The 2016-17 Ski Season Thread

[ORH_wxman]

15 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Hahaha...nothing like a good ol' few warm days to "shut down every ski resort straight to Canada."

Get the pond skimming operations up....gonna need it after the 2nd cutter.

[eyewall]

Happens every year at every area...you do more than a quarter million visits a winter the odds are a couple will have cardiac issues.  Especially an aging ski population and many who may not be in the best physical shape then go and exert themselves very heavily one day on the mountain and problems crop up.  

A couple winters ago our Patrol had two saves...both brought back with defibrillators but quick thinking by on hill guests to start CPR immediately made it possible.

I stopped by Barnes Camp again today and while leaving I saw stowe mountain rescue headed toward the notch. I wasn't sure if something happened there or in the back country.

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[powderfreak]

1 minute ago, ORH_wxman said:

Get the pond skimming operations up....gonna need it after the 2nd cutter.

Wouldn't be Christmas without it, lol.  I do feel for the vacationers though...they get dealt some awful conditions it seems every year.  2012 we got two warning criteria snow events during Christmas week, but aside from that winter I think its rained just about every Christmas I've worked here. 

Most expensive week of the year to get hotels or condos or whatever, and it seems to be the worst climo week of the year with regards to probability of rain during the ski season.

Especially since the locals will have enjoyed 3 weeks of the best December skiing & riding since 2007...then when the crowds show up it rains.  I still remember the Fairbanks Museum in St Johnsbury, VT showing the records from the last 100+ years (1V4 has a long period of record) and that right around Christmas has a 2-degree increase in mean temps.  I have to find that graph.  Its pretty crazy and I know its probably noise but its hard to ignore.

[mreaves]

PF, did you haul around Nick Borelli,the WCAX meteorologist, today?  I see they are featuring Stowe on the news tonight. 

[powderfreak]

Just now, eyewall said:

 

I stopped by Barnes Camp again today and while leaving I saw stowe mountain rescue headed toward the notch. I wasn't sure if something happened there or in the back country.

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Shattered leg in Angel Food...its backcountry terrain (or sidecountry) that's accessible from the Gondola with a long gravity traverse and no hiking required.  All that stuff drops straight down onto RT 108.  Apparently it happened pretty low down luckily so they could get to him quickly on snowmobilies.

Stowe Mountain Rescue (as confusing as the name is) is the town/municipal High-Angle and Technical Rescue Squad that responds to all the lost hiker or injured hiker calls in the summer and the backcountry skier/rider calls in the winter.  They get a ton of calls for service so the town a while back decided we needed a special rescue team (not something you find in many towns) highly trained in backcountry rescue.  As you know the Notch has some very rugged terrain and they get people stuck on cliffs, ice climbing accidents, lost hikers/skiers that get cliffed out, etc. 

Our Ski Patrol, snowmaking, grooming, and lift maintenance teams all have members on the Stowe Mountain Rescue crew so they are usually nearby when Lamoille Dispatch tones it out from a 911 call.  The resort will send Ski Patrol help when they can, but it depends on staffing as we can't handicap our own operations (ie if someone gets hurt on a ski trail) because the patrollers are searching for a broken leg a mile into the woods.  So that's why the Stowe Mountain Rescue started up as an independent organization affiliated with Stowe Rescue and Stowe PD. 

[eyewall]

Shattered leg in Angel Food...its backcountry terrain (or sidecountry) that's accessible from the Gondola with a long gravity traverse and no hiking required.  All that stuff drops straight down onto RT 108.  Apparently it happened pretty low down luckily so they could get to him quickly on snowmobilies.

Stowe Mountain Rescue (as confusing as the name is) is the town/municipal High-Angle and Technical Rescue Squad that responds to all the lost hiker or injured hiker calls in the summer and the backcountry skier/rider calls in the winter.  They get a ton of calls for service so the town a while back decided we needed a special rescue team (not something you find in many towns) highly trained in backcountry rescue.  As you know the Notch has some very rugged terrain and they get people stuck on cliffs, ice climbing accidents, lost hikers/skiers that get cliffed out, etc. 

