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NNE Winter 2015-16 Part 1


klw

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For the first time in 36 hours, MVL has 10sm visibility again.

 

Man what an inversion to have fog/freezing fog stuck in the valley for so long. 

 

From 10:40pm on Dec 5th until 6:45am this morning (Dec 7th), the MVL ASOS never saw visibility go above 3/4sm.  It was pretty much 32 hours of 1/4 to 1/2 mile visibility.

 

attachicon.giffog.jpg

 

 

I may be able to hunt down more freezing fog shots early tomorrow morning lol.

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For early next week I mentioned the cutter emerging as a 970's bomb over Quebec as per the Euro meaning a rain/wind event for NNE. I finally have access to ensembles and it has plenty of support there with a mix between a Miller-B and a single big low among the members.

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This is a bit off subject, but since we're in a lull, I figured I'd ask (maybe it's been discussed before).  Chic Chocs vs Northern VT: most places quote 7m of snow annually, though I've read 9m in one place (snowmachine website),  which is somewhere between 280" and 350". I remember some time ago about the Chic Chocs receiving 400" annually- which puts them on par with some inter-mountain west resorts and interior BC- and more snowfall than most Colorado resorts. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Murdochville (ele. 1800') gets 210" annually and they're not in the "high peaks" region of the Chic Chocs which top out 3000-4000' with an Adirondack-style clumping of of round-top, steep sided mountains. I was under the impression that the Chic Chocs get perhaps more snow than VT, but it's not really considered East Coast for good reason, just Eastern.

 

 I would have to imagine that the mountains there receive at least a similar amount of snow to northern VT just by latitude with both a longer season and better chances for being north of a rain line.  Perhaps N VT gets more Dec-March snow, and the shoulder season is where the Chic Chocs score. Maybe a lack of interest in measuring snowfall beyond the regional avalanche center (which has to cover a LARGE, unpopulated area)?   

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This is a bit off subject, but since we're in a lull, I figured I'd ask (maybe it's been discussed before).  Chic Chocs vs Northern VT: most places quote 7m of snow annually, though I've read 9m in one place (snowmachine website),  which is somewhere between 280" and 350". I remember some time ago about the Chic Chocs receiving 400" annually- which puts them on par with some inter-mountain west resorts and interior BC- and more snowfall than most Colorado resorts. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Murdochville (ele. 1800') gets 210" annually and they're not in the "high peaks" region of the Chic Chocs which top out 3000-4000' with an Adirondack-style clumping of of round-top, steep sided mountains. I was under the impression that the Chic Chocs get perhaps more snow than VT, but it's not really considered East Coast for good reason, just Eastern.

 

 I would have to imagine that the mountains there receive at least a similar amount of snow to northern VT just by latitude with both a longer season and better chances for being north of a rain line.  Perhaps N VT gets more Dec-March snow, and the shoulder season is where the Chic Chocs score. Maybe a lack of interest in measuring snowfall beyond the regional avalanche center (which has to cover a LARGE, unpopulated area)?   

 

I'd guess that the Chic-Chocs do way better than NVT for synoptic snow, no idea about upslope.  When there's decent blocking, it probably snows continuously for days and days.  Juicy LP stalled in the Gulf of St. Lawrence - meter(s) of snow.

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The 12z Euro now brings next week's cutter as a single low across Interior SE NY and SNE instead of into Quebec (Not so much a cutter now). Waiting on ensembles. None the less there isn't a great deal of cold air available. Maybe some tail end snow if it verified verbatim.

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Yeah we will see if it lowers at all. Also I realized I was looking at a decoded version that said AGL, above ground level, so the base at the ridgeline would make sense. Mount Washington posted this:

 

 

Nice...yeah it looks real shallow when there are little gaps in the clouds.  You can tell its not thick.

 

I think we've got a good shot at undercast from the summit tomorrow.  It will be close but the moisture is mostly at 900mb and lower tomorrow.  Look at this RH plot for BTV:

 

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This is a bit off subject, but since we're in a lull, I figured I'd ask (maybe it's been discussed before).  Chic Chocs vs Northern VT: most places quote 7m of snow annually, though I've read 9m in one place (snowmachine website),  which is somewhere between 280" and 350". I remember some time ago about the Chic Chocs receiving 400" annually- which puts them on par with some inter-mountain west resorts and interior BC- and more snowfall than most Colorado resorts. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Murdochville (ele. 1800') gets 210" annually and they're not in the "high peaks" region of the Chic Chocs which top out 3000-4000' with an Adirondack-style clumping of of round-top, steep sided mountains. I was under the impression that the Chic Chocs get perhaps more snow than VT, but it's not really considered East Coast for good reason, just Eastern.

