NNE Winter 2015-16 Part 1

[adk]

3" at home and 7.5" at 1,550ft.

 

is that a 7.5 since your afternoon board clearing?

 

I'd say that I found about that level of new snow around the mtn. Just great conditions up there. What was amazing was to go from sun and clear skies on Mansfield to snow west of williston. It's snowing pretty decently in BTV right now. There is about 1" new at my place in the south end and about the same on cars downtown at the office. Has to be lake enhanced?

[backedgeapproaching]

Also have some low level snow here..nothing on radar, but tiny flakes. VIS wavers.

[powderfreak]

is that a 7.5 since your afternoon board clearing?

I'd say that I found about that level of new snow around the mtn. Just great conditions up there. What was amazing was to go from sun and clear skies on Mansfield to snow west of williston. It's snowing pretty decently in BTV right now. There is about 1" new at my place in the south end and about the same on cars downtown at the office. Has to be lake enhanced?

No 7.5" is the 24 hour total at the base. 11" at 3,000ft in the trees.

[adk]

No 7.5" is the 24 hour total at the base. 11" at 3,000ft in the trees

 

Gotcha.

 

Did you notice the temp drop through the morning. It was interesting to see. When I left BTV at 4:55 it was about 15F. When I got back it was 5F. Not too often you see that. 

[Ginx snewx]

No 7.5" is the 24 hour total at the base. 11" at 3,000ft in the trees.

Nice, what did the summit report?

[mahk_webstah]

Being in the SNE oriented, NYC and MA threads has me uncertain and depressed lol.  I know it is an uncertain time, Scott Coastal said the models would be a mess this week.  GYX discussions have reflected this uncertainty.  What are you guys thinking in NNE for this weekend?  It is interesting to me that the GFS and Euro are so far apart for Fri/Sat.  I would lean a bit towards the GFS given that it lead the way in the last system from the mid-range, despite being awful in the short range.  But if you recall, the Euro came quite a bit towards what the GFS was depicting from days 5-7.

 

It's a dry week so I think we get a moderate precip event over the weekend, perhaps whiff early week, but then get in on a bigger storm later next week.

 

What are your thoughts?

[Ginx snewx]

Wow Stowe

 

[J.Spin]

Event totals: 3.0” Snow/0.12” L.E.

 

The most notable periods of snowfall at the house were yesterday afternoon and evening, with a bit more tacked on after midnight.  The snow density dropped in the evening and hovered around the 3% H2O range as colder air moved in.  The settling rate of the lofty snow is notable, with the stake showing 5.5” at midnight and only 5.0” at this morning’s reading despite a bit of additional accumulation.

 

Details from the 12:00 A.M. Waterbury observations:

 

New Snow: 1.4 inches

New Liquid: 0.04 inches

Snow/Water Ratio: 35.0

Snow Density: 2.9% H2O

Temperature: 21.2 F

Sky: Light Snow (1-12 mm flakes)

Snow at the stake: 5.5 inches

 

Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations:

 

New Snow: 0.3 inches

New Liquid: 0.01 inches

Snow/Water Ratio: 30.0

Snow Density: 3.3% H2O

Temperature: 8.2 F

Sky: Light Snow (1 mm flakes)

Snow at the stake: 5.0 inches

[adk]

Nice, what did the summit report?

 

You mean the Mansfield snow stake? I wouldn't suspect it would record more than 11" as it doesn't get checked as often and it compacts. 

[powderfreak]

You mean the Mansfield snow stake? I wouldn't suspect it would record more than 11" as it doesn't get checked as often and it compacts. 

 

Yesterday afternoon's report had 2" of new snow on 0.17" liquid with a snow depth increase of 3".  Given the ridiculous fluff factor I was seeing, the liquid amount sounds right for about 5" of snow, and the depth increasing 3" also sounds right because it probably compacted the couple inches of fluff that was already above the crust from the sleet storm.  The only thing that doesn't sound right is 2" of 10:1 ratio snow.

 

Tonight's report won't capture this all that well either...its already settling out a bit.  Can see settlement cones around the twigs and brush.  Similar to what J.Spin was showing in that although more snow fell after midnight the snow depth actually decreased some, ha. 

 

This was pure cotton candy...the type of stuff only arctic FROPA's with good snow growth can accomplish.

[Ginx snewx]

Yesterday afternoon's report had 2" of new snow on 0.17" liquid with a snow depth increase of 3".  Given the ridiculous fluff factor I was seeing, the liquid amount sounds right for about 5" of snow, and the depth increasing 3" also sounds right because it probably compacted the couple inches of fluff that was already above the crust from the sleet storm.  The only thing that doesn't sound right is 2" of 10:1 ratio snow.

 

Tonight's report won't capture this all that well either...its already settling out a bit.  Can see settlement cones around the twigs and brush.  Similar to what J.Spin was showing in that although more snow fell after midnight the snow depth actually decreased some, ha. 

 

This was pure cotton candy...the type of stuff only arctic FROPA's with good snow growth can accomplish.

so a foot AWT? nice

[powderfreak]

Gotcha.

