NNE Summer 2013 Thread

[OceanStWx]

The higher summits forecast doesn't mention snow, but I wouldn't rule it out based on that alone.

 

Ours says the same. I'm guessing BTV averages the forecast across a zone (say 3000-4000 feet) and the snow gets washed out because there aren't enough pixels. I'm only getting snow for the few points near MWN.

[eyewall]

Ours says the same. I'm guessing BTV averages the forecast across a zone (say 3000-4000 feet) and the snow gets washed out because there aren't enough pixels. I'm only getting snow for the few points near MWN.

 

Yeah most likely but I was looking at Portland/Gray's summit forecast for NH. I am guessing it is essentially those highest peaks of the Presidentials only that have any chance.

[Nittany88]

Yeah most likely but I was looking at Portland/Gray's summit forecast for NH. I am guessing it is essentially those highest peaks of the Presidentials only that have any chance.

Yeah I doubt there's any snow on Mansfield. The precip looks like it will shut off before the coldest air gets in there.

[powderfreak]

Yeah I doubt there's any snow on Mansfield. The precip looks like it will shut off before the coldest air gets in there.

Agreed...this is the time of year when MWN's 2,000ft advantage (usually 10F difference between them and MMNV1) really comes into play as far as first snows go. I usually expect snow up on Mansfield by the second week of October.

Last winter's first snow on Mansfield was 3.5-4" on October 8th (I reported 3.5" to BTV) but as usual, by the time the 4pm COOP report came out, most of it had melted and it only showed 1.5" of new snow.

[J.Spin]

Well, no freeze warnings this time, but frost advisories are up again for our area, and of course all the usual suspects in the North Country and Northern New England.  I don’t suspect we’ll hit frost in our area since we’re pretty protected, but cover things up if you know you’re susceptible in these marginal setups.  Map and text from the BTV NWS below:

 

 

URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BURLINGTON VT

338 AM EDT SUN SEP 8 2013

 

NYZ029>031-034-VTZ003-004-006>008-082200-

/O.NEW.KBTV.FR.Y.0007.130909T0500Z-130909T1200Z/

SOUTHEASTERN ST. LAWRENCE-SOUTHERN FRANKLIN-WESTERN CLINTON-

WESTERN ESSEX-ORLEANS-ESSEX-LAMOILLE-CALEDONIA-WASHINGTON-

INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...STAR LAKE...SARANAC LAKE...

TUPPER LAKE...DANNEMORA...LAKE PLACID...NEWPORT...ISLAND POND...

JOHNSON...STOWE...ST. JOHNSBURY...MONTPELIER

338 AM EDT SUN SEP 8 2013

 

...FROST ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 1 AM TO 8 AM EDT MONDAY...

 

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN BURLINGTON HAS ISSUED A FROST

ADVISORY...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 1 AM TO 8 AM EDT MONDAY.

 

* LOCATIONS...THE ADIRONDACKS OF NORTHERN NEW YORK AS WELL AS

  NORTH-CENTRAL AND NORTHEASTERN VERMONT.

 

* HAZARDS...AREAS OF FROST.

 

* TEMPERATURES...LOWS AROUND 32.

 

* TIMING...1 AM THROUGH 8 AM EDT MONDAY.

 

* IMPACTS...SENSITIVE PLANTS AND CROPS MAY BE DAMAGED IF LEFT

  UNPROTECTED OR OUTSIDE.

 

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

 

A FROST ADVISORY MEANS THAT FROST IS POSSIBLE. SENSITIVE OUTDOOR

PLANTS MAY BE KILLED IF LEFT UNCOVERED. MOVE ANY HOUSE PLANTS

INDOORS.

 

PLEASE STAY TUNED TO NOAA WEATHER RADIO...YOUR LOCAL MEDIA...OR

GO TO WWW.WEATHER.GOV/BURLINGTON FOR FURTHER UPDATES ON THIS

WEATHER SITUATION.

 

&&

 

$$

 

BANACOS

[dendrite]

Sneaky outside shot for frost tonight at CON. MAV is spitting out 34F. Then we follow it up with 90+ on Wednesday?

[OceanStWx]

Sneaky outside shot for frost tonight at CON. MAV is spitting out 34F. Then we follow it up with 90+ on Wednesday?

