index has recently been negative since the start of 2025, which favors below-normal temperatures in our region,” said Matthew Belk, a meteorologist at the NWS office in Norton. “Snowfall has been above or below normal in various parts of the region. It’s just having the cold air in place whenever the precipitation events do arrive.”
Even when our winters get colder, climate change is still very much present. It’s important to keep in mind there are peaks and valleys to all weather data sets for a day, season, or year. But if you zoom out, the overall trend shows our planet warming.
But we must also remember that each winter is unique in its own right. And there’s still plenty of winter on the horizon to make up any cold or snowfall deficits from the previous year. Just one weather system can tip the scales in either direction.
Sabrina Shankman can be reached at sabrina.shankman@globe.com. Ken Mahan can be reached at ken.mahan@globe.com. Follow him on Instagram @kenmahantheweatherman.