NNE Heart of Winter

[powderfreak]

1F with light snow...more like diamond dust but white dusting on cars and the road shows this dust is accumulating. It almost always snows a dusting when it gets this cold... like every drop of moisture in the low levels is turning into tiny tiny flakes with just enough weight to fall to the ground.

[mreaves]

.1F here in Barre Town.

[klw]

-1f here in Peacham, dropping steadily though I imagine it will even out later.

Only -.2.2f here so the drop has slowed. I am guessing it is much colder at the bottom of the hill.

[mahk_webstah]

6 here but breezy. forecast to go around 0. Notice that Berlin is at 0 and reporting calm winds. If they stay calm they can really plummet.

[powderfreak]

-3F/-9F

Cold.

[adk]

A degree here in BTV. GOing running . I think this might be the outdoor running limit.

[dendrite]

0.9F with a pesky 5-10mph wind continuing. It looks like we'll have to wait for the first below zero reading of the season (if there is one at all).

[MaineJayhawk]

1 lonely F'ing (that would be Fahrenheiting) degree.

Would be better with snow crunching underfoot.

[borderwx]

beautiful. dead calm, star covered sky, -8F. lots of deer moving out back now.

[Lava Rock]

3.5F. imagine the radiational cooling had we had snow on the ground. I' starting to wonder if we'll even get 50% of our avg. seasonal snowfall. This pattern blows hard.

[Allenson]

1F with light snow...more like diamond dust but white dusting on cars and the road shows this dust is accumulating. It almost always snows a dusting when it gets this cold... like every drop of moisture in the low levels is turning into tiny tiny flakes with just enough weight to fall to the ground.

-6F here this morning and we had the same sort of 'stuff' falling from the sky last night. Just enough to leave a trace of whiteness on surfaces. I went out for some firewood last night and I could see the dust falling only in front of the floodlight. Narry a cloud to be seen when it was falling too. Pretty cool, no pun intended, ha-ha...

[adk]

really interesting experience on the run. BTV registered 1 degree at the airport. My outside therm at red rocks said 3. Went running along the lake (light winds) and it was easy 10-12F right along the lake. The lake isn't frozen and you could feel its relative warmth. Very neat.

[klw]

We bottomed out at -5.3f though the Davis across the street shows it hit -6.6. http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=KVTPEACH2

I also was greeted by the diamond dust on the car and the joy that is frosted windows on the car- frosted on the inside. I hate trying to get scrape the inside of the windows. It is hard to scrape plus it looks like it snowed all over the dash when I am done.

[powderfreak]

really interesting experience on the run. BTV registered 1 degree at the airport. My outside therm at red rocks said 3. Went running along the lake (light winds) and it was easy 10-12F right along the lake. The lake isn't frozen and you could feel its relative warmth. Very neat.

Just wait till April when its 75F at KBTV a couple miles inland, 60F on Church Street, and 40F on the bike path

I still remember freshman year at UVM and it was cooking hot in late April (like 80s) and the entire freshman class was like yeahhh we are going partying down at North Beach... BBQs, beers, co-eds in bikinis, etc. Everyone rushes down there, gets out of the cars and is like WTF, its like 38 degrees down here at the shore with ice still floating in coves.

Any sea smoke or lake haze this morning? That used to be one of the coolest sights, when it just looks like the entire lake is on fire and smoking.

[adk]

Just wait till April when its 75F at KBTV a couple miles inland, 60F on Church Street, and 40F on the bike path

I still remember freshman year at UVM and it was cooking hot in late April (like 80s) and the entire freshman class was like yeahhh we are going partying down at North Beach... BBQs, beers, co-eds in bikinis, etc. Everyone rushes down there, gets out of the cars and is like WTF, its like 38 degrees down here at the shore with ice still floating in coves.

Any sea smoke or lake haze this morning? That used to be one of the coolest sights, when it just looks like the entire lake is on fire and smoking.

As a rower I'm well aware of the April water related "WHY THE F IS IT SO COLD" effect. Many days it was sunny and warm on campus and 40s and cold on the water a mile away. Same effect for Hoboken in the Spring. Newark would would 70, Hoboken 50 as the Hudson was still ice cold.

There was lots of smoke on the water today. There were also some neat ice patches past the water treatment plant that floated around looking like Jelly fish.

Def. "feels" like a winter day in BTV now. Low clouds. Grey. Wind. People walking around with scowls on their face. Wind is starting to shift a touch and pick up. Now seems to be coming more west/southwest.

