powderfreak

Interesting little area there in coastal plain of NH/ME of extremely low rainfall. Just unlucky there I guess. Looks like you go half a county north and it's 4-6" on the month of September.

View from a hike today.

No idea but to me, most cameras do not capture fall foliage accurately. They can't figure out the vibrant colors and widely different colors. Everything tends to blend to a muted look. I posted above a comparison of my iPhone's version vs Canon's version. All I know is at the ski area, just like my wife's frustration today, the vast majority of guests visiting and taking photos of the foliage end up taking a bunch of photos and then say "wow, my camera just can't do this justice. It looks so mundane when in real life it is magical."

Speaking of iPhone photos... the above photo was taken with a real camera, Canon 7D Mark II. This bottom photo is the iPhone 6 version of that scene:

I saw PWM had it’s 3rd driest September on record...only missing the record from 1948 by like .13”. Thats crazy, they had under 1/2” of rain the entire month of September...I had no idea it was that dry. We had 4-5” generally in the northern third of VT. Hard to believe PWM downstream couldn’t muster more than like .45”. There were a few heavy West to East rain events but they must’ve gone north of PWM.

I was in Nebraska Notch area of Stowe today and the Lake Mansfield Trout Club....wow that whole area was real vivid. My wife was getting very frustrated that her iPhone 10 couldn’t accurately depict the vivid colors (I was shocked at how bad the color was on her phone photos, lesson learned cell phones not good at showing real life color), but luckily I had my 7D with me as always.

That’s insane. The A/C bills must be through the roof. Turn it on in April and leave the A/C on until Thanksgiving?

Crazy how that 500mb layout is going to give us a couple days of below normal temps at the surface (at least up this way). Pretty colors aloft not translating to the surface.

Yeah it's true. I've never had a foliage season in a decade in Stowe that I felt was "poor" or lackluster. It's always vibrant. I don't know if its the more consistent rains from orographics or the type of tree species and better species diversity compared to the Adirondacks and Whites.... but I never feel like a foliage season isn't working out as expected. There are always high expectations and it seems to happen that way every year.

Color comes before white.

We'll keep trying.

This afternoon... you can see one of the golf holes there at Stowe Mountain Club. Taken in harsh mid-afternoon light but still good color. I think the foliage up here is par for the course, har har har.

Hiking around today, the color is pretty good, IMO. It'll be peak soon but still green scattered around. I think there was the fast change a week ago and now it's like a pause before another wave of color comes? Some green and some trees with full leaf drop too but 75% color.

Bolton Valley is the snowiest small ski area in New England...or I should rephrase that, one of the snowiest ski areas in New England regardless of size. Plenty of powder days, active winter weather, and N.Greens snowpack leads to some great skiing.

The foliage difference between this year and last year is absolutely incredible to me. Last year on this date there was literally nothing... just different shades of green. Facebook reminded me of this photo, September 24, 2018: Compared to this year... its crazy how much variability there is year to year. We are going to peak in like a week this year when last year it was green. And even down below 1,000ft in the valley it's a healthy moderate color.

Ha! I was just coming here to post this link... mostly because I'm pretty sure that's @J.Spin's family in the lead cover photo. Nice work J.

Some shots in mid-day sunshine today. A nice cloudy, dreary day would probably make this color pop. I'd say we are at moderate color. I bet peak is around the first weekend of October...pretty much when it always is on the mountain.

Last light up at the mountain this evening right before the shadows swallow the entire east slope.

