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The 2016-17 Ski Season Thread

Skivt2

By Skivt2,
in New England

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Baroclinic Zone

Baroclinic Zone

Posted
Posted
17 hours ago, TauntonBlizzard2013 said:

Anyone here ski king pine?

lift tickets are dirt cheap for when I'm heading up North, like 27 bucks a ticket there.

i drive by it in the summer this year and it looked kind of dumpy, but looks can be deceiving 

It's not a big place, that's for sure.  But relatively close to Conway.

I equate it to Nashoba Valley although it has some more exciting terrain.

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powderfreak

powderfreak

Posted
Posted
10 hours ago, J.Spin said:

 

That’s great stuff – not sure how long ago they had to answer the questions, but the calls for opening day at Killington near the end of October were right in line.  It can really happen anytime in October (or I guess even into November in some cases), so going with the end of the month isn’t necessarily a slam dunk either.  PF, that was a great piece of info regarding your uncle and meteorology, I never knew that.

Thanks J.  We did that back in August, haha.  Total crapshoot but fun to do... Tim Kelley and I had some fun going through that.

Regarding my uncle, he's been an Atmospheric Sciences professor at the University of Kansas (go Jay Hawks!) for decades now and always mailed me his textbook for Christmas every year.  I used to read those things like they were going out of style.  Lately he's been more in the climate studies area of Atmospheric Sciences... back in the 1990s he would make annual trips to Antarctica at the McMurdo base and Scott base to study ice cores.  Recently he's been doing trips to Greenland instead of Antarctica... but I still have some cool artifacts from Antarctica like an American flag from the base that is torn, tattered, and ripped like one might expect in that environment.

I've always loved snow and skiing since I was like 3 years old, but he got me more interested in the science side of things as a teenager.

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powderfreak

powderfreak

Posted
Posted

Here's a shot from early this morning from one of our snowmakers that I loved...these crews spend all night on the mountain, its gotta be intoxicating in a way being up there at high elevation in the elements dealing with high pressure air and water in the dead of night as lights from town twinkle a few thousand feet below.

This photo is from early morning twilight.

Early-morning-snowmaking-Photo-by-Bailey

And then here's one I took this afternoon after temps rose enough to shut off the guns...hit natural snow around 2,600ft but since it was only 1-2" we were able to drive to 3,200ft before not being able to cross the snowmaking route as they've got a few feet of snow on the ground.  There's still 3-5" of natural snow above 3,500ft that hasn't melted out since the October snows.

Good-base-depths-developing-on-the-upper

 

We could roll it with a tiller and open the top 1,000 vertical feet....but its the bottom 1,000 vertical feet that are the problem right now.  Hoping the cold shot this weekend pans out.  There is still snow even down below 2,500ft from the October snowmaking, so that definitely was still worth it.  The upper mountain is looking pretty good right now though.

 

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J.Spin

J.Spin

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, CoastalWx said:

They may be able to make snow or get natural help before Thanksgiving though.

 

Absolutely, they’ve literally been making snow this very day and specifically talk about adding to the Superstar stockpile in their daily conditions report:

 

“8:58 am 11/10/16--Wintry weather re-entered the forecast last night and Killington snowmakers jumped at the opportunity, firing spot guns on Rime, Upper East Fall and Upper Great Northern, as well as adding to the stockpile of World Cup Snow on Superstar. Snowmaking will continue on open terrain this morning for as long as temperatures remain favorable.”

 

I think we’re just generally unaware of some of the windows in which the mountains are making snow – heck, I’m right in Stowe’s climate area and didn’t even know they were blasting snow last night until PF mentioned it and showed a picture in the NNE thread.

 

The resorts should really be going gangbusters this weekend with the anticipated temperatures – and you know Killington is going to pull out all the stops with such a big event in the works.

 

Even though I guess temperatures are running above average this month, the mountains are getting windows in which to make snow.  It’s not as if it’s October, it’s November now, so there’s a lot more leeway with respect to potential snowmaking opportunities.  And it could definitely be worse, I’m pretty sure we’ve had Novembers where it’s been harder to make snow than this one – I bet PF knows some of the most challenging Novembers out there.

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CoastalWx

CoastalWx

Posted
Posted
18 minutes ago, J.Spin said:

 

Absolutely, they’ve literally been making snow this very day and specifically talk about adding to the Superstar stockpile in their daily conditions report:

 

“8:58 am 11/10/16--Wintry weather re-entered the forecast last night and Killington snowmakers jumped a the opportunity, firing spot guns on Rime, Upper East Fall and Upper Great Northern, as well as adding to the stockpile of World Cup Snow on Superstar. Snowmaking will continue on open terrain this morning for as long as temperatures remain favorable.”

 

I think we’re just generally unaware of some of the windows in which the mountains are making snow – heck, I’m right in Stowe’s climate area and didn’t even know they were blasting snow last night until PF mentioned it and showed a picture in the NNE thread.

 

The resorts should really be going gangbusters this weekend with the anticipated temperatures – and you know Killington is going to pull out all the stops with such a big event in the works.

