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NNE Winter 2015-16 Part 1

klw

By klw,
in New England

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Lava Rock

Lava Rock

Posted
Posted

Wow I was just looking at ski area snowfall in Vermont out of curiosity, and the seasonal totals are pretty depressing.  But Killington stands out to me as probably the roughest relative to normal.

 

Seasonal Snowfall to-date:

 

Jay Peak...66"

Smuggs...46"

Stowe...49"

Bolton...39"

MRG...29"

Sugarbush...56"

Killington...18"

Mount Snow...15"

 

Southern VT has to be one of the lower relative to normal?  Hard to believe at mountains of 2000-4000ft elevation like Killington down to Mount Snow has failed to even see 20" cumulative through mid-January.  This is worse than even 2011-2012 when Killington barely hit 100" for the season. 

 

Also, I guess I shouldn't think too much about the difference between here and Jay Peak (one county difference), as Sugarbush is less than one full county north of Killington and the difference is 56" vs. 18" and both of those starting counting snow in October.

Wow, that is bad. Too think I am only 4" less season-to-date then Ktown is crazy.

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Hitman

Hitman

Posted
Posted

Wow I was just looking at ski area snowfall in Vermont out of curiosity, and the seasonal totals are pretty depressing. But Killington stands out to me as probably the roughest relative to normal.

Seasonal Snowfall to-date:

Jay Peak...66"

Smuggs...46"

Stowe...49"

Bolton...39"

MRG...29"

Sugarbush...56"

Killington...18"

Mount Snow...15"

Southern VT has to be one of the lower relative to normal? Hard to believe at mountains of 2000-4000ft elevation like Killington down to Mount Snow has failed to even see 20" cumulative through mid-January. This is worse than even 2011-2012 when Killington barely hit 100" for the season.

Also, I guess I shouldn't think too much about the difference between here and Jay Peak (one county difference), as Sugarbush is less than one full county north of Killington and the difference is 56" vs. 18" and both of those starting counting snow in October.

Spoke to a friend last night who skis killington and he was lamenting how bad a shape they are in. I don't think they get the lake effect and enhanced snows that we get north of there.

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tamarack

tamarack

Posted
Posted

Ahh not a bad idea with the mult-day precip.  Just leave the Stratus Gauge out there to collect all those little snowfalls.  Could certainly also report at 2pm...though it seems more like a 6-8am type of thing for CoCoRAHS (I know Brian as talked about not wanting to change reporting time).

 

I definitely have been thinking about it.

 

Multi-day reports are great for precip - that's what I do after our grandkid trips.  However, cocorahs won't (or haven't, in my experience) accept multi-day snowfall data.

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J.Spin

J.Spin

Posted
Posted

CoCoRAHS shows the J.Spin difference along the Spine.  Pretty much 200% of anyone else except there was a similar report down in Warren.  But the QPF matches.  Everyone pretty much saw 20-25:1.

 

13JAN16E.jpg

 

Liquid.

 

13JAN16F.jpg

 

I will note that I had 3.4" in Stowe, while the CoCoRAHS observer about 1.5 miles away recorded 2.0".  I had 2.0" from 9pm until 5am, following 1.4" before that.  The local CoCoRAHS guy had 2"/0.16", which is one of the lowest ratios around.  If he followed the trend of 20:1 it would've been over 3", so I'm curious about the timing of his measurements.  I bet my liquid was pretty close, maybe a hundredth or two more, but even removing the board clearing, there was 3" in the driveway this morning (a difference of roughly a half inch from the board clearings).

 

Great stuff PF – really nice demonstration of the spine snow (and liquid equivalent) magic in effect.  I’m really psyched to be able to contribute the data from our location to CoCoRaHS – if you removed that point from the map the totals would look fairly even from east to west across the spine, and you’d miss the substantial bump that’s present in the middle.  Hopefully that aspect is useful for those agencies utilizing the data and not just some sort of localized curiosity.