 

Did you notice the temp drop through the morning. It was interesting to see. When I left BTV at 4:55 it was about 15F. When I got back it was 5F. Not too often you see that. 

 

The snowmaking team was commenting on the temperature drop overnight, saying at some points it was dropping so fast the system could barely keep up with it.

 

So the guys were firing up Liftline last night and the Snowmaking Controller in the control room was monitoring the screens and started to panic a bit.  Apparently he called the guys on the hill asking them what they were turning on and they kept saying we haven't touched anything yet.  Well the temperature was dropping so fast that the automated York system and fan guns at Spruce kept asking the system for more water.  Another 10 minutes goes by and the system keeps asking for water.  The weather stations on those guns were experiencing a temperature free-fall and was literally sucking water up at an astonishing pace as the guns continue to adapt to the latest weather readings.  Sounded like it got hectic there for a bit as the York system just started sucking water at a ridiculous pace so they had to shut some stuff down quickly without starving the system for water, but eventually leveled off. 

 

That's when you know the temperature is plummeting.  When the automated system can barely keep up with it.  Every time the weather stations updated, the guns were like "we need more water captain!" 

[powderfreak]

8-12 for ski areas by Tues am?

From what?

Arctic boundary, upslope, synoptic lift. High ratio stuff, .3 to .5 qpf at 20-1

so a foot AWT? nice

 

Well done, Ginxy.  I'll admit this definitely over-performed to me.  I was thinking the squalls would be the main show but didn't expect like 4-5" before the front even got near.  And then it snowed like 1"/hr from 3pm until like 9pm, with light snow continuing the rest of the night.

 

You're estimates were spot on, as I didn't melt a core but if I were to make an educated guess I'd go with around 0.3-0.4" liquid for 11" of snow.  I'm thinking regardless of snow amount, the COOP comes in with around 0.15" liquid, which would put it around 0.35" for the event of water.

[eyewall]

Looks like we picked up a bit more accumulation. EDIT: My mistake the 4.5 was Milton at 7am. Either way we picked up a little accumulation since then.

Sent from my VS986 using Tapatalk

[wxeyeNH]

Mostly cloudy 10.1F  occ very light flurries.   Finally a real winter day.  Temp has been inching down.  Clear early and then low clouds with flurries came in from the east.

 

Looking forward to more active weather later this week and beyond

[backedgeapproaching]

I'm driving up to Burlington right now on 22 in an absolute white out on that band coming off the lake.

[tamarack]

As usual, my location saw nary a flake - did see a couple in Farmington early afternoon yesterday. CAD on easterlies = downslope on westerlies.  Temp was 14 at 6:30 this morning, had been 23 at 9 last night and bumped to 27 a bit later, probably mixing as CAA began.  Unless the wind stays fairly strong, should have my first subzero of the season tonight, 2nd latest behind 2007, when it took until Jan. 17.  (And debuted with a -18.  Do not expect anything close to that.)

[powderfreak]

I'm driving up to Burlington right now on 22 in an absolute white out on that band coming off the lake.

Friends are saying it's snowing pretty hard on RT 7 in Addison County. Sunny here in Stowe. Reverse of the usual.

[ono]

going all day here in BTV.  Little flakes, just picked up a bit. Not expected, or common- sustained Champlain lake effect in Burlington. Definitely snow globe feeling today with another inch or two from this lake effect stuff.

[backedgeapproaching]

Friends are saying it's snowing pretty hard on RT 7 in Addison County. Sunny here in Stowe. Reverse of the usual.

Yea, VIS at times was like 30ft between the snow and blowing snow and low cloud deck.

This was somewhere between Addison and Vergennes on 22. VIS was worse then these pics indicate.

[backedgeapproaching]

My car thermo dropped from 13F when I left SVT to 4F when I got to near BTV.

[dendrite]

13.6F...at my low for the day.

[dryslot]

As usual, my location saw nary a flake - did see a couple in Farmington early afternoon yesterday. CAD on easterlies = downslope on westerlies.  Temp was 14 at 6:30 this morning, had been 23 at 9 last night and bumped to 27 a bit later, probably mixing as CAA began.  Unless the wind stays fairly strong, should have my first subzero of the season tonight, 2nd latest behind 2007, when it took until Jan. 17.  (And debuted with a -18.  Do not expect anything close to that.)

 

Yeah downslope dandy here as well, At least we are making some ice

[OceanStWx]

As usual, my location saw nary a flake - did see a couple in Farmington early afternoon yesterday. CAD on easterlies = downslope on westerlies.  Temp was 14 at 6:30 this morning, had been 23 at 9 last night and bumped to 27 a bit later, probably mixing as CAA began.  Unless the wind stays fairly strong, should have my first subzero of the season tonight, 2nd latest behind 2007, when it took until Jan. 17.  (And debuted with a -18.  Do not expect anything close to that.)

 

Froude never got super favorable for widespread snow showers getting over the terrain yesterday. There was a small window around 18z when it climbed above 1 according to the BTV WRF. Otherwise, it got pretty blocked after about 00z.

 

[powderfreak]

My car thermo dropped from 13F when I left SVT to 4F when I got to near BTV.