[powderfreak]

Yeah today is the first day all season that I will not be putting my skis on my feet...I was starting to consider trying to go for everyday all season long, but a bad head cold and -12F up top/-4F base was enough to sway me to get some indoor things done. I figure I gotta cross that bridge sooner or later but I actually have some things to take care of today (like cleaning that's been neglected for 6 weeks) and errands. But from town I can see there's probably been some flurries moving over the mountain as every once in a while the upper 1-2,000ft of Mansfield turns a milky white but it dissipates really quickly.

[hvysnow79]

JAny sea smoke or lake haze this morning? That used to be one of the coolest sights, when it just looks like the entire lake is on fire and smoking.

Here is a great site for checking out how the bigger lakes are doing water temp wise, ice in/out, arctic sea smoke. It is my buddies site and I am meant to check earlier, so not sure if Winnie actually had the arctic smoke or not this morning. He does have a a very cool time lapse set up if you catch it in time, I forget how long back it goes.

http://www.blackcatnh.com/

[ono]

Yeah today is the first day all season that I will not be putting my skis on my feet...I was starting to consider trying to go for everyday all season long, but a bad head cold and -12F up top/-4F base was enough to sway me to get some indoor things done. I figure I gotta cross that bridge sooner or later but I actually have some things to take care of today (like cleaning that's been neglected for 6 weeks) and errands. But from town I can see there's probably been some flurries moving over the mountain as every once in a while the upper 1-2,000ft of Mansfield turns a milky white but it dissipates really quickly.

Hey PF, a little off subject. the feb 19th to 24th 2009 event-I wasn't on the east coast that season- but hear about it all the time. what exactly happened to cause that? was it a low parked over the maritimes, or just constant clippers/pulses? wondering how the valleys faired compared to elevation.

some talk about the deepest day, east or west, they've ever had occurring during that time.

do you have any other comparable experiences over the years?

[adk]

Ono-

I took a look at this event here: http://www.famousint...winter-outlook/

it was essentially (TWO) deep upper level lows that rolled slowy through. It was deep. 40 inches in the week. (at valley level)

The lows were big, slow and wet. Lots of embedded s/w and upper level divergence. Very fun. Though I doubt it was the best ever.

I know a few people that say the snow that fell last year Dec. 6-7, in a 40 inch upslope event was the lightest craziest snow ever.

[wxeyeNH]

Cold day with temps slowly rising from 0F to 15F. Newfound Lake is wide open. A couple of the small bays have a bit of ice but the northwest wind is keeping the lake from freezing. Its ready to go however. Just 8 hours of calm conditions would cause most of the lake to freeze over. It started to do this before the big wind so temp must be very close to 32F.

[J.Spin]

Hey PF, a little off subject. the feb 19th to 24th 2009 event-I wasn't on the east coast that season- but hear about it all the time. what exactly happened to cause that? was it a low parked over the maritimes, or just constant clippers/pulses? wondering how the valleys faired compared to elevation.

some talk about the deepest day, east or west, they've ever had occurring during that time.

do you have any other comparable experiences over the years?

ono, if you’re ever interested in fairly recent (since 2006) mountain/valley snowfall events and the associated skiing around here in the Northern Greens, you can check the weather page at our website – you’ll see that adk used some of my data in that link he mentioned. We’ve got detailed mountain and valley text about each event (which in most cases are my observations/updates to EasternUSwx.com & Americanwx.com), and there are snow/skiing photos for many of the storms. As I’m writing this, I realize that the archive is getting pretty big, the Sunday/Monday event we just had was the 237^th storm in my records. If you click on the link to our weather page above, you can scroll down a bit and you’ll see links to the past five winter seasons – choose your season of interest, and on that page you can scroll down to find the link to a specific snowstorm that you are looking for.

Anyway, I grabbed the entries out of the table for 2008-2009 storms and pasted them below. I think the links below should work for you to check on the details, but I can answer a couple of your specific questions from my perspective before Powderfreak weighs in. I actually have that Feb 19-24, 2009 period split into two storms, so there must have been a big enough demarcation/lull to formally split it into two events (as you can see in the table below).

1. It could have been a couple of those spinning Maritime lows that did the trick like you’re thinking, although it sounds a little different the way adk puts it - Powderfreak will probably provide some additional thoughts. Usually I’ll talk about the origins/type of storm in my text, although I didn’t see it in a quick look.
   
2. In terms of snow totals in the valleys vs. the mountains, Bolton Valley received 72 inches of snow during that stretch (at ~3,000’ elevation). We’re down at the bottom of the Winooski Valley below the resort and we got 33.4 inches at ~500’ elevation, so about 50% of the mountain’s snowfall for a valley location along the spine.
   