 

Below I’ve got an image of the driveway yesterday morning after my wife left.  This storm is getting there with close to a third of an inch of liquid, but we typically don’t even worry about clearing the driveway after these types of storms.  You just drive over the fluff and pack it down (and I actually want a packed snow surface on the driveway above the gravel for the snow blower anyway).  I’ll probably shovel the plow berm at the end of the driveway at some point, but even that hasn’t been an issue thus far.

 

13JAN16D.jpg

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J.Spin

J.Spin

Posted
Posted

I usually don't melt my snow every time.  I'll do it once in a while if I'm curious about something, but the other guy is only 1.5 miles away.  Our water is generally fairly close, but of course there are t-storms and localized stuff where it can vary a bit.  But overall his water numbers seem fine.  I just think he's not a board-clearer and pretty much a once-a-day depth measure based on the snowfall numbers.  The snow depth is usually within an inch too.

 

I could definitely do it for rain events no problem.  The winter is a little harder up here to do that in the morning before leaving for work at 4:30am or whatever.  And given the number of days you can be required to report up here (I mean you could have 0.01"-0.1" like 5 days in a row) just because of how often it precipitates at least lightly, its a little more difficult.  I'd definitely do it if it was just melting a synoptic snowfall once every 7-10 days or something (which is why I will often melt those because they are not as frequent and I'm curious).

 

But it takes dedication like J.Spin to constantly melt every 0.1-3.0" snowfall that happens all winter.

 

Yeah, as you’re well aware, it can be close to 100 days a season with at least some new snow the way things go in the upslope zone.  It can definitely be a chore that wears on you at times; I’ll typically just do 6:00 A.M. and 6:00 P.M. analyses unless the snowfall ramps up to the point that 6-hour measurements are more critical.  Slower seasons like this one so far aren’t too bad though, and it gives you a bit of a physical/mental break.  And, even when we do get into those patterns where it’s just days upon days of snow, it’s so picturesque out there that you don’t mind getting out for a bit to measure and core.  I really love our typical valley snow globe regime with calm air, comfortable temperatures in the 20s F, and big flakes fluttering down.

 

In your case though, you could easily do your usual quick snow measurements daily and melt down your gauge contents once a week (or sooner, depending on schedule, big storms, etc.) and get decent data.  Actually, the way this season has gone, you sort of get free, automated melting of the gauge contents once a week anyway.

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radarman

radarman

Posted
Posted

Wow I was just looking at ski area snowfall in Vermont out of curiosity, and the seasonal totals are pretty depressing.  But Killington stands out to me as probably the roughest relative to normal.

 

Seasonal Snowfall to-date:

 

Jay Peak...66"

Smuggs...46"

Stowe...49"

Bolton...39"

MRG...29"

Sugarbush...56"

Killington...18"

Mount Snow...15"

 

Southern VT has to be one of the lower relative to normal?  Hard to believe at mountains of 2000-4000ft elevation like Killington down to Mount Snow has failed to even see 20" cumulative through mid-January.  This is worse than even 2011-2012 when Killington barely hit 100" for the season. 

 

Also, I guess I shouldn't think too much about the difference between here and Jay Peak (one county difference), as Sugarbush is less than one full county north of Killington and the difference is 56" vs. 18" and both of those starting counting snow in October.

 

27" difference from Sugarbush to MRG is suspect, considering it's about 5-10 minutes by car.

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powderfreak

powderfreak

Posted
Posted

there may be a difference in what dates are included.  SB starts counting in November whereas mrg doesnt start their season until later.

 

I'm a little nuts about this, but I take notes when people start counting snow.  Sugarbush started their count in October with 6" at the summit in mid-October (17-18), which surprised me because they often have started in November.  I have a daily snow tally that includes snow reported by Killington/Sugarbush/Bolton/Smuggs/Jay to compare to Stowe, so I can look back at it if need be.  Jay Peak actually started their seasonal count the latest of any of us...they didn't start until the week they opened in late-November.  Smuggs started counting in October, we started November 1st and Bolton looked to start in mid-November.

