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NNE Spring

mreaves

By mreaves,
in New England

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J.Spin

J.Spin

Posted
Posted

I really have not been paying attention but took a quick look at the 18Z NAM.   Looking at that it would suggest some accumulating snow above 1000 feet tomorrow in my area.  Thought?

 

Well, a quick look at the Mt. Mansfield graphical point forecast suggests the possibility of snow:

 

25APR14B.jpg

 

The BTV NWS forecast discussion indicates fairly high snow levels above 2,500’ from tonight into tomorrow morning, but lowering to 1,500’ by tomorrow evening.  They also mention ¾” of liquid for the eastern slopes of the Greens.  It’s certainly something to watch, depending on how much of that can fall as snow up high.

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powderfreak

powderfreak

Posted
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Beautiful day out there... best day of the week, IMO.  If only we could lock this weather in for several weeks.

 

I'd lock these high/lows in all spring...hard freeze at night, and then afternoons near 60-degrees.

 

SLK...58/16

MVL...60/25

MPV...58/28

BML...59/23

HIE...60/24

 

Great afternoon for a hike and ski, too.

 

IMG_2847_edited-2-1.jpg

 

IMG_2850_edited-2.jpg

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J.Spin

J.Spin

Posted
Posted

I did a quick scan of the local web cams in assessing options for turns this morning, and the snow line appears to be around the 2,000’ level.  There’s actually been a decent accumulation at that elevation at Bolton Valley, because the bare areas visible near the base yesterday have been covered over:

 

27APR14A.jpg

 

27APR14B.jpg

 

27APR14C.jpg

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J.Spin

J.Spin

Posted
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Based on the web cam images from this morning, it looked like Bolton Valley and the western slopes of the Greens did relatively well with respect to accumulations, so I took a quick trip up to the mountain today in the late morning period to check out the new snow.  Temperatures were in the upper 30s F down here in the Winooski Valley with light rain/mist, and as I headed westward, the intensity of the precipitation picked up.  The rain changed over to snow at ~1,200’ on the Bolton Valley Access Road, and first signs of new snow accumulation were at the Timberline Base at 1,500’.  I suspect that accumulations had reached lower based on the image that PF showed earlier from 800’ in Nashville, but it seemed like the snow line had already risen a bit by the time I was up there.  At the main base at 2,100’ there was roughly an inch of new snow, and after ski touring in the Vista area, I can pass along the following elevation/snowfall summary:

 

1,500’:  T

2,000’: 1”

2,500’: 2”

3,000’: 3”

 

Despite fairly modest accumulations, the skiing was excellent, especially in the upper elevations; the quality of the skiing was high because the new snow is dense to provide plenty of support, and the subsurface is actually soft spring snow as opposed to something frozen.  The turns were often fairly bottomless on the top half of the mountain, especially with the aid of fat skis.

 

The snow line had risen another few hundred feet as I was heading back down the mountain only an hour or so later, so it’s definitely been one of those days to get at it sooner rather than later.  I added a few shots from today below:

 

27APR14F.jpg

 

27APR14E.jpg

 

27APR14G.jpg

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wxeyeNH

wxeyeNH

Posted
Posted

Snow in the Plymouth NH  area last night over 1500 feet.  I didn't get up during the night to look but a neighbor at 1800 feet sent me the picture below.

 

First forsythia opened today and last natural snow in the bog below me melted.  I count spring as the day the first forsythia opens.  Looks like a slow green up process looking at the week ahead.

post-268-0-35632500-1398629077_thumb.jpg

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powderfreak

powderfreak

Posted
Posted

Cool little meso-scale feature I noticed this morning based on the web cams and observations...even though I'm down in Albany, NY, it was quite obvious that the snow level got quite low on the western slope (even with that light accumulation down to 800ft at Nashville), while on the east side it seemed to stay up in the 2,000ft range.

 

The flow seemed to be more northerly than westerly, which often focuses the orographic precipitation on the west slopes and even out into the eastern Champlain Valley in a quasi-CPV convergence mixed with upslope type set-up.  Precipitation vectors were more almost due north to south this morning, great for CPV convergence, with just a light NW boundary layer flow providing the upslope... but the flow didn't have enough speed or westerly orientation to push that precip up onto the center of the Spine and into the eastern slope.  I didn't look, but I'd bet that Froude Numbers this morning were near 0.5.

 

Anyway, the steadier precipitation this morning on the western side, along with the cooling associated with upslope and forced lift was enough to drop the snow level quite a bit lower on the western side than the eastern side.  We are talking about horizontal distances of like a couple miles, but there was accumulating snow down to 1,000ft on the western side of Mansfield and Smugglers Notch, while on the east side the accumulating snow level was near 2,000ft. 