Our Ski Patrol, snowmaking, grooming, and lift maintenance teams all have members on the Stowe Mountain Rescue crew so they are usually nearby when Lamoille Dispatch tones it out from a 911 call.  The resort will send Ski Patrol help when they can, but it depends on staffing as we can't handicap our own operations (ie if someone gets hurt on a ski trail) because the patrollers are searching for a broken leg a mile into the woods.  So that's why the Stowe Mountain Rescue started up as an independent organization affiliated with Stowe Rescue and Stowe PD. 

Very cool and glad they were able to get to him quick.

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[powderfreak]

Just now, mreaves said:

PF, did you haul around Nick Borelli,the WCAX meteorologist, today?  I see they are featuring Stowe on the news tonight. 

Ha, nope but I know him and he's a seasons pass holder here.  I heard they might be filming today.  Generally if its a weatherman/meteorologist and they ski at Stowe I've crossed paths with them, lol. 

A couple days ago I actually ran into Weir Lundsted in the woods coming back to the Chin Clip trail...most don't know that name but he's WINDEX Weir, the author and researcher of the WINDEX paper that is so often referred to around these parts.  Great guy.  Weather and skiing/snowboarding definitely go hand in hand and I've found a lot of Mets are just snow weenies like the rest of us and love getting out there on the mountain.

[ORH_wxman]

12 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Wouldn't be Christmas without it, lol.  I do feel for the vacationers though...they get dealt some awful conditions it seems every year.  2012 we got two warning criteria snow events during Christmas week, but aside from that winter I think its rained just about every Christmas I've worked here. 

Most expensive week of the year to get hotels or condos or whatever, and it seems to be the worst climo week of the year with regards to probability of rain during the ski season.

Especially since the locals will have enjoyed 3 weeks of the best December skiing & riding since 2007...then when the crowds show up it rains.  I still remember the Fairbanks Museum in St Johnsbury, VT showing the records from the last 100+ years (1V4 has a long period of record) and that right around Christmas has a 2-degree increase in mean temps.  I have to find that graph.  Its pretty crazy and I know its probably noise but its hard to ignore.

Hopefully both events trend into mostly nothing except a brief period of ZR after good snow up in the ski areas. There's a reasonable chance that happens....there's also a reasonable chance you get 6-8 hours of 50F too, but I am hoping that after paying up last winter, you get a few breaks on these "it could go either way" type scenarios. Sometimes you have coin flips and the difference between a footnote and a disaster week is having the coin flip go your way, and after last year, you are due for a few to go your way. Been a good start, so we'll hope it stays that way. A little ZR would not hurt things much at all.

 

 

[radarman]

MRG single opens tomorrow.  Might be a freshie or two up there.

[powderfreak]

14 minutes ago, radarman said:

MRG single opens tomorrow.  Might be a freshie or two up there.

Doubt it given the number of social media posts I've seen of people shredding that terrain lol.  Just kidding, no way that could all get skied out.

[HoarfrostHubb]

22 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Ha, nope but I know him and he's a seasons pass holder here.  I heard they might be filming today.  Generally if its a weatherman/meteorologist and they ski at Stowe I've crossed paths with them, lol. 

A couple days ago I actually ran into Weir Lundsted in the woods coming back to the Chin Clip trail...most don't know that name but he's WINDEX Weir, the author and researcher of the WINDEX paper that is so often referred to around these parts.  Great guy.  Weather and skiing/snowboarding definitely go hand in hand and I've found a lot of Mets are just snow weenies like the rest of us and love getting out there on the mountain.

