NNE Spring Thread

[powderfreak]

fresh fiddleheads! another step in the spring direction. roof is done, next....

PF looks like Manny holding better snow than J, you would have to get up into North Jay Peak and BIg Jay, in the willy whacks to find that - I would say just about anything left on the ski hill is man made. got two more days on skis left in me - pedal season is taking over in the desire department

east wind finally has shut down - diggin blackies out the eyes, another right of spring

Yeah, Mansfield (the Stowe ski area side) has amazing snow retention with a steep pitch and northeast facing terrain. It sees very little sunshine in the higher elevation north/east facing slopes... and what little sunshine it does sees is usually early morning during the coldest part of the day.

With that said, it is starting to go really fast now. Sunshine and mild afternoons are doing the trick... there's a lot less snow up there than there was a week ago.

All the work roads are now sufficiently plowed out, too.

Those photos are from yesterday... today is the same deal but with less "fair weather" clouds.

[powderfreak]

Also, yesterday I found what is likely the last snowbank left in the town of Stowe... all of the lower elevations are now completely snow free of even snowbanks, lol.

[dendrite]

I think there's more snow pics in this thread than January.

High of 66.0F today. Not too shabby despite some midday cloudiness. The beginning of next week looks cool and very wet. Hopefully there's no flooding.

[powderfreak]

I think there's more snow pics in this thread than January.

High of 66.0F today. Not too shabby despite some midday cloudiness. The beginning of next week looks cool and very wet. Hopefully there's no flooding.

Haha, that means we're having a good May. Plus there's really absolutely nothing to talk about wx-wise so might as well roll with the left-over snow. Pictures are worth a thousand words, too.

High of 73F here with 30% RH... nice, dry heat. Didn't see a cloud all day, not even over Mansfield. Already down in the 50s now. I like these days of wide diurnal swings in temperatures. It has been a beautiful stretch of weather the past 5 days.

[MaineJayhawk]

Had a rare nice day on the waterfront in Portland with clear skies and 64F for a high. Another good day tomorrow and then back to normal spring with rain and low 50s for the forseeable future. Will stop by Lowe's tomorrow and pick up a giant bag of grass seed ... take advantage of Ma Nature's free watering offer.

[HoarfrostHubb]

Had a rare nice day on the waterfront in Portland with clear skies and 64F for a high. Another good day tomorrow and then back to normal spring with rain and low 50s for the forseeable future. Will stop by Lowe's tomorrow and pick up a giant bag of grass seed ... take advantage of Ma Nature's free watering offer.

It will wash away next week...

[dryslot]

Pretty chilly this morning. Got down to 36F at the house. No frost in the yard but there were a few patches down in the low-lying hollows below the house....

I understand well--I've lived in Maine and coastal NH and know well the springtime frustrations from your neck of the woods.

Did you live near the mid coast when you were here? I had thought i had heard you had mention it before, After a nice day today and tomorow, Looks like we get another stalled out front over this area here for the next 5 days...... We need a definite pattern change going into summer..

[dryslot]

It will wash away next week...

Yup, Pretty much sucks, Starting to resemble spring of 2009 which led to a wet summer..

[J.Spin]

It's interesting that Mount Mansfield acquires a similar snowpack to the mid-elevation peaks I saw in Glacier National Park last summer at 6000-7000', with over 100" piling up on Mansfield during good winters, but it fades much much more quickly with the lower elevation. It's a sudden release of snowpack in May/early June as the relatively low elevations of the Greens just can't hold snow with the strong summertime sun angle, so you melt off a foot every few days if you have a healthy snowpack at this time of the year. This sudden melt is also a much bigger problem in terms of flooding than what you find out west where the snowpack releases MUCH more slowly, over the entire summer through about early-mid August, as well as the fact that Vermont is obviously a wetter climate anyway.

