All manner of people come out during and just after a big snowstorm to play in it, but if you ask most people what they think of winter, they’ll say they hate it or wish they could get away from it. I’m sure even dedicated skiers dislike the mundane winter tedium of clearing snow, wet boots, cold cars, walking dogs, and the many hindrances to ordinary movement that winter and snow create. All the more reason to feel a bit of personal freedom by gliding along through the transformed landscape.

Check out nearby parks, trails, and golf courses as places to ski. The XC trails placemap lists a few.

This post is about conditions for Jan. 27 2026, and forecast for the next few days. 24- and 48-hour snowfall graphics just below. See jump links to Conditions and Forecast for more info.

The storm continued to deliver snow to the interior and eastern Massachusetts into Monday, resulting in 18+” accumulation in the Boston area. Central Park in New York recorded just short of 12″ total, with a few inches composed of sleet. Had it been snow, the total could easily have been 14 inches.

How’s the skiing in general?

The opposite of ‘ice’ is ‘powder’. And there’s so much of it that for a day or two XC skiers will have to be OK with skiing through soft snow that: a) isn’t firm enough for skate-skiing; b) may call for wider skis than you might nrormally use or have; c) requires an adjust ment of techniques. Several touring centers are saying trails are soft, and some are holding off setting tracks. So emjoy some old-fashioned ungroomed ski-touring for now- in a couple of days the trails will be consolidated enough to feel familiar.

Most of the snow was light and fluffy ‘dendritic’ snow, great for classic wax, useless for snowballs. Along the coast sleet and freezing rain made for a bit of a crust, but the intense cold has kept it from consolidating into ice. The volume of snow has makes for a lot of work to plow and pack trails, but this is a better problem than lots of freezing rain as happened in the south, or wet snow becoming slush, which is what the northeast gets all too often.

BETA report of 1/26 states every backcountry route is skiable, and should be great through the next several days. Soft and slow until trails are broken out.

Hit up ‘State of the touring centers‘ or in the menu above for reported conditions as of today. Snow depth graphic below snows a huge swath of territory east of Lake Ontario (maybe 95%?) with 10 or more inches of snow.

Forecast

Essentially unchanged from yesterday’s post It was a big one. Refinements include:

• Continued lake effect snow for upstate NY and Tug Hill through much of the week Northern New England can also expect some snow showers oer the next coupld of days.
• Breezy today (Tuesday), so even the relatively light gusts of 20mphn will feel pretty brutal given the cold. Slightly milder wind levels will persist till till Friday, when gusts will pick up in the downstate NY/NJ and southern New England portions.
• The weekend will turn warmer, but winds will kick up some more as well. By Sunday the mid-Atlantic area and southern New England areas will ahve gusts of 25+ or possibly 30+mph.
• There is potential for a relatiely weak (in terms of moisture) system off the coast mixing it up with a cold front out of the midwest over the weekend. Currently the thought is that any storm will be a near-miss for the NYC metro, and have glancing impact on Boston and New England. Accurate track prediction is impossible this far out, so stay tuned.

Daytime temperatures:

Date	Northern NY VT NH mtns	Northern lowlands	Hudson Highlands to NYC metro
Tu 1/27	Below zero to single digits	Teens	Teens to low 20s
We 1/28	Below zero to single digits	Teens to low 20s	Low 20s
Th 1/29	Below zero to single digits	Teens	Teens to low 20s
Fr 1/30	Below zero	Single digits to teens	Teens
Sa 1/31	Single digits to teens	Teens to mid 20s	Teens to mid 20s
Su 2/1	Single digits to teens	Teens to mid 20s	Mid to upper 20
Mo 2/2	Single digits to teens	20s	Upper 20s to low 30s

(temps expressed in ˚F)