NNE Thread: Heading into the Heart of Winter

[tamarack]

Near 20 here at the moment after a high of 33. Had 0.5" of new fluff by 9 PM, perhaps another tenth since with some flakes still drifting down though the moon shines thru the clouds. I-95 between Newport and Dixmont (mile 161-164) was an adventure about 4:30. There was more sticking to pavement than elsewhere on the Interstate though only a tenth or two had fallen, and in that stretch we that saw 5 southbound vehicles that had made snowbank visits, some all the way to the trees, one northbound (and we easily could've missed others), and a minor 2-vehicle fenderbender. Saw a couple more closer to WVL. Towtrucks and troopers were busy.

My officemate printed out the snowdepth map for New England, and easily the least snow on the mainland is NE Aroostook. CAR had all of 2" OG before this past storm - got about 4" more. I've got 14", and have had 40% of my avg winter snowfall and only Maine Jayhawk (also about 40% of my guess for his avg) is as low among all those who have posted on the "total so far" thread. CAR is at about 25%. Last year BWI had 6" more than CAR. That's not happening this winter, but a number of stations near LI Sound have reported a foot more than CAR so far. Given the gfs cold and dryness for the next 10+ days (CAR should approach -30 if it verifies), there will be some frozen water lines up that way due to lack of white insulation.

[Arnold214]

Nice little patch of 3/4sm overhead now. Little in the way of wind with decent sized dendrites.

[dendrite]

Finished with 2.4" from the inverted trough. EC hits ENE the hardest, but 3-4" here...maybe 5" if ratios are good.

The EC also drops the -20F 2m isotherm south of here Monday morning.

MEX guidance right now has the following lows that morning...

LCI -11F

CON -18F

LEB -21F

BML -25F

HIE -26F

[dryslot]

Ended up over here with 1.5" of snow overnight.........

[MaineJayhawk]

I had 1.2". I wonder if measuring on the car was detrimental to my total? I mean, it was snowing pretty good all evening long. I didn't set up a snow board, think I oughtta get on that.

[powderfreak]

J.Spin,

Can you explain your snow at the stake at 18". Looking at just your totals from Jan, I'd of thought you would have a deeper pack. I guess the mini-torch couple weeks back did some damage, no?

Its called pure fluff. Look at a lot of his snow to water ratios. I'm in the same boat as him... we haven't really had much in the way of synoptic snowfall this season (that's been all SNE,C/E New England). It is not uncommon for 6" of snow to settle to 2" and I've seen over a foot of fluff pretty much look like 3-4" a couple days later once the air drops out of it. Without the synoptic storms, we have had to rely on upslope snow which is much like lake effect in that most of it is like 20-40:1 ratio snow. The upslope mechanism is a nice back-up for times like these when synoptic storms seem to be too far SE, and though I'm not sure, I've been roughly following along and think I'm probably approaching 80" for the season if J.Spin is near 100". The ski resort is up to 161" as of this morning and Smugglers Notch Resort 3 miles away is up to 180". We've had steady snow cover since December 5th (not one full melt out) but the snowpack has pretty much stayed between 6-14" for the duration.

Take this morning for example... full moon is shining and it is snowing pretty steadily. They are huge, huge dendrites where each flake that falls seems to add another 0.1" to the snowboard. I had a half inch of this dust this morning on my car and drove to the mountain where we are closing in on an inch at 1,550ft. My car is already covered again by these massive flakes but you can still see the dark color of the car under an inch of snow. When you add all these daily 1-2" fluff falls up, the seasonal total is pretty darn good. This is how most of the ski areas up here record 300"+ a season... because there's almost always a dusting to an inch each morning, and sometimes a lot more. But the snowpack can suffer if we never get any water to fall with the snow.

I bet J.Spin's 18" snowpack is a lot more healthy now after the last QPF event... mine has taken on a more mature look (I had around 16" yesterday) thanks to the two grazes by the synoptic storms adding some water weight. You guys further south and east were starving for snow and now have more on the ground than most of us up here. We can snow for a month here and if none of the storms were synoptic with some QPF, the snow on the ground is never as impressive as if you get a couple .75-1.5" QPF events. Same reason why Colorado ski areas that get 300+ inches per year will never have the same snowpack of west coast resorts that get the same snowfall totals. Or even Utah with 500" per year won't have the snowpack of the Tahoe Resorts because of the snow to water ratios. Fluffy snow is nice to look at and still counts in a seasonal snowfall tally, but comparing snow-on-ground would likely tell a different story.