Yes, the snow really seems to hold on longer out in Glacier than it does here at equivalent elevations. For easy drive up skiing in the late season we typically go to the various east snowfields on Mt. Washington out here (~5,500’), and when we lived in Montana we would go to Logan Pass (6,646’) at Glacier. The Glacier terrain is a bit higher, so that has to be factored in, but it’s reasonably close for comparison. Using our experiences from these types of outings is a little complicated because the access is determined by when the roads open, when the weather offers a decent window, and when our schedule permits. Weather and personal schedule aside though, the goal is to hit the snow as soon as the road opens for access to the greatest amount of well-covered terrain, so we strive to do that, and I’d say is probably 2-3 weeks later at Logan looking at our experiences. Some examples would be that we’ve caught good days at Mt. Washington on May 25^th, ’08 and May 29^th, ‘10, whereas a couple of similar outings that I can pull up from Glacier would be June 7^th, ‘03 and June 19^th, ’05. This coming weekend is likely to be a perfect example of the weather aspect of getting to the snow; while there was the chance that the Mt. Washington Auto Road would be opening to the summit this weekend according to their blog, even if it does, it’s not going to be the weekend to head up and ski based on the forecast. There’s likely to be rain from tomorrow onward, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some frozen stuff up there as well with predicted lows in the 20s and 30s F.

I grabbed some of the Mt. Mansfield snowpack plots from the years that you mentioned below, you can get the plots from ’54-’55 onward at the SkiVT-L Mt. Mansfield historical data page. Snowpack doesn’t tell the whole story of the winter of course, but it’s a pretty good parameter for providing some flavor of the winter season, so I figured you might enjoy comparing the plots to your thoughts.

There were some awful winters in the 1980s particularly....I think VT really got screwed in stronger El Niños like 86-87 and 87-88 which concentrated most of their storms in the mid-Atlantic.

Based on the plot for those seasons below, it looks like the ‘86-’87 season was actually pretty decent, with average snowpack through January, and then things really took off through the heart of the season to hit 90 inches at the stake. Things did taper off early though aside from a snowy period near the start of May. The ’87-’88 season looks like it wasn’t too bad, although it looks a touch below average aside from the resurgence in April:

81-82 and 83-84 were probably pretty snowy in the Greens (except the disastrously record warm February of 1984)

It looks like the snowpack plots from those seasons certainly agree with your thoughts; both seasons were above average almost wall to wall, with the ’81-’82 season topping out with a depth over 120 inches. You may be able to see the effects of that Feb ’84 you spoke of, which is the only real point in the heart of the season where the snowpack even came down to around average:

but aside from those years there were a lot of duds like 79-80, 82-83, 86-87, 87-88, and surprisingly the strong Niña winter of 88-89 which I believe was very dry in New England.

The remaining ’79-’80, ’82-’83, and ’88-’89 seasons that you mentioned are in the final plot below. None of them look great, with most of ’79-’80 and ’82-’83 looking pretty abysmal aside from the April-May ’83 period. The ’88-’89 season seems to come out fairly middling, but certainly not a great one based on snowpack:

[tamarack]

Had a rare nice day on the waterfront in Portland with clear skies and 64F for a high. Another good day tomorrow and then back to normal spring with rain and low 50s for the forseeable future. Will stop by Lowe's tomorrow and pick up a giant bag of grass seed ... take advantage of Ma Nature's free watering offer.

And that's why I've backed off from planting carrots, arugula, etc this weekend. Having 5-7 day of 50F rain is a recipe for rot-in-the ground gardening. Of course, next weekend will be the height of blackflies here; they just began to be hungry yesterday.

So far May has been pretty meh - temp about normal for here (avg is 62/41 thru 5/12), and 8 of 12 days with highs in the 60s (1 of 48, 3 in 50s), 9 of 12 with lows in the 40s including 5 at either 41 or 42, nothing close to frost since the 2nd. Good chance of not getting bove 4/29's 70 before 5/20 (if then), which is late for this inland/downsloping location.

[powderfreak]

Wow, J.Spin... that snow depth in 1981-1982 was massive all season long! Now that's the winter I'm looking for with a max depth of 120"+.

The woods above 3,000ft are still holding on, haha.

[TalcottWx]

Man the deteriorating snow pics and updates daily are captivating

[dendrite]

Awesome day...73.5F max so far with mostly sunny skies.

This morning there was a deer, turkey, and a fisher cat in the yard...quite a clan.

The only negative for today is the tree pollen. It looks like 3/4SM snow out there. I'm surprised the ASOS's haven't detected snow yet. lol

[dendrite]

The only negative for today is the tree pollen. It looks like 3/4SM snow out there. I'm surprised the ASOS's haven't detected snow yet. lol

heh

http://www.wmur.com/health/27888895/detail.html

[Dan76]

Great pictures powderfreak......If I didn't have to work I'd be there in a minute.