Yeah I remember the early years for me on the List-Serve there was a crew that lived up there. Even when we were looking, the prices were extremely reasonable for what they accessed, and the snowfall. Being able to document that and collect data on the location would be such a fun experience, ha. It just snows all winter and you have to be dedicated, but a few good seasons of observations would be amazing to have. And yeah, living in Richmond/Jonesville, the only place to buy anything closed at 8pm and that was a pint-sized Cumberland Farms gas station. On top of that, we got downsloped to death in any synoptic event because the prevailing moist flow in those is usually out of the SE. We downsloped severely off 4,000ft Camels Hump down to 300ft (in a relatively short distance)....with no terrain past us to slow the flow. It was just Champlain Valley flats for the winds to run out into. The one I remember was in February 2010... the storm was sneaking up on us, and it started snowing steadily but just had trouble accumulating. I was driving in for the snow report and woke up to 6" or so I think. Heading out and turning east on RT 2, I remember running into what looked like double digit snowfall passing your area by the underpass with I-89. Twice what I had.

We tried so hard to rent a condo up there right out of college...ended up in Jonesville which was the exact opposite effect. Great location for going to recreation, but bad snow climo. Those homes up at BV are really pretty cheap but man, driving that access road from 300ft to 2,300ft every day would do a number on your vehicle. I'd deal with it in order to live in that weather that 2,000+ feet brings. I bet both places average about the same amount of snow. There might be some slight event to event differences but both spots are literally on the slopes of the Spine so I don't think they'd see a ton of variation from westerly flow or easterly flow. Those precipitation differences to me seem to become more noticeable once you get a few miles out (on either side) from the Spine.

It's coming along and does vary from hillside to hillside. It's still 50% or more green, IMO on the whole. The green has changed to a lighter green and almost yellow-green through, with some red and orange patches starting to show. Here's a view of the early color in the Notch.

Yeah agreed those totals are pretty safe. So many things came together, including temps and ratios to produce those totals. That same pattern in a warmer environment (say March) with dense 8-10:1 ratio snow might have left that as a 60-70” period... vs 100”+. Just an incredible combo of factors.

Every time I see these couple houses up on Spruce at 2,200ft, I think of @cpickett79. What a weenie spot to live...3,600ft hill behind you and an obscene amount of precipitation. Likely one of the most prolific annual QPF spots in the state of Vermont sitting high in the Notch/Mansfield/Spruce area. You never have to worry about it getting dry, as even a really dry pattern here is more water than most spots. If I win the lottery, I'm buying that place and putting an ASOS station up there to see just how low the visibilities are all winter. Probably could put up a +SN ob 5-6 of 7 days a week during the winter. Makes the parking lots at 1,500ft seem like the valley.

See I almost think if it happens again, it could happen in similar fashion. Almost like a standing wave pattern of big bombs that form in the same spot over and over. I feel like we do see those repeated patterns over 4-6 week cycles...say March 2001 was just a series of bombs that favored more interior and NNE, with COOPs in VT seeing up to 80" in that month in 3-4 storms. What 2015 did was one of these repeating patterns but on crystal meth. Plenty of situations I can think of where the same area got smoked with a huge storm in short succession...ALB in 12/25/2002 and then 1/4/2003... BTV had it in December 2003 with 3 crush jobs in a row for 50".... and then say mid-Atlantic in 2009-2010 with just massive bombs in succession. What makes 2015 remarkable though is it took the "stable bomb pattern" and took it to the next level. Plenty of examples I'm pulling up of 2-3 storms in a row over the same areas, but to get 4 to 5 systems over the same area in a month is something I can't think of. 2015 gives us a look at what happens if some of those patterns that produced 2-3 big storms in a row...kept going and dropped another 1-2 biggies on top of it.

Yeah if he had 120+ he probably did beat my backyard, I don’t have the number but it’s in that 110-120” range. Even JSpin had under 150” IIRC. We were pretty much spot on normal snowfall that winter I think or even a couple inches below.... say normal here is ~120 and JSpin ~150. Which goes back to your earlier point...getting normal snow when others get record snow certainly plays into our heads of the overall vibe of a given winter. And also it is crazy how close Scooter probably was to 150” if a couple of those late bloomers clipped him with a foot or something. What an insane winter. And it really took until Jan 20th to get started too.