J.Spin

Wow, that’s so cool! Post lots of observations - I hear NNE gets a lot of snow!

October may be getting a bit too much credit by association with the amazing November; the notable tie in was that bit of snow we got at the very tail end (last couple days) of the month that carried over into the first part of November. And, looking at the stake data, the snow depth did briefly go back to zero on November 7th, so it’s not even one of those seasons where the “official” Mansfield snowpack started in October (although it’s possible there were still traces around during that snowpack nadir). The Northern Greens had six accumulating storms last October, which I’m sure is above average in number and indeed notable, but none of them were actually that significant locally. I got out for just one day of skiing that month, and it was a fun low-angle tour, but conditions were pretty marginal compared to what we’ve had during many other Octobers. Here’s a quote from my final report for last October: “We’ve had numerous rounds of snow in the mountains over the past couple of weeks, but none of the storms have been the type that really put down a big dump of 6 to 12 inches or more at once.” I’d certainly categorize last October as “good”, but I’d say it’s hard categorize any of it as epic without at least one of those beefier storms. Of course, a couplet of a decent October and an absolutely outstanding November is a great way to start off the first couple months of the ski season.

Ahh, understood. Indeed that’s true, a lot of those early accumulations seem to come from some sort of terrain assist where all it takes is a bit of moisture in the flow accompanied by marginal temperatures.

Measurable snow by then shouldn’t be remotely surprising for the mountain valleys around here. Mean (as well as median) date for first measurable at our site is 10/20 ± 11 days, so the 11/8 would be well past 1 S.D. and actually closer to 2 S.D. Not that we couldn’t get measurable snow before that, but 11/8 for first accumulation would be in the bottom 4 to 5% of seasons based on the data set thus far.

Relative to averages, it’s been a bit of a slow start to the snow in my area since we’re already past the mean dates of first frozen trace (10/20) and first accumulating snowfall (10/26), but October can of course be quite the wild card in the snowfall area. Unless the models are totally off their rockers though, that first week of November would offer multiple chances for snow with the combination of temperatures, flow off the lakes, and minor disturbances. Even at our place down in the valley we average more than a foot of snow in November, but the S.D. is high, and snowfall can be very lean in certain patterns, so it’s still tenuous. Snow chances showing up in the models inside of a week now is a good sign though, and it’s not the sort of stuff that’s dependent on some big storm forming, it’s just part of the expected flow and minor ripples. Those setups can be pretty reliable for some flakes at longer lead times, but we’ll still want to see that the models hold onto that general scheme over the next few days. With no imminent chances, I’ve been holding off on getting all the snow measurement stuff set up for the winter, but this is probably the week to get moving on it.

It won’t be long now, but can we get things rolling like last November?

Interesting question for some places, but if you were to transform that question into the equivalent for up here in ski county, I bet you’d get very few to vote for that first option. Full blown feast or famine is really not a good way to run a ski season.

It’s a subjective thing as far as I can tell, so I really don’t have any idea. I didn’t see anyone immediately jumping in with confirmation though, so presumably it wasn’t.

Was last season a… “ratter” in SNE?

It’s definitely not worth trying to push it when it comes to health – I wouldn’t think twice about it if I was in that scenario. Right around 60 F is what we find as a reasonable threshold when we’re just having fun to see how far we might push it in the fall, and last week we were down in that 58-59 F range without any obvious daytime warmups, so it was an easy call. Below about 60 F we find that “room temp” tap water starts to have a chill that makes it tough to use for dishes or whatever, and that’s one of the first places I notice the temperature issue. Also, if I’ve got to work on my computer, grading, or whatever, I’ll turn it on because even borderline temperatures are frustrating if you have to sit still for a while to work vs. moving around.

Thanks for the update on the temps, I guess it has seemed pretty typical. We did put the heat on for a few days last week, but I turned it back off because we haven’t really needed it this week, and that’s often how things go. For fun, we always try to see if we can make it to Halloween before having to turn on the heat, but even in the warmest Octobers we never really get there. There are generally those stretches where it gets cloudy and rainy, and once the house isn’t naturally getting up to 60 F in the day is when we typically make the call. The weather has really been fantastic for soccer season, and that Columbus Day weekend period was insane with the combination of foliage and weather – the levels of visitors and traffic around here definitely spoke to how everything came together. We got that typical October snow during the chilly period last week, and your mountain updates were great. It’s always nice when we can get one of those slightly more robust October events that give you enough to get out on the boards for some early powder (although I’m sure some folks got out on the junkboards and rock skis for the last one), but it doesn’t look like we’re getting one of those this year. The next shot at snow seems to be around the end of the month/beginning of November. 10/20 is the average date for first frozen precipitation at our place, so we’ll definitely be later than average this season. It’s quite the difference from last year at this time – last year we already were onto our third accumulating valley snowfall of the season by this point.

