Winter 2011-2012

[ORH_wxman]

The major eruption took place in June, 1991. I don't recall any markedly different wx much before early 1993, and the cold bottomed out for NNE in 1/94. How much of that was volcano and how much was broader patterns, I don't know.

11/1986 - if that's the storm of about 11/21, it's one of my weenie laments about Nov snow. We had 4" in Gardiner followed by a moderate (0.4" accretion) ice storm. Ft. Kent, which I'd moved from 13 months earlier, had 21". The big snow awaited my departure.

Summer of 1992 was the coldest summer on record in the U.S. and I believe many New England sites that is also their coldest summer on record if we are talking a bit closer to home.

[powderfreak]

I'd kill for a good snowy November... its been a while and would make the start of ski season that much easier for mountain operations staff. The last big November snow I can remember was an upslope snowfall several years ago where we got 2 feet of fluff. I'd trade 24" of shredded tissue paper for 12" of concrete at that time of year. Lets hope for a big, wet snow bomb.

[Typhoon Tip]

I'd kill for a good snowy November... its been a while and would make the start of ski season that much easier for mountain operations staff. The last big November snow I can remember was an upslope snowfall several years ago where we got 2 feet of fluff. I'd trade 24" of shredded tissue paper for 12" of concrete at that time of year. Lets hope for a big, wet snow bomb.

Don't quote me ...but I vaguely recall reading a statistical deal that showed that November +snow/cold anomalies led poorer DJF turn out overall.

Folks may want to look into that before their hopes are powerful enough to actually control the weather on some eerie quantum scales - LOL

[powderfreak]

Don't quote me ...but I vaguely recall reading a statistical deal that showed that November +snow/cold anomalies led poorer DJF turn out overall.

Folks may want to look into that before their hopes are powerful enough to actually control the weather on some eerie quantum scales - LOL

Yeah that's not surprising... to snow in November you've gotta be in a nice cold pattern usually (unless you get that one rouge snowfall in a warm pattern) and that probably switches from cold anomalies to warm anomalies right as you enter the heart of winter later in December. As a very vague baseline, I tend to think there are cycles that last around 6 weeks (very rough average)... so if its cold in November and December, its probably warm in January and February.

But I'd rather take the snow and then see what Mother Nature lays out in the winter months. I doubt the correlation is as big up here, too. Probably much stronger down in SNE and mid-Atlantic? (that being Nov snows lead to poor DJF).

[ORH_wxman]

Don't quote me ...but I vaguely recall reading a statistical deal that showed that November +snow/cold anomalies led poorer DJF turn out overall.

Folks may want to look into that before their hopes are powerful enough to actually control the weather on some eerie quantum scales - LOL

Well we can do a quick rundown of recent snowy Novembers (at least for Southern New England...can't speak about further north):

2004

2002

1997

1995

1991

1989

1987

1986

1985

1980

It looks like in the past 30 years, snowy Novembers tell us very little about the rest of winter. There's some blockbuster years in there and some total stinkers and a little bit of in between. They seem pretty evenly balanced.

[powderfreak]

Well we can do a quick rundown of recent snowy Novembers (at least for Southern New England...can't speak about further north):

2004

2002

1997

1995

1991

1989

1987

1986

1985

1980

It looks like in the past 30 years, snowy Novembers tell us very little about the rest of winter. There's some blockbuster years in there and some total stinkers and a little bit of in between. They seem pretty evenly balanced.

Good to know it really doesn't matter... I'm not sure how most of those November's were up here, but I do know that if its snowing in SNE then at the very least we likely have cold weather up here for snowmaking. All I want this year is to open the ski resort on schedule, the weekend before Thanksgiving. Two of the past five years we've had significant trouble laying down a base and keeping it into early December. It'd be nice to buck that trend. I think the last winter we had great early season snow was 2003... especially December 2003 when BTV ended up with close to 5 feet of snow for the month, and the mountains were over 100" for the month.

Early season 2003 had so much snow that the Jay Peak co-op reported several days with 100-inch snow depth which is absolutely insane for December 19th. I think Jay Peak and Mansfield both had close to 150" snowfall by the end of December 2003. After that the winter sort of crapped the bed.

This is a sick snowpack for December.