 

 I would have to imagine that the mountains there receive at least a similar amount of snow to northern VT just by latitude with both a longer season and better chances for being north of a rain line.  Perhaps N VT gets more Dec-March snow, and the shoulder season is where the Chic Chocs score. Maybe a lack of interest in measuring snowfall beyond the regional avalanche center (which has to cover a LARGE, unpopulated area)?   

 

I've done plenty of skiing in both places and watched the CC and NVT weather closely and I think they get about the same amount of snow on average as the greens. Some storms do well for them. Some for NVT. Sometimes they get upslope with St. Lawrence seaway enhancement, sometimes just the biting winds of death.  Its honestly about equal all told. I'm also not sure it is always a longer season. Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. I also don't think the shoulder seasons are per-se better. There are plenty of storms that hit us in October and Nov. that miss them. 

 

Now when it comes to terrain. 

 

Well, the CC have some things that are just downright dandy. 

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Nice...yeah it looks real shallow when there are little gaps in the clouds.  You can tell its not thick.

 

I think we've got a good shot at undercast from the summit tomorrow.  It will be close but the moisture is mostly at 900mb and lower tomorrow.  Look at this RH plot for BTV:

 

attachicon.gifrelh.png

 

I agree. I was looking at the Skew-T and saturation stops at around 3000ft (true not agl) on the skew-T

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The Euro is still bouncing a bit and back much more of a pure cutter for early next week followed by a transfer to a secondary low before clearing out. Warm and rainy to be sure in that time frame. There would be a chance for upslope snows around 12/18 as weaker storm system moves out.

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This is a bit off subject, but since we're in a lull, I figured I'd ask (maybe it's been discussed before).  Chic Chocs vs Northern VT: most places quote 7m of snow annually, though I've read 9m in one place (snowmachine website),  which is somewhere between 280" and 350". I remember some time ago about the Chic Chocs receiving 400" annually- which puts them on par with some inter-mountain west resorts and interior BC- and more snowfall than most Colorado resorts. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Murdochville (ele. 1800') gets 210" annually and they're not in the "high peaks" region of the Chic Chocs which top out 3000-4000' with an Adirondack-style clumping of of round-top, steep sided mountains. I was under the impression that the Chic Chocs get perhaps more snow than VT, but it's not really considered East Coast for good reason, just Eastern.

 

 I would have to imagine that the mountains there receive at least a similar amount of snow to northern VT just by latitude with both a longer season and better chances for being north of a rain line.  Perhaps N VT gets more Dec-March snow, and the shoulder season is where the Chic Chocs score. Maybe a lack of interest in measuring snowfall beyond the regional avalanche center (which has to cover a LARGE, unpopulated area)?

 

We’ve talked about it a couple of times in the past:

 

December 2012

http://www.americanwx.com/bb/index.php/topic/35526-the-201213-ski-season-thread/page-17#entry1900905

 

August 2014

http://www.americanwx.com/bb/index.php/topic/43937-nne-summer-thread/?view=findpost&p=3033619

 

Every time I check, what appear to be the most credible snowfall numbers keep coming back in the 200”+ range.  As you noted, a popular “round” number that various winter-related websites seem to throw out is 7 meters, or 275”, but I don’t know the actual validity of that number.  Since I haven’t found any official reporting stations up at elevation in the Chic Chocs, I tried a different approach this time and started looking at annual snowfall data like you did for the town of Murdochville, which sort of sits near the middle of the eastern end of the Gaspé Peninsula (people have posted snowy pictures from there on the forum before).  From a website reporting Environment Canada data, and Wikipedia, the annual snowfall numbers come in at 215.7” and 209.2” respectively, just like the 210” you mentioned:

 

http://www.currentresults.com/Weather-Extremes/Canada/snowiest.php

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murdochville,_Quebec

 

This initially got me intrigued, figuring that Murdochville was low elevation, and if they’re averaging 200”+ there, then maybe some of those outlandishly high snowfall numbers (e.g. 500 inches) I’ve seen out there for the Chic Chocs could be real.  Unfortunately, it turns out that Murdochville isn’t a low-elevation community at all; its elevation is somewhere in the range of 1,755’-2,170’ depending on which website you use, and that’s higher than most of the base areas of ski resorts around here.  The Chic Chocs top out around 4,160’ at Mont-Jacques-Cartier; perhaps PF could try to extrapolate what the snowfall might be up there in the higher elevations based on that Murdochville snowfall.  I’m not sure if the higher elevations would push to 300”+ though if the area’s snowfall is more synoptic, since I think I recall PF pointing out that our upslope snow here in the Northern Greens produces more dramatic snowfall increases with elevation vs. synoptic snowfall.