Nick's dad built our porch this summer

[powderfreak]

17 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

Hopefully both events trend into mostly nothing except a brief period of ZR after good snow up in the ski areas. There's a reasonable chance that happens....there's also a reasonable chance you get 6-8 hours of 50F too, but I am hoping that after paying up last winter, you get a few breaks on these "it could go either way" type scenarios. Sometimes you have coin flips and the difference between a footnote and a disaster week is having the coin flip go your way, and after last year, you are due for a few to go your way. Been a good start, so we'll hope it stays that way. A little ZR would not hurt things much at all.

 

 

No wouldn't hurt at all to get a few ZR events. People are definitely just enjoying it as it comes at this point, at least the local crowd.  Everyone knows it *will* rain at some point and after last season that's fine.  It's funny how the overall mood changes after last year...like nothing will be that bad and approaching 100" on the season in mid-December is well worth a couple rainers to most locals in some odd mental tradeoff with Mother Nature.  

So far there's been big orographic events in October, November and December so everyone knows something is different.  I think JSpin and I have mused that the "Green Mountain Magic" hasn't been there the past several winters where the Spine produces at every excuse imaginable...but that's seemed to change so far.  Orographic snows that were modeled as 2-4" last winter ended up dusting-1".  This year those have been 4-8".  It's funny how that works and I don't understand the meteorology behind why some years the orographics go nuts and other years it doesn't...even with a prevailing westerly flow every winter.  The models think it should happen all years, with the QPF bullseyes over the peaks.  

Another nice thing this year is that although it's been mostly orographic over synoptic, there's been some hefty QPF in the snow.  Like even last night 1.7" in town and 3.0" at 3000ft in westerly flow squalls was dense.  Lots of graupel and rimed flakes that come from convective properties.  The Mansfield COOP just came in with 0.3" liquid and 3.0" snow, which would've been from those squalls.  This latest event brought 0.54" liquid to the mountain...so it hasn't been "fake" snow overall though occasionally there are those 3-4" farts of fluff.  

Really impressive base for so early in the season in terms of QPF.  Adding more mixed precip or even rain should absorb into this andjustmake it more durable.

[ono]

9 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Really impressive base for so early in the season in terms of QPF.  Adding more mixed precip or even rain should absorb into this andjustmake it more durable.

while a winter like 2000-2001 would be amazing (no thaws IIRC, tons of snow), a snow-sleet-freezing rain mixer early on could really lock the base in- though from the sound of it and the models, it looks like there won't a real soaker during the non-fozen portion of the event over the weekend. so could be another net gain in depths and/or solidifying the composition of the pack.

with the stake at 36" as of today, we've effectively reached last years max depth, which came around 4 months from now in early-mid April. I'll take that.

[Ginx snewx]

1 hour ago, powderfreak said:

Wouldn't be Christmas without it, lol.  I do feel for the vacationers though...they get dealt some awful conditions it seems every year.  2012 we got two warning criteria snow events during Christmas week, but aside from that winter I think its rained just about every Christmas I've worked here. 

Most expensive week of the year to get hotels or condos or whatever, and it seems to be the worst climo week of the year with regards to probability of rain during the ski season.

Especially since the locals will have enjoyed 3 weeks of the best December skiing & riding since 2007...then when the crowds show up it rains.  I still remember the Fairbanks Museum in St Johnsbury, VT showing the records from the last 100+ years (1V4 has a long period of record) and that right around Christmas has a 2-degree increase in mean temps.  I have to find that graph.  Its pretty crazy and I know its probably noise but its hard to ignore.

I researched down here and found that it's real. An oddity. please post that graph

[powderfreak]

2 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

I researched down here and found that it's real. An oddity. please post that graph

I'll look for it.  I know it was a social media/Facebook post from Vermont Public Radio's "Eye on the Sky" guys that forecast out of the Fairbanks Museum in St J.

[radarman]

8 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

I'll look for it.  I know it was a social media/Facebook post from Vermont Public Radio's "Eye on the Sky" guys that forecast out of the Fairbanks Museum in St J.

[powderfreak]

24 minutes ago, radarman said:

Awesome dude.  That's the one.  