 

I'm betting on fog before frost for CON, MAV seems too aggressive.

[MaineJayhawk]

Not exactly the best of forecasts for 4000'+, but I've gotten lucky all summer with getting decent days out of crap so I figured I'd roll the bones again. I planned a 19.8 mile viewapalooza to the Bonds deep in the Pemigewasset Wilderness, with stops at Zeacliff, Zeacliff Pond and Zealand Mountain.

Waking at 3:30am and checking the radar, it looked like I'd have to deal with an area of showers with embedded heavier stuff, so I made sure to pack the raingear. After showering and downing a couple Poptarts I was on my happy way. 100 minutes later I was at the Zealand Trailhead. It was calm and 57F as I strapped on the gear and headed out.

About 30 minutes in it began to rain ... and rain ... and rain. I was hoping the rain would pass by and clear out once I reached Zeacliff, which affords one of the finest views in the Whites. However, that was not to be. I arrived at Zeacliff with rain and fog. Visibility was a couple hundred feet. Alas.

I moved on, went to the viewless wooded summit of Zealand Mountain and continued towards Mt Guyot, which has a bare summit. The wind at this point was howling through the stubby trees just below treeline. I pretty much had decided I would turn around after taking some measurements on Guyot, and that is exactly what I did - it was 41F with a top wind speed in the 20 seconds I could bear to hold the anemometer in the wind of 30.8 mph (had I taken a longer measurement I feel certain I could have topped 35). The windchill was in the 20s and I was soaked despite the raingear. With no real reason to forge ahead I turned back. This pic is the summit area of Guyot. Mt Bond would be directly behind it, but today it was invisible in the fog.

The rain did quite a number on the trail, which isn't known for its superb drainage to begin with. I made an error in gear selection - I used mesh trail runners instead of waterproof hiking boots. D'oh!

As I made my way back the rain abated, but the wind remained strong ..knocking the water off the leaves onto me. Nice! But it wasn't much longer before the sun peeked out. I arrived back at Zeacliff and had a magnificent view.

It was still only 43F with considerable wind, so it was difficult to hang out too long. I continued down the mountain, noticing how the foliage is changing (my last adventure 2 1/2 weeks ago I noticed no changing) and crossed a couple of streams that had lovely waterfalls.

The sun did not last long and more showers moved in, so I hustled back to the trailhead. Despite the conditions it was still nice to be able to get a 14 mile walk in. I will certainly revisit my intended route on a better day.

[powderfreak]

Nice, chilly evening out there. Today was my first daytime high in the 50s of the season. Only made it to 59F (although MVL made 60F) and now down to 55F as the sun falls behind Mansfield.

Here's a view from Brush Hill Road in the eastern part of Stowe.

[Lava Rock]

Everything looks so lush and green. Must be all that summer rain.

[mreaves]

Nice, chilly evening out there. Today was my first daytime high in the 50s of the season. Only made it to 59F (although MVL made 60F) and now down to 55F as the sun falls behind Mansfield.

Here's a view from Brush Hill Road in the eastern part of Stowe.

I was close to there today. Hiked Moss Glen Falls with the Forest Ecology class I'm in. Fun hike, though not quite as ambitious as Jayhawk!

[eyewall]

Awesome shots guys! I caught this tonight over Lake Champlain! This was shot on the BTV waterfront looking west at the Moon (with Earthshine) and Venus next to it (a conjunction).

 

 

[J.Spin]

I’ve completed my 2012-2013 winter weather summary for our location in Waterbury, and what I’ll do is make a few comments here and add some of the text, and then for those who are interested in the full article, they can head to the website to check it out.  The first link below is for that post, which among other things has a complete month by month walkthrough of what transpired here during the winter, and then the second link is the web page with all the detailed charts, graphs, and tables of snowstorms, snowfall, snowpack, etc.:

 

http://jandeproductions.com/2013/09/08/2012-2013-waterbury-winter-weather-summary/

 

http://jandeproductions.com/2013/1213weather.html

 

For reference, the monthly snowfall breakdown is below:

 

 