 

I think I’ve heard of the Chic Chocs getting some moisture feed off the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in terms of mesoscale lake-effect/upslope, but we hear so little about the weather up there in general, it’s hard to know how common or substantial a contribution it makes to the annual snowfall.  The thing is, when we’re on the fringe of coastal systems up here in NVT, then they’re totally out of it, and they’re still close enough to our area that I only occasionally see a system where that area is on the good side of a storm’s snow line relative to our area.  I’m not sure what type of storms/storm tracks are typically doing the work up there, but usually with Quebec ski areas the theme seems to be snow preservation, not huge snowfall.  At least that’s the way it is with the Quebec City area.  I was thinking, like you, that perhaps they do well on the fringes of the season when the storm track is farther north?  Murdochville definitely looks like a snowy place based on the size of the snowbanks in a lot of the pictures.  It’s hard to know how much of that comes from preservation vs. high snowfall, but if the area sits around 2,000’ and gets 200”+ of (synoptic?) snow a season with great preservation, it’s going to look like that.

 

During my searching, I looked into the local skiing in Murdochville and found out about the Mont Miller ski area that’s right there.  I hadn’t really heard about it before, but I found a very cool shot that immediately caught my attention, and most avid skiers out there won’t need to be told why:

 

09DEC15A.jpg

 

When I saw that image, my jaw dropped a bit for a second, and there’s no doubt we’d be hearing more about Mont Miller in ski magazines and other media if the perspective in that picture was perfectly representative of the lift-served terrain they were offering.  That looks impressively steep, and reminds me a bit of the back side terrain of Discovery, or some of the front side of Whitewater.  I surveyed some shots from other perspectives, and there’s certainly some telephoto compression going on in that image to set up the apparent pitch of that terrain.  Regardless, it’s a very cool shot, and it looks like a fun mountain to visit.  It seems they generally offering lift-service in the weekend timeframe, which of course mean good things for those earning turns.  Their Facebook page looks like a good place to see what’s currently going on – they certainly had some rounds of snow in November:

 

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Club-de-Ski-Mont-Miller/107257929303610

 

It looks like you can access various backcountry areas near the lift-served terrain as well, and there seem to be designated backcountry areas with defined runs.  Some of them are listed on the web page of Chic-Chac, which is a local hostel, guide, snow cat, etc. operation:

 

http://www.chic-chac.ca/en/skiing-area/

 

Here’s an Alpinezone trip report from this past May with some other discussion and pictures of the area:

 

http://forums.alpinezone.com/showthread.php/136791-Ski-Mont-Miller-Murdochville-May-2-3-2015

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We’ve talked about it a couple of times in the past:

 

December 2012

http://www.americanwx.com/bb/index.php/topic/35526-the-201213-ski-season-thread/page-17#entry1900905

 

August 2014

http://www.americanwx.com/bb/index.php/topic/43937-nne-summer-thread/?view=findpost&p=3033619

 

Every time I check, what appear to be the most credible snowfall numbers keep coming back in the 200”+ range.  As you noted, a popular “round” number that various winter-related websites seem to throw out is 7 meters, or 275”, but I don’t know the actual validity of that number.  Since I haven’t found any official reporting stations up at elevation in the Chic Chocs, I tried a different approach this time and started looking at annual snowfall data like you did for the town of Murdochville, which sort of sits near the middle of the eastern end of the Gaspé Peninsula (people have posted snowy pictures from there on the forum before).  From a website reporting Environment Canada data, and Wikipedia, the annual snowfall numbers come in at 215.7” and 209.2” respectively, just like the 210” you mentioned:

 

http://www.currentresults.com/Weather-Extremes/Canada/snowiest.php

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murdochville,_Quebec

 

This initially got me intrigued, figuring that Murdochville was low elevation, and if they’re averaging 200”+ there, then maybe some of those outlandishly high snowfall numbers (e.g. 500 inches) I’ve seen out there for the Chic Chocs could be real.  Unfortunately, it turns out that Murdochville isn’t a low-elevation community at all; its elevation is somewhere in the range of 1,755’-2,170’ depending on which website you use, and that’s higher than most of the base areas of ski resorts around here.  The Chic Chocs top out around 4,160’ at Mont-Jacques-Cartier; perhaps PF could try to extrapolate what the snowfall might be up there in the higher elevations based on that Murdochville snowfall.  I’m not sure if the higher elevations would push to 300”+ though if the area’s snowfall is more synoptic, since I think I recall PF pointing out that our upslope snow here in the Northern Greens produces more dramatic snowfall increases with elevation vs. synoptic snowfall.