[mahk_webstah]

Finished with 2.4" from the inverted trough. EC hits ENE the hardest, but 3-4" here...maybe 5" if ratios are good.

The EC also drops the -20F 2m isotherm south of here Monday morning.

MEX guidance right now has the following lows that morning...

LCI -11F

CON -18F

LEB -21F

BML -25F

HIE -26F

I thought EC had CON at .41?

That would translate to 5-8 I'd think at least in CON. And maybe the trend in the guidance continues...

[Allenson]

Low temps, man.

[powderfreak]

Its called pure fluff.

This photo is a good example... this was from Sunday when 10-11" of broom-snow fell overnight from that clipper. If you look at the snow texture, you can tell that's all air and almost no moisture. I bet there was less than a quarter inch of liquid in that double digit snowfall. 48 hours later a storm that added 12" to the seasonal snowfall total had settled out to only a 4" increase in snow depth... this is not the snowfall that those of you SE of here have gotten, where 12" storm total leaves a 10" increase in depth.

[dryslot]

I had 1.2". I wonder if measuring on the car was detrimental to my total? I mean, it was snowing pretty good all evening long. I didn't set up a snow board, think I oughtta get on that.

Get the board set up, Your going to need it tomorow.........

[j24vt]

1.1" over night

[J.Spin]

Event totals: 6.3” Snow/0.63” L.E.

Thursday 1/20/2011 6:00 A.M. update: After reading the past several BTV forecast discussions, I couldn’t quite break this current snowfall out from the Tuesday system, since it was just a weak embedded 5H Vort, it sounds like it’s been working on leftover moisture, and there’s been some upslope flow. I grabbed some text from one of the evening/overnight discussions:

CRNT RADAR SHOWS AN AREA OF VERY LIGHT SNOW ACRS WESTERN/NORTHERN NY...MOVING TWD THE CPV. THIS COMBINED WITH SOME LLVL LAKE MOISTURE INTERACTION AND LEFTOVER RIBBON OF ENHANCED 850 TO 500MB RH...WL CONT TO PRODUCE SOME VERY LIGHT SNOW ACRS OUR REGION THRU 09Z TONIGHT...BEFORE BEST RH LIFTS INTO EASTERN VT AND NH. IN ADDITION...SOME WEAK UPSLOPE FLW ON NORTHERLY WINDS WL HELP TO ENHANCE LLVL LIFT...BUT FLW IS WEAK AND OVERALL LLVL OMEGA IS MINIMAL. GIVEN BIG FLUFF FACTOR A DUSTING TO AN INCH OR SO...STILL LOOKS REASONABLE.

There was still light snow falling at the house this morning, and it’s the same here in Burlington, so I suspect there will be one more observation to report with this event before the focus moves on to the next system coming in tonight into Friday. Our point forecast and the latest NWS discussion both suggest a few inches with that one for this area.

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

New Snow: 0.7 inches

New Liquid: Trace

Temperature: 15.4 F

Sky: Light Snow (2-10 mm flakes)

Snow at the stake: 18.5 inches

[MainePhotog]

1 1/2" of snow from yesterday's snowfall. Started as wet snow and by dark, was pure fluff. Looking forward to 6"+ for Friday event.

FEW 15.6° F.

[mattb65]

Heading up to Killington for the weekend, forecast on sunday hi 0, low -20,

Coldest I've ever seen first hand is -22 in Colorado a few years ago, any chance there's a run at that?

[adk]

Heading up to Killington for the weekend, forecast on sunday hi 0, low -20,

Coldest I've ever seen first hand is -22 in Colorado a few years ago, any chance there's a run at that?

Overnight?

Sure.

[j24vt]

Here comes the cold torch.

[J.Spin]

J.Spin,

Can you explain your snow at the stake at 18". Looking at just your totals from Jan, I'd of thought you would have a deeper pack. I guess the mini-torch couple weeks back did some damage, no?

