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NNE Heart of Winter


Allenson

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I don't think I'd call this diamond dust but were getting some clear sky flurries right now near CON

I just went and checked and im getting it too.

Suns out so that'll limit accumulations.

What causes this? Low level moisture and cold temps would be my guess.

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I don't think I'd call this diamond dust but were getting some clear sky flurries right now near CON

You're very knowledgable at this stuff, so I gotta ask... how do you tell the difference? I just sort of always assumed when its very cold and skies are clear, if there's light flakes falling its basically diamond dust. I know what you're saying though... there's sometimes a difference in the flake size and structure that makes you think dust vs. flurries? We often get "clear sky flurries" towards the tail end of an upslope event when its dried out enough at H85-H7 that there just isn't anything left to form a cloud, but it seems to be snowing out of blue skies. Those particulates are larger and still look like snow flakes.

This is from a couple weeks ago but this is diamond dust, no? The stuff you can really only see when the sun hits it just right... incredibly small ice crystals just hanging in the air.

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You're very knowledgable at this stuff, so I gotta ask... how do you tell the difference? I just sort of always assumed when its very cold and skies are clear, if there's light flakes falling its basically diamond dust. I know what you're saying though... there's sometimes a difference in the flake size and structure that makes you think dust vs. flurries? We often get "clear sky flurries" towards the tail end of an upslope event when its dried out enough at H85-H7 that there just isn't anything left to form a cloud, but it seems to be snowing out of blue skies. Those particulates are larger and still look like snow flakes.

This is from a couple weeks ago but this is diamond dust, no? The stuff you can really only see when the sun hits it just right... incredibly small ice crystals just hanging in the air.

That is one cool shot. One day in Jan 94 at -10 or so we had diamond dust for hours and hours out of cobalt blue skies. Just love that.

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Sweet day in northern VT... bluebird.

From town...

Then 3,000ft above town...

The mixed bag and freezing rain the other night really made conditions take a turn for the worse. Quite icy out there though the groomers weren't too bad. Ungroomed terrain is pretty rugged and the woods are filled with a thick breakable crust.

Check out the thickness of this crust... its not going anywhere for a while. We'll be dealing with this for some time.

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Sweet day in northern VT... bluebird.

From town...

Then 3,000ft above town...

The mixed bag and freezing rain the other night really made conditions take a turn for the worse. Quite icy out there though the groomers weren't too bad. Ungroomed terrain is pretty rugged and the woods are filled with a thick breakable crust.

Check out the thickness of this crust... its not going anywhere for a while. We'll be dealing with this for some time.

I was out at Burke today. Most of the terrain SUCKED. 15-20F all afternoon with ice everywhere. They were blowing snow on main trails and some spots were decent, but overall it was a day where if you weren't a great skiier, it was quite tough.

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^ Damn dude. 3" here (still snowing though) and I'm psyched. Lovely, fluffy fresh snow, ba-da-boom.

Yeah I'm still in disbelief... I really want to see a radar image from last night to see where this came from.

When I looked outside and saw the cars in the parking lot I knew it was a good amount of snow but was thinking 3" not 5.5".

I'll post pics when I get home but there's no doubt that we got a solid 5-6" in Stowe last night, pretty uniform from the town up here to the base of the mountain.

Smuggs on the otherside of the notch is also reporting 6" of new snow this morning... something happened up here last night that must've focused some banding or something because this was not really orographic in nature until that last band moved through this morning.

The drive in this morning would've made me think we were in a major winter storm with 6" on everything, snowing heavily in that 30-35dbz band, and full white out every time the wind blew. You could tell the plows were caught off guard as there was a solid 5-6" unplowed clogging RT 108 and even the contractors weren't out clearing the hotels and lodges.

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3.7" inches of fluff overnight.

Wow...I'm curious as to what the CoCoRAHS guy in the Lower Village reports. Everyone coming in this morning is giving me crap because I said 1-2" and they all looked out at their cars and had the same "wow" reaction I did this morning.

Our mutual friend said probably 5-6" in Waterbury Center.

Looks like a widespread 3-6" in the Greens last night based on reports so far.

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We had around three inches last night. The measuring was made difficult by the wind. It is never a good sign for accuracy when we end up with as much snow on the back door step as we did because it is protected by a sizeable overhang. Before I went to bed though we had more new snow on the back step then on the cars which is usually a sure sign the wind is blowing things around.

Still fluffy enough that the broom worked wonders.

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Yeah I'm still in disbelief... I really want to see a radar image from last night to see where this came from.

I was up working last night PF so I did a midnight analysis and put it in the observations thread – from midnight to 1:00 A.M. we did pick up 1.2 inches at our location though, so it was really coming down during that stretch. Unfortunately I didn’t grab any radar shots, but I’ve reposted my observations here for reference since it can be tough to wade through the whole observations thread for NNE observations. My first observations were from Trapps yesterday evening, and it seemed like the snowfall was really starting to take off there:

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We were visiting some friends at Trapps (~1,300’) this evening, and when we headed outside around 7:00 P.M. to go to the pool, it seemed like it had just started snowing. About an hour later when we went back out we encountered steady snowfall – it seemed rather intense, but flakes were small and it still probably qualified as light snow. I'd say they had a few tenths of an inch of fresh snow down at that point. Here at the house (~500') as of ~9:00 P.M. there’s 0.2” of new snow on the snowboard.

-----------------

Event totals: 2.2” Snow/0.09” L.E.

I was up, so I did a midnight analysis on the snow received at this location up to this point. I initially wrote down the sky observations as light/moderate snow just based on local visual inspection and assessing the snow accumulation on my arm out the door, but it was obvious that the snowfall intensity was more than that once I got out in it. Unlike earlier in the evening, there are now some >1 cm diameter flakes falling, and that is supporting more rapid accumulation. I decided to call the snowfall moderate, although it could be borderline heavy, since as of ~12:30 A.M. there was already another 0.4” on the snowboard.

Some details from the 12:00 A.M. Waterbury observations are below:

New Snow: 2.2 inches

New Liquid: 0.09 inches

Snow/Water Ratio: 24.4

Snow Density: 4.1% H2O

Temperature: 22.5 F

Sky: Moderate Snow (2-12 mm flakes)

Snow at the stake: 9.5 inches

----------------

Event totals: 3.6” Snow/0.13” L.E.

The snowfall dried out a bit more overnight, and even after this latest round sat on the board for a while until morning observations, it still came in under 3% H2O with a 35 to 1 ratio. There’s still a little bit of light snow/flurry action going on, so I’ll report later today if there’s anything to add to the storm total.

Below I’ve added the north to south list of storm totals from the Vermont ski areas that have reported in up to this point; it looks like there was a peak in accumulations in the Bolton through Smugg’s stretch where totals pushed past the half foot mark. Totals fell off somewhat to the north and south of there, with another peak in snow totals in the southern part of the state:

Jay Peak: 4”

Burke: 3”

Smuggler’s Notch: 6”

Stowe: 7”

Bolton Valley: 6”

Mad River Glen: 3”

Sugarbush: 2”

Pico: 3”

Killington: 3”

Okemo: 5”

Bromley: 4”

Stratton: 5”

Mount Snow: 5”

Some details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations are below:

New Snow: 1.4 inches

New Liquid: 0.04 inches

Snow/Water Ratio: 35.0

Snow Density: 2.9% H2O

Temperature: 22.5 F

Sky: Light Snow/Flurries (1-3 mm flakes)

Snow at the stake: 10.0 inches

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