Winter 2013-2014 Final Grades

[powderfreak]

It wasn't great. Jan 13th was 10". We hung between 9-13" until the beginning of Feb. It was off to the races after that. I'll have to look up the local COOP data to get a feel for 100" frequency, but it's not that common. My avg is somewhere in the low 70s I believe.

Ahhh, still 10" is interesting while the mountain slopes north are completely bare, haha. I remember some of those mid-January snow cover maps had all the lower elevations shaded in the higher snow depths, tapering to very little in the higher terrain...the inverse of what you'd expect, but you lower elevation guys east of the mountains hold that cold below the inversion like it's your job. CAD capital.

[dendrite]

I would have thought hi 70s.

The long term avgs of the Franklin COOPs are ~71". I'm not sure if there's any missing data. Plymouth COOP is 76" and Weare is 73". I figure I'm somewhere in that ballpark. Mt Sunapee is low 80s and CON is mid/upr 60s.

[CoastalWx]

The long term avgs of the Franklin COOPs are ~71". I'm not sure if there's any missing data. Plymouth COOP is 76" and Weare is 73". I figure I'm somewhere in that ballpark. Mt Sunapee is low 80s and CON is mid/upr 60s.

Yeah perhaps maybe 73-74. You are in an area that is right on the edge of some impressive averages. Averages go up in elevation to your North and West while dropping by a decent amount to the south. You aren't a very high elevation, but latitude helps and proximity to the SE slopes of the mtns to help lock in cold air below 850mb. 

[wxmanmitch]

I'll go with a C+ here. Snowfall total for the winter was 66.5", which is slightly below our seasonal average in the low to mid 70s. While we didn't get screwed as badly as '12-'13, we still got whiffed by some nice powder bombs to the S and E while getting rain from cutters in between the powder jobs in the first half of the winter.

 

Our largest single storm total was 11" on 2/13-14, which would've been larger if we hadn't tainted. Our greatest depth was 20.5" around 2/20. The theme from the earlier part of the winter was sort of repeated in March with rain from the storms that brought big snows to NNE and cirrus from the storms that went underneath us. The winter's strong point was sustained cold; we had far more subzero nights than usual this year, even though we didn't achieve a double digit negative (coldest was -9.5° F). I'd rather have big snow and above normal temperatures than have big cold and below normal snow.

 

I'm hoping to relocate to a better snow spot soon (hopefully by winter '15-'16, if not sooner). Right now I'm thinking 2K in the northern Berkshires or S VT.

[weathafella]

Solid B.

 

The perfectly coriographed whiffs in March kept it from being higher....but otherwise the winter was generally characterized for its cold and slew of warning snowfall events. The below 0F snowfall in early January was historic in nature. Some ill-timed torches in late December and January were also unwelcome.

 

But despite those imperfections, I cannot honestly and objectively grade the winter lower than a B when there was above average snowfall and solidly below average temperatures unless the criteria becomes skewed toward more and more subjective measures.

Pretty much.

[J.Spin]

That low SDD is in major contrast to my area, where it was excellent. However, comparing your numbers to mine really illustrates the difference between foothills synoptic cement and N.VT fluff. Using only the past 7 years, to avoid any with snowfall but not SDD:

 

--Waterbury snowfall 07-08 thru 13-14 averages 66% more than New Sharon, 158.5" to 95.5".

 

--For SDDs, Waterbury records only 74% as much as NS, 1494 to 2011. Only in 2010-11, when Waterbury fell only 4" short of doubling my snowfall, did they have more SDDs, 2277 to 1740.

 

--For a made-up (by me) stat to estimate "retention ability", derived by dividing SDDs by snowfall, the differences are even higher: Waterbury 9.4, NS 21.0. By this stat, 2013-14 looks especially bad for VT, with their "R.A." at 9.3 while mine was 28.0, my highest ever - coldest of 16 winters helped that along.

 

I remember when you mentioned that retention parameter earlier last month in the NNE thread – it’s a great idea.  I really like seeing all the different ways the data can be used to describe the unique climatology of different areas, and it would be great if we had more sites to look at.  Although last season was below 10 at our site for the retention number, looking at my data table, the previous two seasons seemed even more extreme in that respect, with numbers in the 5 to 6 range.  The SDD for those seasons clearly indicate very poor snowpack, but the retention number suggests bad retention was part of that issue vs. just a lack of snowfall:

 

[tamarack]

 

The long term avgs of the Franklin COOPs are ~71". I'm not sure if there's any missing data. Plymouth COOP is 76" and Weare is 73". I figure I'm somewhere in that ballpark. Mt Sunapee is low 80s and CON is mid/upr 60s.

 

Use 75 as the avg and you've been running 120% over the past 8 years. Farmington COOP has been 109% for the same period (97" against avg 89"), good but not as.

Edit, for SDDs: Farmington COOP's past 7 yr avg SDDs is 1,794, so I've had 12% more than there despite 1% less snowfall. Their retention parameter record was 33.7 in 1981-82 (Jan 82 is their coldest month ever recorded), while two years earlier the number was 3.7 - 1979-80 was bad all over New England.

[J.Spin]

2010-2011 winter was awesome...I don't think I realized how good that was when it was occurring. We had 150.1" in town and a 40" snowpack in early March. At the time it felt like we were getting shafted by missing the core of the Jan blitz, but looking back, we had just consistent 40" months. No month was like really crappy compared to the others, just steady snowfall throughout.

 

Indeed, as I’ve mentioned before, 2010-2011 was sort of sneaky good.  I think the surprise factor was due to the precedent set by the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 type of La Niña winters that we’d recently had, which were more overtly good with the moisture and storm train.  However 2010-2011 got there, by hook or by crook, it’s hard to argue about a season that comes in with 200 inches of snowfall in the valley.

[JC-CT]

B+.

Snow was very good.

Would have rather had bitter cold and snowpack in January, and a torching thaw in March. But you can't win them all.

[Nittany88]

Well I think of A as a true top tier winter...like university grades, "average" should come out around B-/C+ territory. Below normal snow this winter (though only 10-20%), but nice cold overall. Awesome March, horrific January, meh December, and dead on average February. Really only two warning events, and waiting till Feb for a warning event in NVT is pretty meh.

I'd stick with a grade representative of a near average winter, C+/B-. Can't go higher than a B- though.

 

Doesn't help that what snow was on the ground from late December through January was an unusable glacial ice pack. No good for skiing, snowshoeing, cross country skiing, etc.

 

That low SDD is in major contrast to my area, where it was excellent. However, comparing your numbers to mine really illustrates the difference between foothills synoptic cement and N.VT fluff. Using only the past 7 years, to avoid any with snowfall but not SDD:

--Waterbury snowfall 07-08 thru 13-14 averages 66% more than New Sharon, 158.5" to 95.5".

--For SDDs, Waterbury records only 74% as much as NS, 1494 to 2011. Only in 2010-11, when Waterbury fell only 4" short of doubling my snowfall, did they have more SDDs, 2277 to 1740.

--For a made-up (by me) stat to estimate "retention ability", derived by dividing SDDs by snowfall, the differences are even higher: Waterbury 9.4, NS 21.0. By this stat, 2013-14 looks especially bad for VT, with their "R.A." at 9.3 while mine was 28.0, my highest ever - coldest of 16 winters helped that along.

 

I think it may speak to CAD more than fluff vs. synoptic in a lot of cases, especially this year. Warm air from cutters blasts in western VT areas, while cold surface air holds strong east of the mountains. Of course in other situations, synoptic vs. fluff does make a difference.