Powderfreak did a nice job of explaining what’s been going on, it’s just that a lot of our snow is incredibly fluffy, so there is a ton of settling that takes place. For example, the Sunday before last we had some upslope snow that fell from the afternoon into the evening in association with the inverted trough. After some synoptic snow, from noon to 6:00 P.M., we received 6.1 inches of 2.3% H₂O snow followed up by 4.4 inches of 3.0% H₂O snow from 6:00 P.M. to midnight. That’s over 10 inches of roughly 40 to 1 ratio snow, and the actual liquid associated with those 10.5 inches of snow is just 0.27 inches. That amount of liquid would just be a couple of inches of typical synoptic snow, even before settling/compression. Those 10.5 inches do add to the snowpack, but after you stack some snow on top of it, I bet it might be less than two inches of contribution. We always get this type of snow to some degree because of our orographics, but this year has seen an even higher proportion of it because we have generally been on the fringe of the big synoptic storms. Our snowpack did drop by about 4 inches or so during the New Year’s thaw, which did represent some snowpack decrease as you suspected, but even without that we’d still be at less than 2 feet of snowpack from almost 100 inches of snowfall.

I’ll digress a bit into another aspect of this type of snowfall…

While the fluff is not that great for building snowpack, as local powder skiers we’re not complaining too much. As long as there is sufficient base snow, the dry snow provides what many consider the ultimate skiing experience; as Powderfreak said it’s the reason that the ski resorts up here in Northern Vermont get well over 300 inches of snowfall a season and it’s what makes the skiing along the Northern Greens so special. You can often see the result in ski pictures that Powderfreak posts. This is the type of snow in which skiing is literally akin to floating through a cloud; you’re not skiing on the snow, you’re skiing within it, and it is quite a surreal experience. If the angle of the ski slope, the skier’s speed, as well as the depth and water content of the snow are appropriate, the powder will billow up over your shoulders, into your face, and even over your head until you are totally surrounded by it. Skiers often refer to this as entering the “white room”, and it’s associated with skiing with a snorkel so that one can breathe. Using snorkels while skiing is mostly lore and is not actually done all that often, probably even less nowadays with more advanced equipment and modern, wider skis, but there is some practicality in the concept. We sometimes have this type of skiing here in Vermont as Powderfreak’s photos attest, although one notable encounter I can remember with it was when we lived out in Montana on January 21^st, 2002 at Lost Trail Powder Mountain. The day stands out to some degree because it shows what can happen when one isn’t prepared to ski in those types of conditions; I added an excerpt from the report below:

Hmmm, this snow is too deep to ski through, I’ll just use this track left by someone else and hustle my way over to the edge of Thunder. “Ahh, now we’re moving, this should be fun, can’t wait to see what this powder is like… oh, hey that shot hit me in the face, gasp, gotta get that out of my mouth, cough, ack another, oh god, oh god, this snow is amazing, gasp, but I can’t breathe, this is too good to stop, choke, but I think I’m going to die, oh man do I need air this isn’t funny, this isn’t funny at all, I REALLY need to stop!”

Derek and I had just scared ourselves half to death. We’d dropped into Thunder and nearly suffocated on snow. After 10 turns, I stopped, gasping for breath, and looked to my left to see that Derek had done exactly the same thing. We were both scared as hell. “Oh my God I couldn’t breathe, I didn’t know what to do, I had to stop!” Derek looked over at me and acknowledged that he was in exactly the same state of affairs. Once the adrenaline surge began to fade, we came to our senses and began to realize what was going on. This was not simply another average powder day. This was a, “Dammit, I know people are always joking about snorkels but I wish I had one right now just so I could breathe” day. As if the two feet we already had weren’t enough, another 18-20 inches had come down overnight and the maelstrom dragged on at an inch and hour right before our eyes. We gathered our thoughts and decided to time our breathing as we skied. It didn’t work. Even on the upstroke of a turn, the snow lingered in the air and left us gagging and coughing, the snow building up in our mouths until we just had to stop and breathe. I never thought I’d see the day when too much snow made the skiing LESS fun. I’d had big powder days back home in Vermont, days when face shots were everywhere, days when I’d get a few mouthfuls of snow and have to spit it out to get breathing again at the next sign of light. But never had I had difficulty like this. I remember the day that Dave called me from Bolton and said that they had been nailed with over 2 feet of champagne powder overnight, he explained how all the instructors were going nuts and you had to time your breathing. I couldn’t go up though because I was in the middle of an experiment at work, but I thought I had imagined correctly what he was going through. I hadn’t. It didn’t matter how we turned or how we tried to time our breathing, it was an all-out choke fest. We worked our way down the rest of the run trying to enjoy the amazing conditions the best we could, but hampered by the snow all the same.