3. The skiing was excellent of course, but I don’t think I’d put it as “all time” in terms of depth or anything. Especially with Jay Peak in the mix, the local mountains are usually good for a storm or two in that three to six-foot range every season (depending on how one lumps events together). Getting six feet is definitely on the high end of that of course, but again it was actually six feet in six days, and technically back to back storms of about three feet each. However, by the end of the two cycles if you were hitting terrain that nobody had touched up to that point, it was clearly deep stuff.
   
4. In line with #3 above, another event that comes to mind is the 2007 Valentine’s Day Storm. We picked up 29.2 inches at the house, and the mountains topped out at around 60 inches, so again basically double what we had in the valley. If you look at my Winter Weather Summary Table, I note the largest storm for each season, and you can see that the smallest number there is 18.2 inches, so if you double that for the mountains it’s around three feet. The doubling thing to get the mountain totals is not exact of course, but it’s a rough guide. The big exception is at the fringes of the season where elevation comes into play and we may end up with rain in the valleys while the mountains are getting pounded. If you check the storm entries in my data tables, look for the big events in the valley, and those will generally be the big events in the mountains, and I’ll often have the ski area snowfall numbers. Anyway, I was just looking through some of my stuff and there are many multiple-foot storms in there for the mountains – you can see some mentioned in the text at adk’s link.
   

Here are the entries for the event you were asking about, the “text” links generally have observations, and the “Pics” links are ski trip report and pictures:

Event Date(s) Snowfall (in.) Cum. Snowfall (in.) Weather Text Weather/Ski Images

36 2/18/09-2/21/09 15.2 146.3 Text Pics1 Pics2 Pics3

37 2/22/09-2/24/09 18.2 164.5 Text Pics1 Pics2 Pics3

Here are the snow totals for the local ski resorts on the spine of the Northern Greens for that stretch, listed north to south:

Jay Peak: 68”

Smugg’s: 54”

Stowe: 52”

Bolton: 72”

That was a fun stretch of skiing, lots of fluff:

[Ginx snewx]

Jspin, wow on your website, absolutely fantastic historical record. Thanks for it.

[ono]

Anyway, I grabbed the entries out of the table for 2008-2009 storms and pasted them below. I think the links below should work for you to check on the details, but I can answer a couple of your specific questions from my perspective before Powderfreak weighs in. I actually have that Feb 19-24, 2009 period split into two storms, so there must have been a big enough demarcation/lull to formally split it into two events (as you can see in the table below).

Been watching your measurements for years- snow recording like clockwork. didn't realize you had everything cataloged so exhaustively.

it likely was 2 events (a brief break in the action). as it compares to the valentines day storm- i skied that one, the wind worked the snow over by the latter part of the storm...

i'm gonna start reading your site now.

[powderfreak]

I don't know why but I just can't place that storm series. I'm on my mobile device but will look at Jspins records later and our Stowe snowfall spreadsheets. I keep thinking of Feb 23ish of 2010 when we got two-three feet on the MTN. I was living in BTV in Feb '09 but just cannot mentally place that storm.

To me Valentines Day 2007 is the storm I'll always hold in the highest regard as that was just epic heavy snow. That was a game changer.

[Hitman]

I don't know why but I just can't place that storm series. I'm on my mobile device but will look at Jspins records later and our Stowe snowfall spreadsheets. I keep thinking of Feb 23ish of 2010 when we got two-three feet on the MTN. I was living in BTV in Feb '09 but just cannot mentally place that storm.

To me Valentines Day 2007 is the storm I'll always hold in the highest regard as that was just epic heavy snow. That was a game changer.

Spring '07 was the best skiing of my life. Valentines, st. Patricks and easter ftw. December '06 we were jonesing for snow just like this year. Just sayin.

[J.Spin]

Event totals: 0.8” Snow/0.01” L.E.

I found 0.8 inches of snow on the snowboard this morning. The flakes are only moderate in size, but the snow is falling into air that is absolutely still and they stacked very well. With the light snowfall continuing, accumulation for the season could soon be hitting the 40-inch mark. So in closing in on that point of reference, I’ve checked on how this season is stacking up to others in my data set. Snowfall for 2011-2012 is still running well ahead of 2006-2007 (which saw just 22.1 inches of snow as of this date) but this season has now fallen behind 2009-2010 due to a 24.9-inch upslope event that was our largest storm of that season.