Never skied in may let alone april

A-Basin looks like their going to hang on for a while...but thats a gimme

http://www.arapahoebasin.com/ABasin/snow-conditions/mountain-snapshots.aspx

[MaineJayhawk]

While running errands today I came across a pile of snow sheltered in an orchard's parking lot about 8' high and probably 20' in diameter. Surprised me so much I pulled into the lot just to check it out.

[nzucker]

Wow, J.Spin... that snow depth in 1981-1982 was massive all season long! Now that's the winter I'm looking for with a max depth of 120"+.

81-82 was a negative-neutral year for ENSO; these usually produce decent winters like 60-61 (huge for my area) and 95-96 (huge for everyone). Although there were no major KU events for the Mid-Atlantic coast in 81-82, it was a very cold winter with a lot of action for Upstate NY and New England. Logan11 always mentions it as one of his favorite winters. Almost the entire US was colder than normal for Winter 81-82:

The 500mb pattern was very impressive. Although there was a typical Nina-like Aleutian ridge, it extended into a pseudo -EPO block that connected with a monster -NAO. This double blocking scheme sent all the cold air into Central Canada and the High Plains while the Arctic torched:

A-Basin looks like their going to hang on for a while...but thats a gimme

http://www.arapahoeb...-snapshots.aspx

Arapahoe is at 13k so it's not exactly a challenge to maintain snow.

[MaineJayhawk]

Things are looking up - first mention of sun is in the forecast for Saturday.

[powderfreak]

Probably the last ski photo of the season from Mansfield... you can all breath a sigh of relief that its over now lol. With this rain and humid weather, from what I can see from the base the snow is most certainly on life-support right now. We had a good run of it though over 7 full months, with 150 of those 210 days spent on the snow.

Friday evening the sun was setting on the ski season.

[powderfreak]

While running errands today I came across a pile of snow sheltered in an orchard's parking lot about 8' high and probably 20' in diameter. Surprised me so much I pulled into the lot just to check it out.

You get a +1 for that.

I love when the white stuff (err dirty white) survives this late in any capacity.

[powderfreak]

Man the deteriorating snow pics and updates daily are captivating

LOL. Its either that or I'll give you pollen and leaf out updates.

Riveting weather here this morning... low clouds, fog, 52F, steady stratiform rain.

[J.Spin]

Wow, J.Spin... that snow depth in 1981-1982 was massive all season long! Now that's the winter I'm looking for with a max depth of 120"+.

That ’81-’82 season (brown line on plot below) must have been an impressive one, because it generally beat out the snowpack in ‘00-’01 (black line on plot below), which most people around here seem to tout as the big season in recent memory. The ’00-’01 season did get above ’81-’82 and up above 130” of snowpack due to that great March, but it then fell back below ’81-’82 for the end of the season. I was curious to see if our current ’10-’11 season (blue line on plot below) would have been like ’81-’82 if all those storms hadn’t missed to the south, but even then, the snowpack would not have gotten as high as it did in ’81-’82 quite so early. Looking closely at what went on in ’81-’82, what elevated the snowpack early was really a pair of big storms at the start of the season (one that brought the snowpack from 5 inches to 30 inches in mid November, and another that brought the snowpack from 32 to 57 inches in early December. With roughly two-foot gains in snowpack, those are probably 3+ foot storms (you might have the best sense of the usual compaction that goes on). From that point on, you can see that the ’81-’82 snowpack really paralleled the slope of the green average, so presumably the growth was at an average level.

As I recall, Northern Vermont wasn’t encountering near misses to the southeast in the November/Early December timeframe this past season; it seemed like it was Lakes Cutter after Lakes Cutter for a while in November, and then as we moved into December this was actually the only area getting much of anything because it was a situation of retrograding upper level low pressure. We actually did get a decent storm that raised the snowpack from 5 to 34 inches in early December this past season – take a look at the sharp rise in snowpack in that timeframe on the blue ’10-’11 line. That was a decent storm, because you can see that the rise in snowpack it created was larger than either of those early season events from ’81-’82. Up above us, that was a four-foot storm for Bolton Valley (47 inches) and down here in the valley it was a two-foot storm (23.4 inches) and our second largest event of the season. The thing was, that storm was comprised of a lot of upslope snow, so it did not put down the moisture that meant staying power in the snowpack. After that big increase on the ’10-’11 trace, you can see that almost half of it was given back in settling, and that didn’t really happen with those ’81-’82 early season storms.

