Winters are warming three times more rapidly than summers in seasonally snow-covered ecosystems like Northern US forests. These changes lead to variable soil water and temperatures from snow melting, and soil freezing without insulative snow can cause root damage. As a result, important root processes that allow forest soils to help fuel tree growth and combat climate change could be impaired during the growing season. Our goals were to test this hypothesis at a winter climate change experiment where we melt snow in forest plots throughout the winter, and to explore how future winter warming could impact how forests respond to climate change by using our data to inform a soil process model. We are measuring new root growth, changes to soil processes, and soil carbon stocks in each melting experiment plot. We found that the model predicts substantial soil carbon losses with hypothesized root responses to snow melt treatments, and we will use our data to ground the model simulations after collecting samples in the fall. This work will help us better understand and predict how changing winters could impact forest soil carbon sequestration.