powderfreak

This time of year seems to max out radiational cooling with the low surface moisture. Dry leaf litter under bare trees, absolutely zero evapotranspiration because everything is dormant. Frequent high pressure and low sun angle. This evening locally is classic. Edge of Stowe Country Club station is 39F while just up West Hill is 46F. I’m at 40F north of there. Stowe Hollow has a 52F vs 40F over a half a mile.

You know your climate, plus above normal heights… the mixed layer stays mild for a long time in this regime.

Damn, ha. Those mins are hilarious.

I don’t like hyperbole early on, but I think I would be fairly shocked if the mountains get near normal snowfall this winter on composite super Nino years. Thats not to say it won’t snow, heck 235” on Mansfield is below normal. But it feels like the deck is stacked a bit, especially if it’s a slow start. It takes making up some good ground to catch up for struggles in even Nov/Dec when you need to hit bigger monthly normal totals in Jan/Feb/Mar. Now, for NNE as a whole? The lower climo snowfall areas near population centers can rely more on several good synoptic events to get closer to normal. I think my fear up here is the daily light events struggle if it’s warm, and the 2-6” type stuff that adds up over time creates a good-sized deficit.

72-73 was decent it looks like… rest leaves something to be desired again.

Can’t control it, if it’s bad hopefully it’s dry and mild.

Snowfall and depth not great, though 1997-98 was ok at the summit. Numerous events were just cold enough for elevation snows. It was not good down low. 15-16, disaster, 82-83 disaster.

In terms of snow depth or temps?

Yeah, I’m not either but like you’ve seen, we can fall behind pretty fast and if the bread and butter snows are off, it’s very hard to make it up synoptically. We can’t have Canada be mild and advent in moderated air masses after each low or front. The cold is really the wildcard. And one or two off events just don’t cut it. If two weeks of every month is sort of moderate, it’s enough to keep every month below average snow.

Oh we can absolutely run into a big storm or two, but that’s not going to save a winter in NNE. I mean, I’m a very positive person but can’t spin a couple big storms in a sea of meh as a “not too bad” winter like 2015-16. The biggest problem is the lack of arctic shuts off our main snow divers in NW flow, lake effect, etc. That stuff probably accounts for at least half the mountain snow with synoptic the other half. These maps show how the lack of cold in Canada moving SEward really stunts snowfall in this area back towards the lakes.

ORH getting to 29F is interesting if he stayed 36F.

Yup, and this Nino is doing exactly what is expected. The Super Nino composites for depth on Mansfield are not in any way encouraging, ha. Some bottom barrel seasons.

Latest 1” depth at the Mansfield summit stake since 1954 was 11/9/1985. I feel like we are going to beat that. This super Nino fall going to set the latest 1” snowfall at the Mansfield summit station?

Phenomenal.

It was 10 degrees warmer at 3am than it is now.