[Ginx snewx]

40 minutes ago, radarman said:

Thanks E

[HoarfrostHubb]

So weird.  But I suppose it is statistically possible with no other explanation other than chaos 

[ORH_wxman]

1 minute ago, HoarfrostHubb said:

So weird.  But I suppose it is statistically possible with no other explanation other than chaos 

There's going to be an outlier or three when you have so many days to romp through in the climo record and the sample size is still not massive. It's pretty good at 100 years or so but that isn't enough to get rid of all outliers. We can see December 7th is also warmer than December 4-5th.  

 

Its possible theres a real mechanism that causes the downward progression to reverse but if there is, nobody has proven it physically. Stats alone don't do that. Hopefully we get a big string of colder Christmases coming up to "pay us back". Lol. 

[Ginx snewx]

29 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

There's going to be an outlier or three when you have so many days to romp through in the climo record and the sample size is still not massive. It's pretty good at 100 years or so but that isn't enough to get rid of all outliers. We can see December 7th is also warmer than December 4-5th.  

 

Its possible theres a real mechanism that causes the downward progression to reverse but if there is, nobody has proven it physically. Stats alone don't do that. Hopefully we get a big string of colder Christmases coming up to "pay us back". Lol. 

It's prevalent across the NE climo sites so years plus wealth of numbers .

[ORH_wxman]

9 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

It's prevalent across the NE climo sites so years plus wealth of numbers .

Well it should be prevelent across New England because the type of system that would cause a torch in VT will do so in our area and adjacent areas too. 

[Ginx snewx]

4 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

Well it should be prevelent across New England because the type of system that would cause a torch in VT will do so in our area and adjacent areas too. 

Somethings can't be explained. 

[ORH_wxman]

13 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

Somethings can't be explained. 

I'm pretty sure we've just seen an abnormal number of cutters around that date by coincidence....kind of like how December 5th has been pretty lucky for snowfall in SNE and Mid-Atlantic. I'm pretty sure there's no physical repetitive force that causes December 5th to be lucky, just that out of all the days, some are gonna hit more often than others until the sample is really really massive. Same goes true for warmth and cold...those tend to even out faster, but we still haven't yet got a long enough record to smooth it out completely. 

That would be my guess given it is statistically plausible without any need of further explanation...but I couldn't call myself a scientist without acknowledging that there is some other unexplained force behind it that has not been detected and/or proven yet. 

 

[masomenos]

It would be interesting to see how other parts of the mid latitudes in the northern hemisphere stack up on those dates too. Not good for ski resorts, but the perennial Christmas and January thaws go a long way in keeping our winters bearable by eliminating excessive ice buildup on key waterways and reducing the strain on our heating resources. Those "thawless" winters like 17-18 and 1875-76 wreaked complete havoc on northeastern society.

[powderfreak]

Getting as much in as possible before we hit the pattern relaxation.  Hoping for at least another couple/few inches tonight.

We've had fresh snow on 11 of the last 13 days...and are averaging around 4" per day during that time.

[radarman]

2-4" new, fluffy at MRG.  Snowy morning, cleared out later flakes persisted, temps dropping.  Upright powder stashes all over and high traffic areas turning to chalky packed powder.  Sun dogs on the clouds spilling over the ridge.  

Phenomonal skiing, best Dec since 07 no doubt.

 

[powderfreak]

Nice to see others getting after it too.... the Greens have been going off so far this season.

Hopefully some more snows will start spreading into other areas too.  You can see the difference with Sugarloaf saying 37" since October and Killington to Jay Peak is in the 70-120" range on the season.  Its been very orographic in nature.  The coastal storms are bound to come though, haha.

[Quakertown needs snow]

so is VT/NY gonna be bullet proof on monday?

[powderfreak]

1 minute ago, Quakertown needs snow said:

so is VT/NY gonna be bullet proof on monday?

Quite possibly, haha.  Depends on the amount of rain.  There is a lot of natural snow that can soak it up and absorb the moisture but if we get more than a quarter inch of rain then yeah its going to be quite firm.