942 AM EST FRI DEC 19 2003
        	FLOOD        STAGE    PRESENT      TEMPS        SNOW
STATION      STAGE  PCPN  /POOL    WEATHER   MAX MIN CUR  NEW TTL LIQ

JAY PEAK            1.05     	CLEAR        32  12  12 16.0 100

941 AM EST SAT DEC 20 2003
            FLOOD        STAGE    PRESENT      TEMPS        SNOW
STATION      STAGE  PCPN  /POOL    WEATHER   MAX MIN CUR  NEW TTL LIQ

JAY PEAK               T         CLOUDY       20  13  13    T 100

941 AM EST SUN DEC 21 2003
            FLOOD        STAGE    PRESENT      TEMPS        SNOW
STATION      STAGE  PCPN  /POOL    WEATHER   MAX MIN CUR  NEW TTL LIQ

JAY PEAK            0.00         PTLY CLOUDY  15   4  12  0.0 98

[ORH_wxman]

I think the last winter we had great early season snow was 2003... especially December 2003 when BTV ended up with close to 5 feet of snow for the month, and the mountains were over 100" for the month.

2007?

[Typhoon Tip]

Good to know it really doesn't matter... I'm not sure how most of those November's were up here, but I do know that if its snowing in SNE then at the very least we likely have cold weather up here for snowmaking. All I want this year is to open the ski resort on schedule, the weekend before Thanksgiving. Two of the past five years we've had significant trouble laying down a base and keeping it into early December. It'd be nice to buck that trend. I think the last winter we had great early season snow was 2003... especially December 2003 when BTV ended up with close to 5 feet of snow for the month, and the mountains were over 100" for the month.

Early season 2003 had so much snow that the Jay Peak co-op reported several days with 100-inch snow depth which is absolutely insane for December 19th. I think Jay Peak and Mansfield both had close to 150" snowfall by the end of December 2003. After that the winter sort of crapped the bed.

This is a sick snowpack for December.

942 AM EST FRI DEC 19 2003
            FLOOD        STAGE    PRESENT      TEMPS        SNOW
STATION      STAGE  PCPN  /POOL    WEATHER   MAX MIN CUR  NEW TTL LIQ

JAY PEAK            1.05         CLEAR        32  12  12 16.0 100

941 AM EST SAT DEC 20 2003
            FLOOD        STAGE    PRESENT      TEMPS        SNOW
STATION      STAGE  PCPN  /POOL    WEATHER   MAX MIN CUR  NEW TTL LIQ

JAY PEAK               T         CLOUDY       20  13  13    T 100

941 AM EST SUN DEC 21 2003
            FLOOD        STAGE    PRESENT      TEMPS        SNOW
STATION      STAGE  PCPN  /POOL    WEATHER   MAX MIN CUR  NEW TTL LIQ

JAY PEAK            0.00         PTLY CLOUDY  15   4  12  0.0 98

The linear overview that may be the case... But 100 years is a better sample set, a, and b, I think scale of anomaly mattered.

I'm going to have to look that up - Harvey Leonard introduced that to me back in the day...like 204 years ago jesus

[tamarack]

Summer of 1992 was the coldest summer on record in the U.S. and I believe many New England sites that is also their coldest summer on record if we are talking a bit closer to home.

For my single data point, then about 9 miles south of AUG, JJA 1992 was my 2nd coolest of 12 summers 1986-87, 0.46F less cool than 1986. '92 had the coolest July, while '86 was coolest of 12 for both June and August. Coldest winter there was 1993-94 by far, 2.44F below 92-93, which was 2nd.

[J.Spin]

Good to know it really doesn't matter... I'm not sure how most of those November's were up here, but I do know that if its snowing in SNE then at the very least we likely have cold weather up here for snowmaking. All I want this year is to open the ski resort on schedule, the weekend before Thanksgiving. Two of the past five years we've had significant trouble laying down a base and keeping it into early December. It'd be nice to buck that trend. I think the last winter we had great early season snow was 2003... especially December 2003 when BTV ended up with close to 5 feet of snow for the month, and the mountains were over 100" for the month.

2007?

