J.Spin

I saw this post the other day but forgot to respond. During the winter, I typically report whatever my thermometer says in the notes section of my morning CoCoRaHS observations, and I’ll include the temperature when I report on snow accumulations here, but that’s about it – I don’t do any continuous temperature monitoring, so I don’t have any stats for deviations.

I saw this post the other day but forgot to respond. During the winter, I typically report whatever my thermometer says in the notes section of my morning CoCoRaHS observations, and I’ll include the temperature when I report on snow accumulations here, but that’s about it – I don’t do any continuous temperature monitoring, so I don’t have any stats for deviations.

I saw some flakes here at our place on Saturday night as well, but nothing that reached the 0.1” threshold, so a trace was all that was reported for our site with that system. I actually found some measurable accumulation on the boards this morning though – I’m not sure when the precipitation occurred, but checking back in the AFD, the BTV NWS says the scattered snow shower activity in the area is from a weak boundary with interacting vorticity embedded in the mid/upper-level trough across the Northeast: Area Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Burlington VT 651 PM EST Sun Jan 30 2022 .SYNOPSIS... A weak boundary will produce scattered snow showers across northern New York into Vermont late tonight into Monday afternoon. Snowfall accumulations will be a dusting to 2 inches in the most persistent snow shower activity, mainly over northern New York. .NEAR TERM /THROUGH MONDAY NIGHT/... As of 641 PM EST Sunday... Water vapor shows mid/upper lvl trof acrs the ne conus with several weak embedded 5h vorts. First weak s/w is approaching the Ottawa Valley this aftn, with secondary vort located btwn Hudson Bay and the northern Great Lakes. These disturbances in the jet stream winds aloft wl interact with a weak sfc boundary to produce periods of light snow shower activity acrs northern NY into the mtns of northern VT late tonight into Monday.

Event totals: 0.2” Snow/Trace L.E. An additional tenth of an inch was all the accumulation I observed at our site from yesterday’s activity, and I’d say that’s the last of the snow associated with this cold frontal passage. We actually had a solid period of snow yesterday in BTV – I’d say it was close to an hour of moderate snowfall with some big flakes and lots of wind. On the radar, the flow of that moisture seemed to be directly from the north, and it never really pushed east of the mountains in our area enough to add anything substantial. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.1 inches New Liquid: Trace Temperature: -1.3 F Sky: Cloudy Snow at the stake: 12.5 inches

Great to hear it - both those spots you mentioned are local favorites!

Event totals: 0.1” Snow/Trace L.E. I found a light accumulation on the snowboards this morning, which the BTV NWS indicates is from a surface cold front crossing the area. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.1 inches New Liquid: Trace Temperature: 23.4 F Sky: Flurries Snow at the stake: 12.5 inches

When you got hit by that first batch, you could see that the incoming moisture wasn’t one big wall that we sometimes get with upslope, it was more disorganized. That’s why I made that comment about the potential changes as it moved east. We had just a trace here because the moisture (atypically) sort of dried up before it hit the spine. There were some streamers in there, so certain spots saw more snow if they got under those. I can’t say exactly how much we picked up in BTV, but it certainly could have been a fluffy inch overall from the various snowfall rates I saw. In any event, these past two systems have delivered nicely in the bread and butter format. The next potential one of these looks to be in the Friday timeframe: Area Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Burlington VT 625 PM EST Tue Jan 25 2022 .SHORT TERM /THURSDAY THROUGH FRIDAY NIGHT/... As of 415 PM EST Tuesday...Quiet but cold early Thursday as ~1030mb high begins to shift eastward ahead of our next clipper system on Friday. Chances for snow increase towards Friday morning as surface boundary enters our far western New York zones. The best upper level dynamics remain north of the border, but enough moisture in the snow growth zone along with some modest surface convergence should allow for widespread snow showers during the day on Friday. Soundings are fairly unimpressive, so do not anticipate heavy snow showers, but an inch or two of light snow is possible area wide by Friday night as activity largely comes to an end.

Sort of similar here in BTV – but the snowfall rate has certainly picked up with the approach of those 30 dB echoes on the radar.