While the 2012-2013 winter at our location was certainly an improvement over 2011-2012, and snowfall was a reasonable ~90% of average, I think it’s easy to make a case that it was distinctly below average in an overall sense.  Below I’ve listed some of the season’s notable detractions – while none of them are deal breakers in and of themselves, collectively the list is really just too long to ignore:

 

• Slow Start (only 2.2” in the first half of December)
• Poor supply of upslope snowfall
• Notable dearth of large storms (see point #2 below)
• Back-to-back January thaw events
• Lowest January snowpack depth in our records (3.0”)
• Lowest February snowpack depth in our records (3.0”)
• Lowest January snowfall in our records (21.9”)
• Second lowest February snowfall in our records (31.4”)
• Below average overall season snowfall (144.2”)
• Second lowest season snowpack in our records (729 SDD)

 

There were certainly some high points of the season as well (~50” of snow for the second half of December, decent finish in parts of March and April), but it just wasn’t enough to counteract the above list.  Throwing out a “grade” for the season, I ended up giving it a C-.

 

There were a couple of other interesting notes with respect to snowfall this season:

 

1) Storm frequency and average storm size:  Despite coming in below average for snowfall, the 2012-2013 season offered up a healthy 51 accumulating snowstorms, almost up there with the 53 storms we received in 2007-2008.  Of course, to come in below average for snowfall with that many storms indicates that the average snowfall per storm was down, and indeed it was.  At 2.8”/storm, 2012-2013 ranks down there with 2011-2012 (2.6”/storm), the only odd seasons out compared to the more typical seasons up near 4”/storm.  For whatever reason, this season’s average came in on the low side.  This is presumably due in part to many of the everyday events being on the small side, but also due to the lack of bigger storms, which is covered in point #2 below.

 

2)  Storms with double-digit snowfall:  It’s certainly an arbitrary and subtle distinction, but after looking through my data, I noticed an interesting trend with respect to each season’s largest storms for our location.  In my season summaries, I always make a list of the top five storms of the season, and when the season seems to have gone well, all of those top five storms have been in the double digits for snowfall.  In fact, the “best” seasons thus far have been able to surpass that five-storm threshold.  For reference, here’s the top five list for this season, with the links to the detailed web pages for each storm:

 

Top five snowfall events
1. 21.3” (3/19/2013-3/24/2013)
2. 15.5” (12/26/2012-12/28/2012)
3. 12.6” (2/8/2013-2/9/2013)
4. 11.7” (12/21/2012-12/23/2012)
5. 7.8” (12/29/2012-12/30/2012)

 

Indeed, if we look at the number of storms with double-digit snowfall by the seasons, we see an obvious trend.  With the number of double-digit snowfall storms listed in parentheses after the season, one notes those “good” seasons - 2007-2008 (6), 2008-2009 (7), 2010-2011 (7) seemed to find a way to exceed five double-digit storms, whereas the poorer snowfall seasons - 2006-2007 (4), 2009-2010 (2), 2011-2012 (3), 2012-2013 (4) just didn’t.  Surely the law of averages comes into play here to some degree – seasons with patterns producing lots of snow likely have a greater chance of getting a big storm in here, but that’s not a given.  It’s also very suspicious that those seasons that come in sort of in that middling ground like 2006-2007 and our season of interest for this summary, 2012-2013, fall just short of making the cut.  I suspect this trend may be more intact in a location like ours because of the relatively high number of storms and snowfall, and upslope snow (which was on the low side this season) as an extra protection against huge snowfall variance, but this is going to be an interesting trend to follow into the future as a gauge of snowfall seasons.

 

Head to the full article for additional information.

[mreaves]

Down to 43.2 I think it's a couple of degrees cooler than this time last Wednesday in our previous cool shot.

[CardinalWinds]

Only up to 57° here at the house at 875' 2 miles NW of Montpelier proper.  Looking forward to an average winter or better at this point.  Hope it materializes!

[dendrite]

Currently 39.6F. CON is already 36F and SFM is 33/34F.

[dryslot]

38.1F was the low here, First time this season we hit 30's

[tamarack]

First time scraping the windshield at 6:30 this morning.  Temp was halfway between 31 and 32.  Earliest 32 or below since 2002, which at Sept 1 is the earliest of all here.