In the end, we found a simple solution. Since we didn’t have neck gaiters, we used the lower front portions of our hoods to cover up our mouths while we skied. This worked like a charm, and from then on all we had to do was focus on powder bliss.

That morning, we spent a lot of time in the white room.

Many avid skiers will spend lots of time and money to get to snow of this quality, often heading out to the Rocky Mountains where they have the best odds of getting some of it. In actuality though, we get a lot of this world-class snow right here in Northern Vermont (as well as in other parts of the Northeast to generally lesser degrees) and around here the snow is at times even drier and fluffier than what places in the Rockies receive. Because of the way this type of snow is very airy, bubbles up and explodes as you ski it through it, and is considered to be very refined and of high quality, Steamboat resort in Colorado coined the term Champagne Powder™ to describe it. Around here in Northern Vermont we use a play on that term and will sometimes refer to our fluffy upslope snow as Champlain Powder™. In general we only get a fairly small amount of our moisture from Lake Champlain itself since it is not quite on the scale of the great lakes, but the term also works in that it happens in the mountains overlooking the Champlain Valley. The Northern Greens form a 4,000 foot wall overlooking the broad valley, and that orographic setup helps to wring out the moisture that provides our Champlain Powder™.

So while some of the recent snow hasn’t done much for the snowpack, the skiing has been stellar. This weekend we were up at Bolton making good use of it:

[mreaves]

Great explanations from J. Spin and Powderfreak. Even though I have lived here most of my life I have very little knowledge of the upslope stuff. I don't ski but have always been fascinated by it and this stuff is very interesting. Thanks for taking the time to do these write ups.

[red]

CAR is getting on board. Winter storm watches are flying around here.... keep coming NW!!!

.TONIGHT...PARTLY CLOUDY IN THE EVENING...THEN CLOUDY WITH SNOW LIKELY AFTER MIDNIGHT. SNOW ACCUMULATION AROUND AN INCH. LOWS AROUND 7 ABOVE. LIGHT AND VARIABLE WINDS...BECOMING NORTH AROUND 5 MPH AFTER MIDNIGHT. CHANCE OF SNOW 60 PERCENT.

FRIDAY...SNOW. ADDITIONAL SNOW ACCUMULATION OF 4 TO 8 INCHES. HIGHS AROUND 20. NORTH WINDS 5 TO 10 MPH. CHANCE OF SNOW 90 PERCENT.

FRIDAY NIGHT...CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF SNOW IN THE EVENING...THEN PARTLY CLOUDY AFTER MIDNIGHT. SIGNIFICANT ADDITIONAL AMOUNTS OF SNOW POSSIBLE. LOWS AROUND 2 ABOVE. NORTHWEST WINDS 5 TO 10 MPH. CHANCE OF SNOW 50 PERCENT.

[Allenson]

Speaking of sun pillars, had a nice one this morning. The one I posted a few days ago was from December 2008. I don't recall seeing any last winter....

[TalcottWx]

I would put my money on 3-5" here right now from 12z guidance

[klw]

A walk down memory lane from Todays Eye on the Sky Weather Journal

http://www.eotsweb.org/forecasts.php

The first of two severe cold spells brought record cold on this date in 1994. Following a heavy snowstorm of 10 to 20 inches on the 18th, arctic air settled in over the fresh, deep snow cover to send thermometers to the 30s and 40s below zero for the first time in over a decade. Both Chelsea and Cavendish recorded lows of –36, while Island pond only managed a high temperature of minus 6.

A friend living in Chelsea at the time claimed he spilled coffee on himself in the car but was able to brush it right off because it froze before it got his clothes wet.