2F at MVL at noon, but now up to 4F.

[eekuasepinniW]

Mountains are pure white.  Tripyramid looks majestic.

[Hitman]

why so quiet about saturday?

 

from BTV

 

THE PATTERN WILL CHANGE FRIDAY NIGHT INTO SATURDAY
AS SOUTHWEST FLOW ALOFT DEVELOPS OVER THE REGION IN RESPONSE TO AN
UPPER LEVEL TROUGH OF LOW PRESSURE MOVING INTO THE UPPER MIDWEST.
THIS WILL ALLOW MOISTURE TO SPREAD INTO THE REGION LATE FRIDAY
NIGHT AND ESPECIALLY ON SATURDAY. AT THIS TIME THE THERMAL PROFILE
SUGGESTS THE PRECIPITATION BEGINS AS SNOW AND THEN MIXES WITH OR
CHANGES TO RAIN IN THE LARGER VALLEYS. AFTER THIS INITIAL SURGE OF
MOISTURE/PRECIPITATION ON SATURDAY... REGION STAYS IN SOUTHWEST
FLOW ALOFT SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY WITH MOISTURE AND SOME BROAD
SCALE LIFT TO CONTINUE THE CHANCE FOR PRECIPITATION...BUT SATURDAY
APPEARS TO HAVE THE BEST CHANCE AND HAVE GONE WITH LIKELY
PRECIPITATION CHANCES DURING THIS TIME PERIOD.

[J.Spin]

I went for a ski tour up at Bolton Valley this morning to check out the new snow, so I’ll pass along some observations from the mountain and surrounding area.  As of the 6:00 A.M. observations time we’d picked up 3.0” total from this event down at the house in Waterbury at 500’, and I didn’t measure the settled depth at that point, but it’s presumably around 2” or so with the way this fluffy 3-6% H2O snow is compacting.  Fortunately it didn’t look like there was much wind as I ascended the Bolton Valley Access Road, because temperatures were certainly bitter, running in the low single digits F.  I swung into the Timberline parking lot at 1,500’ on my way up the road, and measured 4-5” of powder over the old base.  Although likely serviceable for some turns on appropriate terrain, I know that the base snow is a bit thinner down at that elevation, so I continued on up to the Village at 2,100’ to start my tour.  It was right around 0 F up at the Village, and there was the occasional bit of breeze blowing things around, but it was nothing like that wind from last Tuesday during Winter Storm Goliath.  I ascended via the designated Wilderness route, and descended in the Fanny Hill area, and here’s the summary of snow depths I found above the old base:

 

500’: 2-3”

1,500’: 4-5”

2,100’: 5-6”

2,500’: 6”

3,000’: 7-8”

3,150’: 8”

 

I can’t say that all the snow up on the mountain was necessarily from the past 24 hours, but it’s very easy to distinguish the new powder from the dense base snow that we picked up from Winter Storm Goliath.  I did find a good representative spot from which I could assess total snowpack depth at around 2,700’, and found it to be 14”.  I skied Upper Fanny Hill, which is just above that elevation with black diamond pitch, and it’s easily good to go with the dense base covering up everything but the obvious major obstacles.  There’s a lot of single-black terrain at appropriate elevations that I suspect is good to go for at least the touring crowd, although I’d say one more good shot of liquid equivalent (an inch or so) would be needed to get things going for lift-serviced levels of traffic.  I’m sure the mountain could open some natural terrain consisting of mellow pitches at this point if they chose to.  In any event, the powder turns were excellent this morning, with my only complaint being that it was “slow snow” due to the very cold temperatures.  Even with 115 mm fat skis keeping me afloat, I had to go steeper than the pitch of typical green terrain for a good ride.  Fortunately there’s plenty of such terrain ready for turns on the upper mountain.

 

As others have reported, snow actually picked up as I approached the Champlain Valley, and it’s been snowing all day.  They’re small flakes vs. those larger dendrites that you can sometimes get from lake-effect/upslope, but accumulating nonetheless.  I’ll try to post a few pictures from the outing when I get a chance.

[J.Spin]

Why so quiet about Saturday?

 

I’m still catching up on stuff related to the current storm so I haven’t really had much chance to think about the weekend system(s), but I first started to hear about some of the potential in the BTV NWS forecast discussion from yesterday evening:

 

BOTH GFS/ECMWF SHOW 540 LINE INTERSECTING OUR REGION DURING THE EVENT WITH ADVECTION BEING OFFSET BY WEAK SECONDARY COASTAL DEVELOPMENT. WILL MENTION LIKELY POPS WITH RAIN OR SNOW IN VALLEYS AND MAINLY SNOW IN THE MOUNTAINS. PRECIPITATION VALUES LOOK TO RANGE BETWEEN 0.25 AND 0.50 FOR THIS QUICK EVENT.

 

There should be a new discussion out soon with the latest thoughts!

[eyewall]

I am not talking about Saturday because here it looks like a mix/rain event. Anyway the CPV snow is finally winding down this evening. It persisted all day and caused a few drivers to end up in the ditch off I-89 near exit 14.