Thanks for the afternoon update PF; your intimate knowledge of the elevation markers at the resort always makes it especially informative for those of us that love the details of snow levels. As I typically try to do, I put up a post on my website to document the October snowfall, with reference to the posts and pictures in here. Thanks again!

That’s great to see PF, thanks for the snow update!

Well, I was just looking out from my office, and there’s a bit of an upslope wall of precipitation look along the western slopes of the Northern Greens. It’s the first time I’ve really seen it this fall, so I looked at the radar and it’s got that appearance too. With the temperatures just a bit above freezing along the ridgeline, I suspect there’s some mixing up there as the radar suggests:

I believe the expression you’re looking for is “incredibly loud”.

2 people with loud voices?

I’m assuming he’s busy with foliage/pre-season stuff, but we need a bit of PF infusion into the main October thread. The SNErs are trying to wish away the potential for some traditional October snow near the end of the month due to that crazy voodoo curse about October snow and a poor snowfall season. That’s not a thing up here – we love our October powder days whenever Mother Nature wants to send them! The family waxing up the boards with the cable radio Halloween station playing in the background is an honored tradition.

No worries; the NNE thread is pretty good about waiting until there’s actually something to talk about. It really won’t be long before there will be snow to discuss around here. Indeed the Mansfield forecast has flakes for later this week, it’s just not anything too notable at this point: It looks like the end of the month has got more potential though – I’ve been seeing it on multiple runs.

I think you summed it up nicely in your later post – it was the right kind of cold, with the bookends and no extended periods of sitting in the dry, arctic chill that gives high temperatures only around 0 F. The only notably cold stretch that immediately comes to mind was around the holidays? We had friends visiting, and we probably would have headed out together for a ski day, but the temperatures really just weren’t friendly. Great surface conditions probably could have tipped the scales a bit and tempted us to head out in the cold, but the surface conditions over the holiday period were nothing to write home about as I recall. Between the cold temperatures and blasé conditions, I only headed out once during the entire holiday period, and that was in the Bolton BC. Bookend cold, no extended arctic outbreaks, and 60+ snowstorms just doesn’t leave one with an especially “cold” taste in their mouth I guess. There were certainly plenty of blemishes (lots of storms tracking to the northwest of the area, an overall poor December, etc.), but it was definitely a fine way to run a winter.

Yeah, up here we LOL at the 50%/150% projections. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see what 150% would be like, since it would be pushing 250” here at the house and 500” in the mountains, but that’s not how our climate works. One S.D. here is probably less than 20%, so 50% is 2.5 S.D., which should happen only once every couple hundred years or so.

Yeah, it seems like the higher Whites are essentially a lock for snow with this upcoming event, but the Greens could easily get flakes as well.

Yeah, it looks like the Whites are easily into the snow above 5,000’, and anything that falls should stick around reasonably for pictures over the weekend based on the forecast. It doesn’t look like the snow is going anywhere with those Friday night temperatures: Tonight Snow, mainly after 8pm. Low around 25. Windy, with a southwest wind 20 to 25 mph increasing to 25 to 30 mph after midnight. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New snow accumulation of 2 to 4 inches possible. Friday Snow likely, mainly before 7am. Cloudy, then gradually becoming mostly sunny, with a high near 29. Very windy, with a northwest wind 35 to 40 mph increasing to 40 to 45 mph in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 55 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New snow accumulation of less than one inch possible. Friday Night Mostly clear, with a low around 19. Wind chill values as low as -1. Very windy, with a northwest wind 45 to 50 mph decreasing to 40 to 45 mph after midnight. Winds could gust as high as 65 mph. Saturday Sunny, with a high near 37. Windy, with a northwest wind 30 to 35 mph decreasing to 25 to 30 mph in the afternoon. Saturday Night Mostly clear, with a low around 29. Windy. Sunday A 30 percent chance of showers. Partly sunny, with a high near 45. Windy. Accumulations could get down to 3,000’ or even below based on the forecast. Over here in the Greens any accumulations would probably be more minimal, but the temperatures are around the freezing mark and there’s moisture, so the potential is there.