[eyewall]

Tweaked to bring out the water just a little more:

 

 

[wxeyeNH]

Okay guys, this is the deal. We finished our huge landscape project last Friday. 10 dump trucks of topsoil and hydroseed several acres of steep slope. Right now nothing has germinated being day 4. Everything is on slope and I waited till Labor Day for so I would have time for germination without frosts and without summer severe T storm threats etc. I don't want to hear about EML's, stalled warm front with severe training cells or anything else! Normally I would be so looking forward to the upcoming setup but this is going to be a diaster! I am really afraid this week is going to cost me thousands of dollars as everything washes down this slope without grass. Here's a picture posted just now, wish me luck, I'll post another post cold front picture at the end of the week.

[MaineJayhawk]

...  I'll post another post cold front picture at the end of the week.

 

 

[dryslot]

Image66.jpg

 

[powderfreak]

Awesome shots guys! I caught this tonight over Lake Champlain! This was shot on the BTV waterfront looking west at the Moon (with Earthshine) and Venus next to it (a conjunction).

 

That photo is crazy.  Love it!  What sort of lens where you using for that?  That seems really zoomed in over the northern Adirondacks.

[powderfreak]

I’ve completed my 2012-2013 winter weather summary for our location in Waterbury,

 

Awesome!  It'll take me some time to go through it all, but your summaries have to be the most complete weather record/archive in our area of the world.  You do some great documentation of the weather conditions, snowfall, skiing, etc along the central and northern Spine.  I was actually going to ask you when you were going to get this year's summary up, as these pages (http://jandeproductions.com/2013/1213weather.html) are the first thing I check when looking back on previous storms.  If I'm curious about a past event, I stop in at your website and then will usually pull up BTV's daily climate maps along with the CoCoRAHS reports from those dates, and it all paints a pretty clear picture of what happened with any given storm.

 

Thanks for the hard work, Jay.

[eyewall]

That photo is crazy.  Love it!  What sort of lens where you using for that?  That seems really zoomed in over the northern Adirondacks.

 

I was borrowing a Nikon D300 with a Nikkor 24-70mm lens (worth about 2 grand I think). As for the zoom you see there that is actually a crop of a high megapixel image (so more of a virtual zoom).

[J.Spin]

Awesome!  It'll take me some time to go through it all, but your summaries have to be the most complete weather record/archive in our area of the world.  You do some great documentation of the weather conditions, snowfall, skiing, etc along the central and northern Spine.  I was actually going to ask you when you were going to get this year's summary up, as these pages (http://jandeproductions.com/2013/1213weather.html) are the first thing I check when looking back on previous storms.  If I'm curious about a past event, I stop in at your website and then will usually pull up BTV's daily climate maps along with the CoCoRAHS reports from those dates, and it all paints a pretty clear picture of what happened with any given storm.

 

Thanks for the hard work, Jay.

 

Putting together the winter weather summaries and ski summaries is sort of a summertime labor of love – it’s a lot of work, but what winter weather enthusiast doesn’t enjoy reliving old storms in text form to some degree.  The spine of the Northern Greens is a pretty special place for snowfall though, so I think it deserves all the documentation we can give it.  Within the region, our house/monitoring location also represents a rather unique low-elevation spot from which to document each winter’s effects, so that adds some extra incentive in an archival sense.  Next up on my “to do” list is last season’s ski summary, and of course reliving those outings is always a lot of fun.  The nice part about that summary is that all the reports are essentially done, aside from a little touching up with photos, links, quotes, etc., so it’s just polishing at this point and writing up the summary text.  By the time I’m finished with that it should be just about time for some new turns around here.  It’s great to know that folks like you are out there using the material for reference though; I love to see the data get applied to research/discussions.

[klw]

Its a hot one in the 05862!  84/72.  It's the sort of day you start sweating walking across the street and the golden retriever refuses to leave the house.

http://www.nkaf.org/weather

[dryslot]

86/72, Getting steamy

[tamarack]

Farmington-area PWS shown on Wunderground sport mostly low-mid 80s with dews 72-77 (some foliage-augmentation there), except for one at Kent's Hill with TD 37.     RH there listed at 20%, probably closer to 70. Memories of early July.

[klw]

thunder booming here, storm popping up just outside St. J from the looks of it.