With the way the parade of large storms kept coming into the Northeast this season, the time to make some additional big gains on snowpack and get ’10-’11 out of a pretty much average regime could have been that late December through January period. But we know how that played out, with the storms staying too far to the southeast and only fringe effects hitting here until February. Following the blue ’10-’11 trace, one can see how the snowpack really languished through January, and while it did pick up in February, it really wasn’t until that big storm at the beginning of March that a notable gain was made.

It was nice that the ’10-’11 snowpack jumped up and really got above average in March, but for the Northern Vermont mountains it was a pretty pedestrian snowfall season; I don’t have data for Smugg’s, but for Jay, Stowe, and Bolton, I’ve got 376, 332, and 330 inches of season snowfall for departures of +5.9%, -0.3%, and +5.8% respectively. After the poor season in ’09-’10 where the resorts were close to 30% below average, hopefully we’re due for a good shot in the other direction eventually. This season was nice though for the consistency of temperatures and no massive thaws, which I think helped set up that snowpack for its rise in March. The consistent temperatures certainly seemed to help down here in the valley in terms of snowfall though, because although we were only about a half S.D. above average, we did better than the mountains and came in with a departure of +14.4%. It’s too bad that the snowfall data from the stake don’t seem to be worth much, because it would be nice to know what the snowfall was up there in ’81-’82; BTV was pretty typical that season with 81.5 inches.

[dendrite]

A solid +RA over the last hour and the boundary has pushed through. Winds are mostly out of the NNE and up to 10-15mph. The temp has dropped from 54F to a current 51F.

0.74" so far including yesterday.

[TalcottWx]

Guys thank you for inviting me into your hood this past academic year.. i am out likely for good. It was a great time posting learning and socializing with you northeners. Im off to the abyss that is Baltimore MD in July to start my freshman year as a towson tiger football player....

Im truly going to miss maine and the foothill/lake region.. a couple shoutouts to dryslut and gayhawk.. the locals closest who taught the local climate to me

[MaineJayhawk]

Have a good time in Baltimore and don't let those hazing rituals involving cardboard tubes and gerbils get the best of you.

[CoastalWx]

Guys thank you for inviting me into your hood this past academic year.. i am out likely for good. It was a great time posting learning and socializing with you northeners. Im off to the abyss that is Baltimore MD in July to start my freshman year as a towson tiger football player....

Im truly going to miss maine and the foothill/lake region.. a couple shoutouts to dryslut and gayhawk.. the locals closest who taught the local climate to me

Good luck Jay. At least you get to hang in a pretty popular place to score a few ladies......or perhaps dudes. Stay Southie Strong.

[wxeyeNH]

A solid +RA over the last hour and the boundary has pushed through. Winds are mostly out of the NNE and up to 10-15mph. The temp has dropped from 54F to a current 51F.

0.74" so far including yesterday.

47.9F light to moderate rain. Winds have really started to blow out of the NE gusting to 30mph. With the trees leafed out it seems even windier! About 1.30" so far.

[powderfreak]

This is noteworthy... it looks like a done deal at this point that this will be the wettest spring on record across northern VT, and we still have 2 weeks left of May to go.

So record precipitation March/April/May along with deep snowpack at all elevations entering spring-time, its easy to see how Lake Champlain is having a 150-year or more flood event.

.CLIMATE...

BTV IS FAST APPROACHING THE WETTEST METEOROLOGICAL SPRING

(MARCH...APRIL...AND MAY) ON RECORD. THE CURRENT RECORD OF 15.46

INCHES WAS SET IN THE SPRING OF 1983. AS OF 5 PM SUNDAY

(5/15)...BTV HAS SEEN 14.86 INCHES THIS SPRING WHICH IS CURRENTLY

2ND PLACE. WITH CONTINUED RAIN OVERNIGHT...A NEW SPRING RAINFALL

RECORD MAY BE ESTABLISHED MONDAY MORNING.

Absolutely atrocious day out there... temps in the upper 40s with steady rain and more coming.

[borderwx]

So we got this stick from a friend. supposed to be a barometer of sorts I guess.

Not lookin to thrilled today

Over an 1" now since the showers kicked up late yesterday afternoon. Wasn't to bad until late this afteroon, dropped to 40F with gusty winds. good gortex testing weather.

On a plus side, as long as you don't get close enough to smell him, the dog looks cleaner and fluffier than ever

[dendrite]

47.1F

1.58" since Saturday. 1.76" for CON.