 

Even though I guess temperatures are running above average this month, the mountains are getting windows in which to make snow.  It’s not as if it’s October, it’s November now, so there’s a lot more leeway with respect to potential snowmaking opportunities.  And it could definitely be worse, I’m pretty sure we’ve had Novembers where it’s been harder to make snow than this one – I bet PF knows some of the most challenging Novembers out there.

I guess with such a notable event...you definitely don't want crappy conditions. Looking ahead, despite opportunities for making snow...it doesn't look like a great overall pattern.  I'd be a little concerned that's all.  But, that's the risk with having it so early. 

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powderfreak

powderfreak

Posted
Posted

We had a good snowmaking run last night.  We could open today if we had a way to only ski the top 1000 vertical feet (2500-3600ft).  We need a good push Friday into Saturday in the 1500-2500ft elevation band.

From this morning.  Just knocking it off 12-18 hour windows at a time.  This stuff just doesn't melt this time of year too.  Even these warm sunny days are so dry and the sun doesn't do anything.  We still have a snowbank outside the office from the first October storm of 5.5". It just melts so slowly (and we go into the shade and start radiating at like 2pm lol).

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15016178_10153883602812382_8221147785176

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powderfreak

powderfreak

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

I guess with such a notable event...you definitely don't want crappy conditions. Looking ahead, despite opportunities for making snow...it doesn't look like a great overall pattern.  I'd be a little concerned that's all.  But, that's the risk with having it so early. 

Hey I'd be concerned as well...it's still different than just opening which you can do with a firm 12" base.  But the netting and depth requirements for safety of a World Cup is different than just opening for the public.

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ORH_wxman

ORH_wxman

Posted
Posted

The concern is big cutters....they will be totally fine in this pattern with these windows of snow making IF (and this is a big IF) they can avoid those warm 36-48 hour cutters with high dewpoints and rain.

These days where the high is 46-50F on the mountain but it remains dry aren't going to do a ton of damage to the manmade snow. If there is a cutter, hopefully it's not all that rainy, doesn't last very long, and occurs at least 4-5 days before the world cup so that they can do good snow making for several days behind it. Most cutters in November are going to give you a snowmaking airmass behind it...even in an overall mild pattern.

 

You just want to avoid those 1-2 inches of rain though with 50F temps...those cause the snow to evaporate faster than hair on Kevin's scalp.

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CoastalWx

CoastalWx

Posted
Posted
9 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

The concern is big cutters....

they will be totally fine in this pattern with these windows of snow making IF (and this is a big IF) they can avoid those warm 36-48 hour cutters with high dewpoints and rain.

These days where the high is 46-50F on the mountain but it remains dry aren't going to do a ton of damage to

the manmade snow. If there is a cutter, hopefully it's not all that rainy, doesn't last very long, and occurs at least 4-5 days before the world cup so that they can do good snow making for several days behind it. Most cutters in November are going to give you a snowmaking airmass behind it...even in an overall mild pattern.

 

You just want to avoid those 1-2 inches of rain though with 50F temps...those cause the snow to evaporate faster than hair on Kevin's scalp.

The cutters are what worried me. It's warm overall and can't rule out a rainer or two.   Just seems too early to have an event like that on crap snow, but I guess Europe was out of the question.

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powderfreak

powderfreak

Posted
Posted
21 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

The cutters are what worried me. It's warm overall and can't rule out a rainer or two.   Just seems too early to have an event like that on crap snow, but I guess Europe was out of the question.

It is early...they schedule Nov events in the US for some reason.  Mid-winter has the big EURO races.  

But these events have been cancelled before in November in Vail, Park City, and Beaver Creek...it's no gimme even out there (say this November for example).  

Its just how the World Cup schedule is.

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powderfreak

powderfreak

Posted
Posted
40 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

The concern is big cutters....they will be totally fine in this pattern with these windows of snow making IF (and this is a big IF) they can avoid those warm 36-48 hour cutters with high dewpoints and rain.

These days where the high is 46-50F on the mountain but it remains dry aren't going to do a ton of damage to the manmade snow. If there is a cutter, hopefully it's not all that rainy, doesn't last very long, and occurs at least 4-5 days before the world cup so that they can do good snow making for several days behind it. Most cutters in November are going to give you a snowmaking airmass behind it...even in an overall mild pattern.

 

You just want to avoid those 1-2 inches of rain though with 50F temps...those cause the snow to evaporate faster than hair on Kevin's scalp.

Yeah it's not even the cutters that are the 12-18 hour deals...it's the ones you mention like a cut-off in the Ohio Valley or Lakes where it's like 48-72 hours of southerly flow getting more moist with time.  

Man made snow melts really really slow as we've all hashed out.  Think feet of sleet and how long it would take even 3 feet of IP to melt out of Boston Commons.  So the 12-18 hour cutters don't even hurt that much.  It's the days and days type stuff where dews creep to 50F for 24 hours.

I just drive through the Notch (RT 108 reopened) and there's even patches of natural snow left at the top of the pass at 2,400ft...from two weeks ago.  Just amazingly different preservation this time of year from like March when it seems like the sun can burn through 10" in an afternoon on a south facing hill.  

Lately these warm days haven't done anything...people who hiked for turns said it was icy even at like 50 degrees the other day when dews were like 20F.  Without direct sunlight the 50/20 afternoons don't even soften it lol.

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