alex

I've gotta add, many times I have been surprised by the conditions in a "bad stretch." Good grooming can turn an icy trail into a really fun skiing day. I'm actually looking forward to the warmup - nicely groomed trails with 30s and 40s daytime high can be a treat in January!

Merry Christmas! Just started flurrying as we opened presents. How festive! :p

Definitely a net loss here but at least it's still white. 4" at the stake

Never mind. Lasted 4 seconds

Snowing

Flooded. Just moved everyone’s cars and made my way back through 2 feet of icy water. So fun… amazingly the renters all thought it was the coolest thing lol

I thought once the front came through we were going to plummet? Dropped 10 degrees in minutes but now it’s ever so slightly going up. Weeeeeeeird

Just went to check the river - it’s incredible to see. There is still 5” of snow in most spots but in between there are just 4-5” of slushy water. If that freezes before getting absorbed talk about a bullet proof base lol. Assume the cold front went through since this is my pws:

Down to 43 and sleet. Wtf

It’s interesting how localized my flood threat is. The Ammo starts just a few miles from my house (it comes out of Lakes of the Clouds), so what it does is really dependent on just the few miles between my house and the top of Mt Washington. So far so good, but keeping an eye on it. 44F, pack down to 7”. Would be nice to keep a few just for looks lol

Glad we got a new plow truck (Ram 2500). Tried with the F150 yet and 5” of water logged snow was just no match for it. Eeek.

That’s a bit surprising. It’s windy here but doesn’t seem anything exceptional so far

Festive

Wind really picked up here, lights flickering. Generator kicked in for a minute but power came back quickly. For now. Temp up to 38 with a mix of rain/snow. Looks like rain flout when you see it on the windows you can sss there is frozen stuff mixed in. Hopefully that will help reduce the flooding risk. My anxiety over flooding is high!

Over the rain. A little over 4” of new snow overnight

Still snow here, and quite a bit of it

Snow has started, game on. For once, really hope for some severe downsloping that limits the flood thread. We’ll see what tomorrow brings

Wind has picked up here. Some severe damage to the snow covering some the tallest trees, which I witnessed being shaken off. Gonna be a long 24 hours...

Yes I hope you’re right. I looked at 2 years ago, when we had a close call, and we had much more snowpack to begin with, 2 full days above freezing with several hours at about 60F, and about 2” of rain. Either way, it’s good to be prepared! in the meantime, amazing skiing today. The ungroomed natural terrain is just amazing right now. The resorts will suffer but with the cold temperatures they’ll get back quickly. Groom those suckers a couple of times, make some snow and voila, everyone is happy. speaking of which - yesterday some of the newer guns were set on this very fine mist - almost like vapor. It didn’t seem like they were doing anything but the trail underneath them was like fresh soft powder. I was pretty amazed. back to skiing (typing from the gondola lol)

Interesting - thanks for sharing. Most of our evergreens (balsam fir and red spruce) up here are pretty short so maybe less prone to damage, plus our location gets some pretty nasty winds pretty regularly but will be interesting to see. More worried about the potential for flooding than wind damage, but that’s very IMBY

Yes we do!

Are 60-70 mph gusts that big of a deal with bare trees? I feel like we get that a few times every year without much consequences - but I could be completely wrong (and the fact that so many are focusing on winds probably tell me that I AM wrong)

That’s where good resorts like Bretton Woods shine. Give them 2 rounds of grooming and that ice will be turned to a fast packed powder that’s really fun to ski on.

I'd like to think that, but the AFD was pretty gruesome. My biggest concern of course is flooding... but would also like to salvage some snowpack if we can. I don't even particularly care much for me - we see plenty of snow (it's STILL snowing today, after all) and even my kids don't care that much since they're so used to it, but it's so sad for people who come up for Xmas break and it's their one ski trip a year. Also, I'm in a really bad spot for retention in cutters. I think the only way we don't downslope is on West or North winds; we are otherwise surrounded by 5000 ft+ peaks. The mountains giveth, the mountains taketh

Pretty nasty snow squall coming through