What I find hilarious is how the climate change paranoia simply gets adapted to whatever slant people want. Does your area have frequent drought issues? Well, climate change is going to make it even drier. Are floods a problem in your part of the country? You’d better watch out, climate change will definitely make them worse. Have a certain crop that you grow on your farm? You’re screwed. Climate change is going to ruin that by bringing more heat and moisture to the area. You’ll get more rain and warmer temperatures to grow your crops, but don’t worry, they’ll grow worse than before because… reasons. And don’t forget, despite the excess rainfall, your area is going to simultaneously be plagued with drought, so your crops won’t grow anyway. Oh, and if there’s an organism that frequently plagues your favorite crop as a pest, you can be damned sure that whatever the climate changes into, that pest is going to go absolutely gangbusters and eat whatever crop you put it. And you know, since it’s climate change, the modeling indicates that the pest is going to eat your house as well for good measure. Unfortunately, climate change prediction science is a field that can easily be filled with tons of model-based hypotheses that can’t be proven or refuted on a convenient time scale. In most fields, you make a hypothesis, run your experiment, then adjust your model accordingly and run the next experiment. When dealing with climate change it feels like you put together a model (which of course is done with the best knowledge available, but still can’t take into account everything we don’t know about), and then the planet’s population has to sit around for 50 years, discuss the possibilities and potentially prepare for the worst, while we wait to see how accurate the modeling actually was.

Based on what I’ve heard from the meteorologists in the forum, haven’t the number of coastal storms been abnormally high in recent seasons? I hear the SNE folks talk about how their snowfall averages over the past decade are on the high side – is that due to coastal storms? I did a quick look at my storm list from last season and grabbed any that were “coastal”, or along/near the coast for the list below. I found 15 in my storm list, but there may be more because a storm won’t be in my list if we don’t get any accumulation at our site. It seems like defining what a “coastal storm” is could be tough though, with the way things redevelop and take various tracks. What was last season like with respect to the typical number of “coastal” storms? Storm Date Description 3 10/23/18 Compact low pressure system off the New England Coast followed by upslope flow 4 10/27/18 Nor'easter 6 11/9/18 Double-barrel low pressure - eastern Great Lakes & coastal lows 7 11/13/18 Low pressure system hugging New England coast 9 11/15/18 Winter Storm Avery - low pressure just inland from New England coast 12 11/20/18 Low pressure passing through Mid-Atlantic States into Southern New England 14 11/26/18 Winter Storm Bruce - triple point low passing through New England 22 12/17/18 Vertically stacked system off coast + upper level trough/upslope 30 1/2/19 Clipper system with a bit of coastal redevelopment 36 1/19/19 Winter Storm Harper - Low pressure tracking from NYC to Gulf of Maine 40 1/29/19 Winter Storm Jayden - St. Lawrence/Ottawa Valley low & coastal development 45 2/12/19 Winter Storm Maya - low pressure tracking through Great Lakes & redeveloping off the coast 47 2/18/19 Winter Storm Oren - Benchmark low with weak shortwave moving through Northern New England 52 3/3/19 Winter Storm Scott - low pressure passing along coast near Cape Cod 59 3/21/19 Upper-level closed lows consolidating with coastal development and upslope

September Precipitation: 4.93” 2019 Precipitation: 46.39” 2019 Water Year Precipitation: 64.86” September is the driest warm season month in my data set, but this year its total precipitation came in about an inch above average and it wound up being our wettest September since 2012. Typically, even average precipitation for the month is plenty of moisture to keep the lawn happy with the cooler, early fall temperatures, so the extra precipitation was just sort of a bonus. The end of September not only marks the end of the month, but the end of the 2019 water year, and that came in on the high side as well. The average I have in my data here is in the 55” range, and this year it’s about 1 S.D. on the high side. A lot of the water year total came from the extra moisture we got during the winter, with 30.82” of total liquid during the accumulating snowfall season. Calendar year precipitation is currently a bit ahead of its average pace as well, and we’ll see what the next three months bring. We typically average about 50 inches of snow at our site in the coming three months, so hopefully we can keep the moisture train going to get that early snowfall down to start a good snowpack in the valleys and mountains.