 

Mad River Glen started their count in November, but what I notice is MRG is less likely to have those huge ranges like SB will...like 1" base and 6" summit, or 3" base 9" summit.  MRG is usually a much smaller range for whatever reason (like three nights ago MRG was 2" base 2" summit, and SB was 1" base 3.5" mid 5" summit).  Though most mountains are smaller in ranges than Sugarbush.  Their summit snowfall this season has surprised me a bit but I have no reason to doubt it.  Be curious to see what they have at the top of Super Bravo for a seasonal total (the mid-mtn total), which has to be a fairly similar elevation to my 3,000ft snow board which we consider "upper mountain". 

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J.Spin

J.Spin

Posted
Posted

At 18.2” so far, this season is easily[/font] setting the low bar in my records with respect to total snowfall; the next closest is 2006-2007, which had 26.6” through yesterday.  Surprisingly, that’s only a difference of roughly one decent storm.  Depending on how this week plays out with respect to snowfall, it could actually gain some ground on 2006-2007, which was only at 33.5” of total snowfall as of the 18th of the month.

 

Ha, setting all sort of low-bars for winter this year so far.  It really is pretty crazy overall just how bad this winter has been.  You can only laugh.

 

On a somewhat positive note regarding the above, we aren’t in quite as rarified territory as we were with regard to this season’s abysmal snow totals.  Our recent storm brought yesterday’s season snowfall total at our location to 25.5”, which was essentially within an inch of where 2006-2007 was (26.6”) at this point.  There’s no doubt we are way behind average (my data say our site should be passing 70” of season snowfall now), but getting to a respectable season total isn’t unprecedented from this position.

 

There is a dose of reality that dampens the above however; the coming week in 2006-2007 brought a healthy 20 inches of snow from two solid storms, so we’d have to have a snowy week to keep pace.  Currently the GFS snow maps suggest about a third of that amount in the coming in the next six days, although the global models certainly aren’t going to pick up on all the nuances of snowfall that go on around here.

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Hitman

Hitman

Posted
Posted

On a somewhat positive note regarding the above, we aren’t in quite as rarified territory as we were with regard to this season’s abysmal snow totals.  Our recent storm brought yesterday’s season snowfall total at our location to 25.5”, which was essentially within an inch of where 2006-2007 was (26.6”) at this point.  There’s no doubt we are way behind average (my data say our site should be passing 70” of season snowfall now), but getting to a respectable season total isn’t unprecedented from this position.

 

There is a dose of reality that dampens the above however; the coming week in 2006-2007 brought a healthy 20 inches of snow from two solid storms, so we’d have to have a snowy week to keep pace.  Currently the GFS snow maps suggest about a third of that amount in the coming in the next six days, although the global models certainly aren’t going to pick up on all the nuances of snowfall that go on around here.

remarkable how similar this season has been to '06-'07.  lets hope this one plays out the way that one did down the stretch.

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powderfreak

powderfreak

Posted
Posted

Radar just really lit up along the Camels Hump -Mansfield corridor. 

 

Yeah it did....those 30dbz specks are nice to see.  Maybe a quick 1-2" on the Spine?

 

Only flurries in town but as the light faded the ski trails were hidden behind a wall of white.  I love that when you look towards the mountain and can't see it and you know the only reason is because its snowing steadily.

 

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powderfreak

powderfreak

Posted
Posted

First shift grooming supervisor saying 2-3" in 2 hours since 4pm on upper mountain.  Be interesting what tomorrow morning's numbers are, as if it shuts off soon like radar shows, that stuff is going to settle out a bit.  Says it is pure fluff, which makes sense with single digit temps at summit level allowing for great dendritic snow growth from the orographic precip.

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