[tamarack]

Got 0.8" from the little event; its impact on traffic far outweighed that on snowpack. Looks like another graze tonight/tomorrow, then two big steps down into the icebox. 06z gfs had the Monday max in AUG at -4.

To follow up a bit on powderfreak's and JSpin's expanation of their big snow totals and modest depth, it's been my experience that, whatever the initial ratio of an all snow event, it will - in the absence of melting temps or further precip - settle to about 6:1 before a week passes, and further with added time. (Things like the 10" of 4:1 mashed potatos we got late last Feb are obvious exceptions.) My first full winter in Ft. Kent, 1976-77, had no rain and no temps above 36 (and only 2-3 above 32) from early Dec thru eary Mar, during which time over 140" fell. (Winter total was 186.7".) Max depth was 54" immediately after a 9" event in early Mar, and several snow cores taken in Feb and early Mar revealed the snowpack density to be closer to 4:1. Since the snow was essentially all synoptic, with initial ratios generally from 8:1 (grainy flakes) to 20:1, the change was nearly all from settling.

[Lava Rock]

J. Spin, Powderfreak thanks a lot for the full out explanation. I like to ski and was at sunday river last wknd, but have never skied in powder that deep. Most ever for me might have been up to my shins and I fell a lot . I'd really like to take a powder lesson, but those storm types aren't frequent enough here. I consider myself an advanced intermediate, but would really like to be a more well rounded skier and tackle the powder. I like the technically chalenging, more steeper terrain with some bumps. I've gotten more confident in my skiing abilities over the years and actually have less fear in going down some steeps then when I was in highschool. I'm sure age, as my wife will attest to will eventually turn that thought process around.

[powderfreak]

Great explanations from J. Spin and Powderfreak. Even though I have lived here most of my life I have very little knowledge of the upslope stuff. I don't ski but have always been fascinated by it and this stuff is very interesting. Thanks for taking the time to do these write ups.

Today is another great example of the type of snow we get... myself and a ski patroller checked our two snow plots and found 2" at both 3,000ft and 1,500ft. We could only find a trace to a couple hundreths of liquid in the snow. So that's another day where a light snowfall (2" in this case) was added to the seasonal snowfall tally that literally added no water weight to the snowpack at all and will not benefit the snow pack. Now, had we gotten 2" of snow with .2" of liquid, this stuff might actually add an inch to the snowpack... but alas, it is just pure upslope fluff that looks pretty but doesn't add anything to the overall snow cover.

As an aside... at Stowe we (as in myself and a ski patroller) are really, really trying to set up a fully transparent snow and weather reporting system on Mount Mansfield. We have the snow plots established and they have been established for a few years but we have not utilized them in an organized, daily manner. I'm going to do a write up on our plots with photos, and pose it to the New England forum for comments and suggestions, but regardless, we'd like to get a lot more scientific with how we report snow and weather here at the mountain. We live and play on this mountain and everyone around here lives and dies with the snowfall... so why not set it up and become "official" with how we do it. I have talked with the NWS office in Burlington via email and we would like to turn this into a co-op or CoCoRASH station which would be pretty cool.

A couple of things in the works are potentially a live camera powered by solar, and focused on one of our snowboards with a ruler, so people can actually remotely watch the snow pile up. You see this a lot at ski areas out west and also a lot of the lake effect snow belt areas have snowmobile operations that utilize this type of thing. We also want to display our weather stations live on the web, which would give folks live access to temp/Td/RH/wind data at 3,600ft...2,500ft...and 1,500ft.

I'm always looking for suggestions as to how to report and present this sort of information. This mountain gets a lot of snow, and we want to prove it so people can no longer claim it as made up "marketing" numbers.

To start, I'm going to post our daily snowfall and snow depth information (on the days that I work):

3,000ft plot...24hr New: 2"...Depth: 38"

1,500ft plot...24hr New: 2"...Depth: 18"

[powderfreak]

J. Spin, Powderfreak thanks a lot for the full out explanation. I like to ski and was at sunday river last wknd, but have never skied in powder that deep. Most ever for me might have been up to my shins and I fell a lot . I'd really like to take a powder lesson, but those storm types aren't frequent enough here. I consider myself an advanced intermediate, but would really like to be a more well rounded skier and tackle the powder. I like the technically chalenging, more steeper terrain with some bumps. I've gotten more confident in my skiing abilities over the years and actually have less fear in going down some steeps then when I was in highschool. I'm sure age, as my wife will attest to will eventually turn that thought process around.