 

I think I’ve heard of the Chic Chocs getting some moisture feed off the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in terms of mesoscale lake-effect/upslope, but we hear so little about the weather up there in general, it’s hard to know how common or substantial a contribution it makes to the annual snowfall.  The thing is, when we’re on the fringe of coastal systems up here in NVT, then they’re totally out of it, and they’re still close enough to our area that I only occasionally see a system where that area is on the good side of a storm’s snow line relative to our area.  I’m not sure what type of storms/storm tracks are typically doing the work up there, but usually with Quebec ski areas the theme seems to be snow preservation, not huge snowfall.  At least that’s the way it is with the Quebec City area.  I was thinking, like you, that perhaps they do well on the fringes of the season when the storm track is farther north?  Murdochville definitely looks like a snowy place based on the size of the snowbanks in a lot of the pictures.  It’s hard to know how much of that comes from preservation vs. high snowfall, but if the area sits around 2,000’ and gets 200”+ of (synoptic?) snow a season with great preservation, it’s going to look like that.

 

During my searching, I looked into the local skiing in Murdochville and found out about the Mont Miller ski area that’s right there.  I hadn’t really heard about it before, but I found a very cool shot that immediately caught my attention, and most avid skiers out there won’t need to be told why:

 

09DEC15A.jpg

 

When I saw that image, my jaw dropped a bit for a second, and there’s no doubt we’d be hearing more about Mont Miller in ski magazines and other media if the perspective in that picture was perfectly representative of the lift-served terrain they were offering.  That looks impressively steep, and reminds me a bit of the back side terrain of Discovery, or some of the front side of Whitewater.  I surveyed some shots from other perspectives, and there’s certainly some telephoto compression going on in that image to set up the apparent pitch of that terrain.  Regardless, it’s a very cool shot, and it looks like a fun mountain to visit.  It seems they generally offering lift-service in the weekend timeframe, which of course mean good things for those earning turns.  Their Facebook page looks like a good place to see what’s currently going on – they certainly had some rounds of snow in November:

 

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Club-de-Ski-Mont-Miller/107257929303610

 

It looks like you can access various backcountry areas near the lift-served terrain as well, and there seem to be designated backcountry areas with defined runs.  Some of them are listed on the web page of Chic-Chac, which is a local hostel, guide, snow cat, etc. operation:

 

http://www.chic-chac.ca/en/skiing-area/

 

Here’s an Alpinezone trip report from this past May with some other discussion and pictures of the area:

 

http://forums.alpinezone.com/showthread.php/136791-Ski-Mont-Miller-Murdochville-May-2-3-2015

 

Thanks for the links.  Did some more sleuthing last night, and came across this: 

 

http://www.sepaq.com/dotAsset/9426a9fd-0a5e-4d23-9d96-9c45c6400c87.pdf

 

Apparently, the official park literature quotes 8-10m in avalanche terrain- which is a fair bit more than other sources. so somewhere between 7-10m- a respectable number for sure.  

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Thanks for the links. Did some more sleuthing last night, and came across this:

http://www.sepaq.com/dotAsset/9426a9fd-0a5e-4d23-9d96-9c45c6400c87.pdf

Apparently, the official park literature quotes 8-10m in avalanche terrain- which is a fair bit more than other sources. so somewhere between 7-10m- a respectable number for sure.

They also get a ton of wind so I'm sure measuring is more estimate than anything. They've got those flat wind-swept mountain tops above treeline with 2,000 verts of wind-loaded terrain below over the edge. Those gullies and faces have to drift to like 30 feet deep in spots.

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The thing is, when we’re on the fringe of coastal systems up here in NVT, then they’re totally out of it, and they’re still close enough to our area that I only occasionally see a system where that area is on the good side of a storm’s snow line relative to our area. 

 

Not all that close, though.  Using Google Earth, it appears the center of the Chic-Chocs is about 4.4° north of Stowe and nearly 7° to the east.  Take that in the opposite direction and one is 25 miles SE of Pittsburgh, and PA's nearby Laurel Highlands - with elevations 2000-3000' - probably get less than 100".  However, where data is lacking, like anyplace in Maine above 2000' or the NW 20% of the state, guesswork must serve.

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At 12z Tue the 15th the 12z Euro has a secondary low taking over at 988mb over eastern ME. The 1st low is weakening well to the north in Quebec. That secondary low first appears in PA before moving northeast through western MA, southern NH and then ME. Of course there is no cold air anywhere to be found taking the run verbatim and with Miller B's the thermal profile becomes very complex.

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At 12z Tue the 15th the 12z Euro has a secondary low taking over at 988mb over eastern ME. The 1st low is weakening well to the north in Quebec. That secondary low first appears in PA before moving northeast through western MA, southern NH and then ME. Of course there is no cold air anywhere to be found taking the run verbatim and with Miller B's the thermal profile becomes very complex.

eyewall   thanks for updating us that don't see the Euro runs

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