 

Take even the Smuggs and Stowe web cams for example...Smuggs actually does really well on NNW flow as the way the Spine is oriented, a northerly wind at H85 will just hit Mansfield's north side and push into this bowl that Smuggs occupies.  The web cam showed accumulating snow down as low as 1,000-1,200ft on the NW side of the Notch, even mid morning.

 

 

Meanwhile, on the east side of Mansfield/Notch area (literally like 2 miles away as the crow flies), the accumulating snow level looked to be up around 2,200ft at mid/late morning.  Even if that rose a few hundred feet in the morning, it didn't appear that anything accumulated down at 1,500ft on the east side base area.

 

 

 

I just find these little nuances pretty fascinating, and this morning showed how that upslope cooling of even 0.5-1C in the low level column can make a decent difference between like 32-33F SN, and 35F -RN.   The geographical distances are so small that its hard to wrap your head around it sometime...and good luck forecasting that stuff accurately, though BTV does a fantastic job.  This year we had upslope events where Smuggs got 12" and Stowe got 5" in a blocked flow, and then we had the opposite in a March event where my snowboard picked up 13" while Smuggs had half that in a 1.25 froude number unblocked event.  And its all just a couple miles away (you can see the ski trails easily from one spot to the other). 

 

I'm not sure you'll find more varied weather phenomena in New England than along the Spine (especially this area) where orographic effects are so severe that its almost always in play, no matter what the event.  Maybe the better way to put it is that this area has some of the most varied "observed" weather in New England.  There's probably similar variations going on in spots in N.NH or western Maine among very small horizontal distances, but the observation network in VT is much more robust due to the fact that the largest mountains/Spine bisects the most populated areas of the state (BTV and MPV).

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Nittany88

Nittany88

Posted
Posted

Cool little meso-scale feature I noticed this morning based on the web cams and observations...even though I'm down in Albany, NY, it was quite obvious that the snow level got quite low on the western slope (even with that light accumulation down to 800ft at Nashville), while on the east side it seemed to stay up in the 2,000ft range.

 

The flow seemed to be more northerly than westerly, which often focuses the orographic precipitation on the west slopes and even out into the eastern Champlain Valley in a quasi-CPV convergence mixed with upslope type set-up.  Precipitation vectors were more almost due north to south this morning, great for CPV convergence, with just a light NW boundary layer flow providing the upslope... but the flow didn't have enough speed or westerly orientation to push that precip up onto the center of the Spine and into the eastern slope.  I didn't look, but I'd bet that Froude Numbers this morning were near 0.5.

 

Anyway, the steadier precipitation this morning on the western side, along with the cooling associated with upslope and forced lift was enough to drop the snow level quite a bit lower on the western side than the eastern side.  We are talking about horizontal distances of like a couple miles, but there was accumulating snow down to 1,000ft on the western side of Mansfield and Smugglers Notch, while on the east side the accumulating snow level was near 2,000ft. 

 

Take even the Smuggs and Stowe web cams for example...Smuggs actually does really well on NNW flow as the way the Spine is oriented, a northerly wind at H85 will just hit Mansfield's north side and push into this bowl that Smuggs occupies.  The web cam showed accumulating snow down as low as 1,000-1,200ft on the NW side of the Notch, even mid morning.

 

attachicon.gifSmugs_april27.jpg

 

Meanwhile, on the east side of Mansfield/Notch area (literally like 2 miles away as the crow flies), the accumulating snow level looked to be up around 2,200ft at mid/late morning.  Even if that rose a few hundred feet in the morning, it didn't appear that anything accumulated down at 1,500ft on the east side base area.

 

attachicon.gifStowe_April27.jpg

 

 

I just find these little nuances pretty fascinating, and this morning showed how that upslope cooling of even 0.5-1C in the low level column can make a decent difference between like 32-33F SN, and 35F -RN.   The geographical distances are so small that its hard to wrap your head around it sometime...and good luck forecasting that stuff accurately, though BTV does a fantastic job.  This year we had upslope events where Smuggs got 12" and Stowe got 5" in a blocked flow, and then we had the opposite in a March event where my snowboard picked up 13" while Smuggs had half that in a 1.25 froude number unblocked event.  And its all just a couple miles away (you can see the ski trails easily from one spot to the other). 

 

I'm not sure you'll find more varied weather phenomena in New England than along the Spine (especially this area) where orographic effects are so severe that its almost always in play, no matter what the event.  Maybe the better way to put it is that this area has some of the most varied "observed" weather in New England.  There's probably similar variations going on in spots in N.NH or western Maine among very small horizontal distances, but the observation network in VT is much more robust due to the fact that the largest mountains/Spine bisects the most populated areas of the state (BTV and MPV).