Assuming the snow growth parameters producing the snow you’ve seen continue to be present, that should be very interesting to see. Things can change as the energy moves east of course, but there’s always lots of potential when areas of deeper moisture run into the spine. I’m not home at the moment, but we’ve got our snow stake webcam running, and that typically provides a decent real-time visual of what goes on at our site in terms of snowfall rates.

We’ve got some snow starting back up here in BTV.

Event totals: 2.5” Snow/0.06” L.E. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 2.5 inches New Liquid: 0.06 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 41.7 Snow Density: 2.4% H2O Temperature: 16.7 F Sky: Cloudy Snow at the stake: 15.0 inches

We were out for a couple of sessions this weekend in the Bolton Valley area, so I can pass along some snowpack and conditions updates. Saturday was the chillier of the two days, so we hit the BV Backcountry Network, starting our tour all the way down at 1,200’. From my Tuesday outing, I found a total snowpack depth of ~18” at 1,500’, and I wouldn’t say it was much less at the 1,200’ elevation. Depth checks on the powder revealed 12-13” above the base, and overall coverage was absolutely fine for the low and moderate angle terrain we were skiing. The powder has obviously settled a bit since the period immediately after Izzy, but the cold temperatures have probably minimized the settling somewhat and/or some sublimation/drying is keeping the powder reasonably dry. On Sunday I was up in the 2,000’ – 3,000’ range at the main area of the resort for some lift-served skiing, and I focused on the Wilderness area since this weekend was the season debut for running the Wilderness Double Chair. The overall snowpack is deeper up at those elevations of course, you can easily tack on another foot up around 3,000’, but a lot of the difference is subsurface snow/base – the powder depths weren’t all that different. On piste surfaces were excellent packed powder aside from areas that were wind scoured or steep, but of course Wilderness doesn’t have snowmaking, and until this weekend the only traffic had been ski touring, so that’s left the snow quite pristine overall. The depths I’m report were all ahead of the Sunday evening system and this one that’s currently coming through the area, so these will certainly top off/replenish those powder depths, even if they aren’t major contributors to the total L.E. of the snowpack. On piste, I’m sure these little systems will soften up spots that aren’t icy due to snowmaking, steep pitch, or high traffic. A few shots from the weekend:

I see that we’ve got some snow falling here at our site now, so any dry levels in the atmosphere must have been saturated.

The BTV NWS point forecast here has fluctuated between 2-4” and 3-5” from what I’ve seen, so the thoughts above seem right on track. I’m currently seeing 3-7” shown for the Mansfield point forecast. I think folks will post some observations when the flakes start to fly, but I’d say we don’t need too much fanfare yet - for now it seems like good ol’ NNE…

Event totals: 1.5” Snow/0.03” L.E. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.2 inches New Liquid: Trace Temperature: -8.7 F Sky: Clear Snow at the stake: 13.5 inches

Event totals: 1.3” Snow/0.03” L.E. Details from the 6:00 P.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 1.3 inches New Liquid: 0.03 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 43.3 Snow Density: 2.3% H2O Temperature: 20.3 F Sky: Light Snow (2-12 mm flakes) Snow at the stake: 14.0 inches

Thus far today I haven’t seen anything at the house, and I was up at Bolton for a midday session and didn’t see any flakes there either. I have seen some flakes this afternoon on the Bolton Webcam, and I’m starting to see some snow crash out around the local peaks. PF is seeing flakes, so maybe this next wave of moisture will have a little more oomph to get flakes down to the surface.

I hadn’t had a chance to post any images from my Tuesday ski session yet, but after the backside snows from Winter Storm Izzy, it was down in the single digits F, so touring seemed like the call. I ended up touring down at Timberline because the snowpack is pretty substantial even down to 1,500’. The parking lot hadn’t been plowed, but there were several cars in the lot from others who were touring there, and the traffic had packed down the snow enough to get around reasonably with 4WD/AWD. I checked the snow depth in various spots on both the ascent and descent, and my best estimates of overall settled snowpack depth at that point were ~18” at 1,500’, ~22” at 2,000’ and ~24” at 2,500’. I’ve got a few shots from that outing below. We actually toured today starting all the way down at 1,200’ and even that was fine. I’ll pass along some images from that session when I get a chance.