I was thinking about '07 as well, and was surprised when PF mentioned ‘03 as the last great early season. I thought the start to the ’07-’08 season was very nice because at the house we had a decent November with 18.8” of snow, and then a great December with 67.2” more, so 86.0” had fallen in the valley before the start of the new year. The mountains must have seen well over 100” by that point. I couldn’t find any references to season totals for the mountains in my trip reports from the end of December ’07, but in my December 29^th report from that season I mentioned that the depth of snowpack at the Mt. Mansfield stake was already 54”. Using that rule of thumb I learned from you PF, that would probably mean ~150” had fallen up there by that point? The start of the subsequent ’08-’09 season also seemed decent according to my numbers, with 20.5” in November ’08, followed by 55.9” in December ’08 for a total of 76.4”. We weren’t yet at our current place in ’03-’04, but based on your comment about BTV, I wish I had the numbers for December ’03. That 67.2” from December ’07 is still the highest monthly snowfall total I’ve recorded since I started tracking snowfall at our current location in ‘06, and I can’t see that really being the top end with months like December ’03 and seasons like ’01-’02 out there. That December ’07 total was attained without any huge storms (no two-footers or even any 20-inchers) and only two substantial systems (19.2” and 16.5”) so if we get into one of those appropriate patterns with big storms followed by upslope, there’s got to be a big month out there.

[powderfreak]

2007?

Yeah I completely forgot about that year, haha. Whoops... I definitely do not have the weather memory bank that you do, Will With that said, I should be able to remember 4-5 years back

Thanks, J.Spin for the info from that year. Was that the November where opening day at a lot of the ski areas coincided with a 8-12"+ upslope snowfall the night before?

I remember it as the Saturday before Thanksgiving of one of those years (either Nov 2007 or Nov 2008) and I think J.Spin's house in "upslope alley" pulled 6"+ in as many hours overnight when the forecast was for scattered snow showers. I remember my 4:30am drive to the mountain from Burlington as starting under clear skies and 20 minutes down the interstate it was a raging blizzard of strong NW wind and 1"/hr snowfall by the time I hit the Waterbury exit. We picked up 8-10" overnight at the mountain and opening day was a powder day.

[ORH_wxman]

Yeah I completely forgot about that year, haha. Whoops... I definitely do not have the weather memory bank that you do, Will With that said, I should be able to remember 4-5 years back

Thanks, J.Spin for the info from that year. Was that the November where opening day at a lot of the ski areas coincided with a 8-12"+ upslope snowfall the night before?

I remember it as the Saturday before Thanksgiving of one of those years (either Nov 2007 or Nov 2008) and I think J.Spin's house in "upslope alley" pulled 6"+ in as many hours overnight when the forecast was for scattered snow showers. I remember my 4:30am drive to the mountain from Burlington as starting under clear skies and 20 minutes down the interstate it was a raging blizzard of strong NW wind and 1"/hr snowfall by the time I hit the Waterbury exit. We picked up 8-10" overnight at the mountain and opening day was a powder day.

Classic cold La Ninas tend to really bring out some good early season opportunities. We wasted a few last year though you guys got a great upslope event in early December...but we made up the slow start with a monster mid-winter. '07 and '08 both had fast starts.

[J.Spin]

I remember it as the Saturday before Thanksgiving of one of those years (either Nov 2007 or Nov 2008) and I think J.Spin's house in "upslope alley" pulled 6"+ in as many hours overnight when the forecast was for scattered snow showers. I remember my 4:30am drive to the mountain from Burlington as starting under clear skies and 20 minutes down the interstate it was a raging blizzard of strong NW wind and 1"/hr snowfall by the time I hit the Waterbury exit. We picked up 8-10" overnight at the mountain and opening day was a powder day.

I’d forgotten about that, but indeed you are correct PF. I looked it up in my records and it was the morning of Saturday, November 22^nd, 2008; from 1:00 A.M. to 7:00 A.M. we picked up a fairly unexpected 6.0” of 40 to 1 upslope snow (0.15” of liquid). The eventual event total at our location was 14.2” from just 0.33” of liquid, and that really helped to get the November snowfall numbers up, even if it wasn’t a huge base builder. I’ve got the play by play text from my Eastern posts, and several sets of snow/skiing pictures came out of that event as well; the fifth image link looks like a good rundown of the event with words, radar images, pictures, etc. After that November though, the past two have been quite slow, so it would be great to get back to something like that in ’11-’12 as long as it didn’t mean too much sacrifice later in the season. It doesn’t appear as though it has to be a huge sacrifice though; looking at the numbers I have from the house, both ’07-’08 and ’08-’09 still continued at a reasonably strong pace with over 100” of snowfall in the JFM period; they both just fizzled somewhat at the tail end of the snowfall season.