Awesome! That's great to hear that you want to tackle the powder. That's really the joy in skiing for me... wandering through a snow-covered forest in the winter with deep snowpack, snow caking the trees, where an overall adventurous spirit abounds.

This photo from last Sunday really illustrates the "fluffy" snow point.... this shot was made possible because of 3-4 very fluffy snowfalls that totaled around 40" in an 8 day period. With no warm weather, rain, or even much wind, this fluffy snow was able to keep its loft a bit. Had you gotten 30-40" of synoptic snow, you would not be able to ski "through" the snow, you would probably be skiing on top of the snow. Don't get me wrong 30" of synoptic snow is deep, but you won't be able to sink to your waist in it.

This snow is so fluffy, that even with a floatation device on each foot (pair of skis) the skier still falls straight to the bottom. This stuff settled out quickly with the dense snow we got yesterday, but when we get into an upslope fluff NW flow pattern, this is the type of skiing that results. Although it isn't "base building" snow, it sure is fun to wade through and almost suffocate in.

[mreaves]

Today is another great example of the type of snow we get... myself and a ski patroller checked our two snow plots and found 2" at both 3,000ft and 1,500ft. We could only find a trace to a couple hundreths of liquid in the snow. So that's another day where a light snowfall (2" in this case) was added to the seasonal snowfall tally that literally added no water weight to the snowpack at all and will not benefit the snow pack. Now, had we gotten 2" of snow with .2" of liquid, this stuff might actually add an inch to the snowpack... but alas, it is just pure upslope fluff that looks pretty but doesn't add anything to the overall snow cover.

As an aside... at Stowe we (as in myself and a ski patroller) are really, really trying to set up a fully transparent snow and weather reporting system on Mount Mansfield. We have the snow plots established and they have been established for a few years but we have not utilized them in an organized, daily manner. I'm going to do a write up on our plots with photos, and pose it to the New England forum for comments and suggestions, but regardless, we'd like to get a lot more scientific with how we report snow and weather here at the mountain. We live and play on this mountain and everyone around here lives and dies with the snowfall... so why not set it up and become "official" with how we do it. I have talked with the NWS office in Burlington via email and we would like to turn this into a co-op or CoCoRASH station which would be pretty cool.

A couple of things in the works are potentially a live camera powered by solar, and focused on one of our snowboards with a ruler, so people can actually remotely watch the snow pile up. You see this a lot at ski areas out west and also a lot of the lake effect snow belt areas have snowmobile operations that utilize this type of thing. We also want to display our weather stations live on the web, which would give folks live access to temp/Td/RH/wind data at 3,600ft...2,500ft...and 1,500ft.

I'm always looking for suggestions as to how to report and present this sort of information. This mountain gets a lot of snow, and we want to prove it so people can no longer claim it as made up "marketing" numbers.

To start, I'm going to post our daily snowfall and snow depth information (on the days that I work):

3,000ft plot...24hr New: 2"...Depth: 38"

1,500ft plot...24hr New: 2"...Depth: 18"

Just like the Coles Pond Weathercam

Great idea. About posting the write up here, are you sure that people have enough opinions about snow here in New England?

[Arnold214]

Does it ever stop snowing here? Down to a mile or two.

[W1WFG]

Does it ever stop snowing here? Down to a mile or two.

It used to rain like this in Worcester -- became a verb, in HC college circles, anyways, as in 'to Worcester'.

Just days and days of sub-nuisance drizzle. Seemed to go from Columbus Day to Thanksgiving unbroken some years.

I guess you could say "It's Graying out'?

[bobbutts]

Heading up to Killington for the weekend, forecast on sunday hi 0, low -20,

Coldest I've ever seen first hand is -22 in Colorado a few years ago, any chance there's a run at that?

Checking out the Dew tour?

I was thinking about going, but no way I'm standing around in below 0