Some details from the 6:00 A.M. observations are below:

New Snow: 0.8 inches

New Liquid: 0.01 inches

Snow/Water Ratio: 80.0

Snow Density: 1.3% H2O

Temperature: 19.9 F

Sky: Light Snow (1-8 mm flakes)

Snow at the stake: 4.5 inches

EDIT: I just noticed as I was looking through my event summary text, that the event that just catapulted 2009-2010 ahead of this one for snowfall was the record-breaking continuous snowfall event in which Burlington received 37.6 inches of snow from January 1-3, 2010. The BTV NWS has a very nice summary page for that event, which would probably be of interest to winter weather enthusiasts that haven’t seen it: Champlain Powder: The Historic Burlington Vermont Snowfall of 2-3 January 2010

I’ve added the snowfall accumulations map from the BTV NWS for that event below:

[J.Spin]

Ginx & ono, thanks for the compliments on the website, hopefully folks will enjoy using it. In fact, ono asking his question about a specific storm is a perfect example of why I think it’s so useful to have all that data available. Fortunately, we’ve also got American Weather as a great resource for storm/snowfall archives, since my data are generally focused on Northern Vermont/Skiing.

On a related note, folks probably notice that I often put linked text in my posts here at American Weather. Hopefully it’s useful in an immediate sense in the posts, since I try to link geographical areas, events, and terms from around here for people that aren’t familiar with the area, but a big part of why I do it is to facilitate the creation of my storm summary pages at the end of the season. I think the links can be extremely useful there for archival/research purposes. Having learned the frustration (way too many times) of composing a nice post on-line in a forum, only to see the internet or the forum software have a burp and destroy the post, I compose all my posts in MS Word first, then past them into the forum. I have a running MS Word file for each storm/event, and that ultimately becomes the html storm summary. For links, I have a file containing all the linked text I use (which I update as needed), so I just paste in the pre-linked text for each post when I write it up and it’s fairly quick. Putting all the links into my archive text after the fact when I make the page for each storm from the 2010-2011 season was a ton of work, so I’d like to avoid that if possible. What I’d really like would be some sort of software that automatically takes my list of linked text and integrates it right into my posts/summaries - that would be really slick. It seems as though the NWS has something like this for their forecast discussions, because they link all those meteorology terms and it appears to be automated.

[J.Spin]

We’ve actually got some pretty steady snow falling here in Burlington at the moment – it’s light but accumulating, so I’d be interested to hear what Powderfreak is getting in the higher elevations.

[klw]

We had a light dusting as I left the house about 7:30 ish but it was just getting steady. Hopefully we can get a nice coating today.

[powderfreak]

It is snowing steadily here in town... looks like maybe an inch so far. Massive, massive dendrites. These things are stacking up like potato chips in a bag.

I'm not at the mountain yet today but will be heading up shortly for our 11am ops meeting.

Tim Kelley just text me a pic and it looks like its absolutely dumping up there.

NYZ028-030-031-034-035-VTZ001>009-016>018-051530-

CALEDONIA VT-EASTERN ADDISON VT-EASTERN CHITTENDEN VT-

EASTERN CLINTON NY-EASTERN ESSEX NY-EASTERN FRANKLIN VT-ESSEX VT-

GRAND ISLE VT-LAMOILLE VT-ORLEANS VT-SOUTHERN FRANKLIN NY-

WASHINGTON VT-WESTERN ADDISON VT-WESTERN CHITTENDEN VT-

WESTERN CLINTON NY-WESTERN ESSEX NY-WESTERN FRANKLIN VT-

909 AM EST THU JAN 5 2012

...SNOW SQUALLS WILL MOVE THROUGH NORTHERN NEW YORK AND PARTS OF

CENTRAL AND NORTHERN VERMONT THIS MORNING...

AT 900 AM EST...SNOW SQUALLS WERE LOCATED FROM HIGHGATE TO ST.

ALBANS BAY TO SOUTH HERO TO SARANAC LAKE...MOVING SOUTHEAST AT 20

MPH.

THE COMBINATION OF SNOW AND BLOWING SNOW WILL RAPIDLY DROP

VISIBILITIES BELOW ONE MILE AT TIMES AND CREATE DIFFICULT DRIVING

CONDITIONS. GUSTY WINDS WILL SHIFT TO THE WEST AND NORTHWEST. TOTAL

SNOW ACCUMULATIONS WILL RANGE FROM A DUSTING TO 3 INCHES IN THE MOST

PERSISTENT SNOW BANDS.

Snow squalls crossing the lake... its not snowing all that heavily here in town, but the snow growth is so good this is like .5"/hr+ with 1-2sm visibility.