[weathafella]

I’d forgotten about that, but indeed you are correct PF. I looked it up in my records and it was the morning of Saturday, November 22^nd, 2008; from 1:00 A.M. to 7:00 A.M. we picked up a fairly unexpected 6.0” of 40 to 1 upslope snow (0.15” of liquid). The eventual event total at our location was 14.2” from just 0.33” of liquid, and that really helped to get the November snowfall numbers up, even if it wasn’t a huge base builder. I’ve got the play by play text from my Eastern posts, and several sets of snow/skiing pictures came out of that event as well; the fifth image link looks like a good rundown of the event with words, radar images, pictures, etc. After that November though, the past two have been quite slow, so it would be great to get back to something like that in ’11-’12 as long as it didn’t mean too much sacrifice later in the season. It doesn’t appear as though it has to be a huge sacrifice though; looking at the numbers I have from the house, both ’07-’08 and ’08-’09 still continued at a reasonably strong pace with over 100” of snowfall in the JFM period; they both just fizzled somewhat at the tail end of the snowfall season.

I had more wine than usual tonight but just added in my head your snow totals. I remembered it when I started this post but I think it's something like 187.1 Nice!

[Ginx snewx]

I had more wine than usual tonight but just added in my head your snow totals. I remembered it when I started this post but I think it's something like 187.1 Nice!

Jerry FYI

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-sun-major-solar.html

[weathafella]

Jerry FYI

http://www.physorg.c...ajor-solar.html

Let's hope it holds!

[adk]

Yeah I completely forgot about that year, haha. Whoops... I definitely do not have the weather memory bank that you do, Will With that said, I should be able to remember 4-5 years back

Thanks, J.Spin for the info from that year. Was that the November where opening day at a lot of the ski areas coincided with a 8-12"+ upslope snowfall the night before?

I remember it as the Saturday before Thanksgiving of one of those years (either Nov 2007 or Nov 2008) and I think J.Spin's house in "upslope alley" pulled 6"+ in as many hours overnight when the forecast was for scattered snow showers. I remember my 4:30am drive to the mountain from Burlington as starting under clear skies and 20 minutes down the interstate it was a raging blizzard of strong NW wind and 1"/hr snowfall by the time I hit the Waterbury exit. We picked up 8-10" overnight at the mountain and opening day was a powder day.

This was 2008. I believe this should illustrate that point well:

http://www.famousinternetskiers.com/trip-reports/08-09/vtah-part-i-stowe-opening-day-2008/2/

[adk]

Whith that said....08-09 was NOT a great year. Esp. compared to 09-10 or 10-11 which were fantastic bordering on absurd. Personally I don't like a cold november. I prefer a cold summer and cold october. Let the pattern flip mid october to warm, last about 6 weeks and then flip back in january to cold again. Fine by me.

[Ginx snewx]

Those of us with solar, volcano fetishes have wet spots today. More and more national coverage on AWT ideas from a month ago. This might be the party of the century, lining up celebs now, I know Snoop has guaranteed a return.

[weathafella]

Whith that said....08-09 was NOT a great year. Esp. compared to 09-10 or 10-11 which were fantastic bordering on absurd. Personally I don't like a cold november. I prefer a cold summer and cold october. Let the pattern flip mid october to warm, last about 6 weeks and then flip back in january to cold again. Fine by me.

I would argue 08-09 was WAY better vs 09-10 for the Pike northward which includes the most populated area of SNE.

[ORH_wxman]

I would argue 08-09 was WAY better vs 09-10 for the Pike northward which includes the most populated area of SNE.

N VT got a 3 foot fluff bomb out of that New Years 2010 weekend retrograde job that we had. They did ok in that late Feb sequence too, I think they had some rain taint in the 2nd big retro storm but they did manage to get a lot of wet snow out of the whole ordeal. It was def a better winter in that area compared to further east in NH and Maine and down in our area.

2008-2009 was good up there, but not as anomalously good as it was for Boston metro-west. They had a huge December but then kind of got skunked a few times on storms too far east. One of the January events was an ORH-eastward special (I think it was the two parter that happened on a Sunday) and the March 1, 2009 storm also whiffed to their SE.

[tamarack]

I would argue 08-09 was WAY better vs 09-10 for the Pike northward which includes the most populated area of SNE.

And farther north in Maine, the contrast is even greater. 08-09 had huge storms 12/21-22 and 2/22-23 and several other medium/large events, while 09-10 died early on Jan 3 as the mild marine air arrived and stayed locked in thru April, resulting in the mildest winter (using DJFM as March is supposed to still be winter here) ever recorded at CAR (72 yr data) and Farmington (118 yr data.) JFMA at CAR averaged +8.6; 2nd mildest (1958) averaged +4.7. Not even close.