Actually, the 12Z CMC run does show some improved bread and butter pacing – there are potential systems coming through for tomorrow, Tuesday, Friday, and then Monday. With those four systems over that span, that’s getting pretty close to that every other day sort of interval we see when the northern branch is active and sending through the moisture. I find that the GFS is better than the CMC in terms of giving the best prognostication for these systems at relatively long lead times, and the models don’t really agree on the latter two systems (probably because of some potential phasing and/or pacing differences). So, one can’t put much stock in those latter two systems yet, but seeing what the CMC shows suggests some potential with our favorite jet stream.

Between skiing and work I’ve been a bit busy this week to comment much on the pattern, although if there was a really strong bread and butter look in the modeling, I probably would have squeezed in the time. There’s been a little something on the models for tomorrow, and then another northern stream system shown for Tuesday, but beyond that, there isn’t anything suggested until around next weekend, and that seems a bit indeterminate at this point because there could be some phasing. When we’re in those really solid bread and butter patterns up here, we’ll have something come through just about every other day, and some of them will show those robust signals for precipitation along the spine of the Northern Greens. So, it’s not a horrible bread and butter pattern by any means, but it’s not necessarily worth pulling out the artisan bread icon, probably more like something in the range of white bread as currently modeled. Not that we’d mind if that potential phasing shown farther out in the models produced another something like Izzy, but putting too much reliance on those types of systems means you’re jumping into that SNE game of Russian roulette. Actually, assuming the bullet is the “undesired outcome” with the way some of the weenies start latching onto fantasy modeling so far out in time, the game they play is really more like some form of reverse Russian roulette, with five rounds in the cylinder and just one empty.

We sometimes get those January doldrums where arctic air moves in and we’re just under cold, dry high pressure for a week or more, but this January hasn’t felt like that so far. At least here in our area, it’s felt like the occasional subzero type of day, but the northern stream still has systems coming through giving us precipitation – and variations in temperature with warm-ups on the front side of systems. I wouldn’t say they’ve been very robust systems the past few days since Izzy departed on Tuesday, but fortunately, we’ve at least had breaks in the cold.

Winter Storm Izzy was obviously a game changer with respect to the local snowpack, but the Mt. Mansfield Stake data objectively tells that tale that we still haven’t even hit the traditional 40-inch mark at the stake. The appropriately-manicured low and even moderate-angle off-piste pitches are pretty much there, but not really the steep stuff. We’re getting close on that terrain, and that’s probably making it tough on folks who are chomping at the bit to hit that stuff. It can also be a bit tougher to manage at Stowe because so much of the off-piste terrain is on the steeper side.

I found 0.2” on the boards this morning from the current system passing through the area. The BTV NWS forecast discussion indicates that it’s a quick moving low pressure system moving along north of the international border. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.2 inches New Liquid: Trace Temperature: 3.6 F Sky: Cloudy Snow at the stake: 16.0 inches

Event totals: 16.5” Snow/1.20” L.E. We’ve largely cleared out now, so I’d say this last accumulation marks the end of Winter Storm Izzy here at our site, and the above numbers should represent the final totals. This storm has now surpassed Winter Storm Carrie (9.3”) from back in December as the largest this season, and is the largest recorded here since Winter Storm Kade (17.0”) back in Feb 2020. Details from the 1:00 P.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.2 inches New Liquid: 0.01 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 20.0 Snow Density: 5.0% H2O Temperature: 16.9 F Sky: Partly Cloudy Snow at the stake: 18.0 inches

Here’s the north to south listing of available storm totals from the Vermont ski areas for Winter Storm Izzy: Jay Peak: 14” Burke: 5” Smuggler’s Notch: 14” Stowe: 13” Bolton Valley: 16” Mad River Glen: 19” Sugarbush: 15” Middlebury: 14” Pico: 17” Killington: 17” Okemo: 13” Bromley: 15” Magic Mountain: 13” Stratton: 15” Mount Snow: 14”