 

Sun 04/27 12Z 0.17 3312 100 84 -3 0.00

Sun 04/27 15Z 0.20 3415 98 80 -3 0.00

Sun 04/27 18Z 0.62 3516 96 77 -3 0.01

 

:thumbsup:

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J.Spin

J.Spin

Posted
Posted

Cool little meso-scale feature I noticed this morning based on the web cams and observations...even though I'm down in Albany, NY, it was quite obvious that the snow level got quite low on the western slope (even with that light accumulation down to 800ft at Nashville), while on the east side it seemed to stay up in the 2,000ft range.

 

Great observations PF; I noticed exactly the same thing when I put up those images from the web cams this morning.  When I saw that there was notable accumulation at Bolton at ~2,000’, and it looked as though there was little if anything new at that elevation on Mansfield, I switched my tour plans to Bolton over Stowe.  I’ll often lean towards Stowe in these higher elevation events with the extra 500’ of elevation at the lift summits, but the fact that one can park and start their tour above 2,000’ at Bolton is a big plus when the snow line is high.  When I saw that web cam image you posted with accumulation down around 800’ in the Nashville area, that pretty much sealed the deal to go for the western slopes.  There were some really fun turns above 2,500’ today – another shot from Bolton at ~2,800’ below:

 

27APR14H.jpg

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powderfreak

powderfreak

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Posted

Sun 04/27 12Z 0.17 3312 100 84 -3 0.00

Sun 04/27 15Z 0.20 3415 98 80 -3 0.00

Sun 04/27 18Z 0.62 3516 96 77 -3 0.01

 

:thumbsup:

 

Nice!  Yeah that makes sense...the northerly H85 wind flow with SFC being NW is definitely a set-up for the eastern Champlain Valley and western slopes (not like anyone needs to tell you that, lol).  Veering winds from SFC to H85 never leads to much excitement on the general Stowe, Waterbury, Warren, Waitsfield side.... while Cambridge, Underhill, Jerhico, Bolton, Richmond, Huntington, Hanksville get the weather.  Bring me the deep unidirectional flow, haha. 

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powderfreak

powderfreak

Posted
Posted

Great observations PF; I noticed exactly the same thing when I put up those images from the web cams this morning.  When I saw that there was notable accumulation at Bolton at ~2,000’, and it looked as though there was little if anything new at that elevation on Mansfield, I switched my tour plans to Bolton over Stowe.  I’ll often lean towards Stowe in these higher elevation events with the extra 500’ of elevation at the lift summits, but the fact that one can park and start their tour above 2,000’ at Bolton is a big plus when the snow line is high.  When I saw that web cam image you posted with accumulation down around 800’ in the Nashville area, that pretty much sealed the deal to go for the western slopes.  There were some really fun turns above 2,500’ today – another shot from Bolton at ~2,800’ below:

 

Yeah J.Spin, when I lived in Jonesville and earlier in Burlington, I often chose Bolton for early/late season events primarily because you can drive so high up.  When the best skiing is done up above 2,500ft, having the ability to be able to drive up over 2,000ft is huge...especially if starting at 1,500ft means hiking another thousand feet in the rain or early season you have to bootpack if the snow starts at that mid-slope elevation of 2,500ft.

 

I saw some pictures from friends that looked similar to yours and they said there was 3" at the top of the Gondola.  What I usually notice in these events is that the upper elevations (like 3,000ft+) will get somewhat similar snowfall amounts but that it tapers drastically and quickly as you move down the east slope.  While the west slope has a much more gradual (if any) decrease as you go down in elevation.  Its almost like in the blocked flow events that the precipitation stops literally right over the Spine, depositing precipitation from 3,000ft+ on the east side, but with very little precipitation occurring down in the base area.  I notice it during blocked upslope events in the winter mainly by flake size.  Up high, you can be getting perfect dendrites that are stacking up like the western slope is seeing...but down on the lower mountain the flakes are very small and its usually very windy with downslope breezes, and even the sun shining just to the east.  Fascinating meteorology when like the Smuggs base area can be getting 1"/hr upslope snow, while at Stowe we are getting 1"/hr at 3,000ft near the Spine, yet only 0.25"/hr in small downsloped flakes at 1,500ft  Then in events with Froude over 1, the inverse is happening haha. 

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powderfreak

powderfreak

Posted
Posted

Some photos from social media of the snow on Mansfield today...reported as 3" this morning.

 

 

 

 

Looks like the coop came in with 2", which seems about right given that its an evening report.  Surprising though that 0.65" of precipitation fell in the bucket, with temperatures below freezing for the 24-hour period... that's a good shot of liquid equivalent in sub-freezing temps.

DAILY HYDROMETEOROLOGICAL DATA
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BURLINGTON VT
606 PM EDT SUN APR 27 2014

STATION            PRECIP   TEMPERATURE   PRESENT         SNOW
                   24 HRS   MAX MIN CUR   WEATHER     NEW TOTAL SWE
...VERMONT...
MOUNT MANSFIELD     0.65    31  23  28   FOG          2.0  57
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