[Mr Torchey]

I think this winter will feature very little snow, perhaps historically low amounts/. Temps near normal. Storm track texas to chicago...........secondary devel enough to save far northern vt and nh.

[CoastalWx]

N VT got a 3 foot fluff bomb out of that New Years 2010 weekend retrograde job that we had. They did ok in that late Feb sequence too, I think they had some rain taint in the 2nd big retro storm but they did manage to get a lot of wet snow out of the whole ordeal. It was def a better winter in that area compared to further east in NH and Maine and down in our area.

2008-2009 was good up there, but not as anomalously good as it was for Boston metro-west. They had a huge December but then kind of got skunked a few times on storms too far east. One of the January events was an ORH-eastward special (I think it was the two parter that happened on a Sunday) and the March 1, 2009 storm also whiffed to their SE.

NYE fluff bomb was nice as well.

[OKpowdah]

08-09 was an okay winter, and 09-10 was a horrible horrible horrible 4 months

The New Years 2010 retrograde thing was crap. 10" spread out over 72 hours is not a storm.

The NYE 2008 fluff bomb was AMAZING!! By contrast, that was 10" in 4 hours. Spectacular dendrites with ratios easily over 20:1

[Ginx snewx]

Perhaps someone should start an old winters thread. Tuesday begins the reversal of daylight as we slowly churn to another crazy winter.

[OKpowdah]

Perhaps someone should start an old winters thread. Tuesday begins the reversal of daylight as we slowly churn to another crazy winter.

That's the only thing I don't like about winter

[tamarack]

Perhaps someone should start an old winters thread. Tuesday begins the reversal of daylight as we slowly churn to another crazy winter.

In keeping with that, I looked at our forecasts/guesses for this past winter. 27 individuals posted forecasts for the 7 cities, with a few adding some local locations. My numbers for 2010-11 come from the Utah Climate Center, and for climo, several sources. For BOS,ORH,BDL,PVD,BTV they came from posts on the forecast thread itself. For CON,PWM,CAR they came from the M(aine)EMA Gen wx site, which was different from the thread numbers for CON,PWM. The "avg" column is the average for all 27 forecasts.

Loc.....Climo..10-11.....Avg.....My guesses

BOS......43.3....79.7.......47.4.......44

ORH.....69.1....92.7.......74.6.......78

BDL......49.9....89.1.......47.8.......43

PVD......36.7....45.5.......38.4.......32

CON.....64.6....86.0.......76.6.......76

BTV.......83.9...115.4......94.5......89

PWM.....66.4.....78.7.......76.0......82

CAR....116.0...108.4.......n/a.......122

MBY.......88......100.5.......n/a.......96

If we had to bust, busting low was the way to go. Only PWM was real close, though CON and PVD were within 20%. Except for ORH, I managed always to be farther from actual snowfall than was the average forecast.

[nzucker]

N VT got a 3 foot fluff bomb out of that New Years 2010 weekend retrograde job that we had. They did ok in that late Feb sequence too, I think they had some rain taint in the 2nd big retro storm but they did manage to get a lot of wet snow out of the whole ordeal. It was def a better winter in that area compared to further east in NH and Maine and down in our area.

2008-2009 was good up there, but not as anomalously good as it was for Boston metro-west. They had a huge December but then kind of got skunked a few times on storms too far east. One of the January events was an ORH-eastward special (I think it was the two parter that happened on a Sunday) and the March 1, 2009 storm also whiffed to their SE.

Middlebury had above average snowfall in both 08-09 and 09-10....the former year being front-weighted with a dull second half, and the latter year being back-weighted with a cold, dry December and then huge snowfalls of 20" on 1/3 and 2/24...the Green Mountains also eventually changed back to snow in the 2/25 Snowicane. Even though temperatures were MUCH milder in 09-10, a couple big storms got the Champlain Valley above average.

I think this winter will feature very little snow, perhaps historically low amounts/. Temps near normal. Storm track texas to chicago...........secondary devel enough to save far northern vt and nh.

It's hard for our area to have historically low snowfall with near normal temperatures. Also, that storm track would probably cause us to be well above average in temperatures if it occurred frequently enough.

[ORH_wxman]

It's hard for our area to have historically low snowfall with near normal temperatures. Also, that storm track would probably cause us to be well above average in temperatures if it occurred frequently enough.

1988-1989, 1979-1980.