NNE Winter Thread

[J.Spin]

Event totals: 13.6” Snow/0.50” L.E.

 

There’s some pretty amazing snow falling out there this evening.  It’s not all that uncommon for me to find snow in the 2% H2O range for smaller accumulations, but getting it in a roughly 5” stack is noteworthy.  Intermediate accumulations for this portion of the storm are below:

 

7:00 PM: 1.4”

8:00 PM: 2.4”

9:00 PM: 3.3”

10:00 PM: 4.0”

11:00 PM: 4.7”

12:00 AM: 4.9”

 

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

 

New Snow: 4.9 inches

New Liquid: 0.09 inches

Snow/Water Ratio: 54.4

Snow Density: 1.8% H2O

Temperature: 22.8 F

Sky: Light Snow (3-15 mm flakes)

Snow at the stake: 26.0 inches

[dmcginvt]

12 hours ago, Redmorninglight said:

Thanks!

Having an awesome day with light crowds and good natural snow. Taking a lunch break at condo then back out to ride until closing. Woods riding real nice along with ungroomed terrain. I even took a few jumps since the landing is so soft. 4 17 year old kids tearing it up. 

Damn, wish I knew you were coming, I would have had you bring some snapper soup and cape may salts from the lobster house

[J.Spin]

Event totals: 14.5” Snow/0.51” L.E.

 

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

 

New Snow: 0.9 inches

New Liquid: 0.01 inches

Snow/Water Ratio: 90.0

Snow Density: 1.1% H2O

Temperature: 19.9 F

Sky: Flurries

Snow at the stake: 25.0 inches

[CoastalWx]

35 minutes ago, J.Spin said:

Event totals: 14.5” Snow/0.51” L.E.

 

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

 

New Snow: 0.9 inches

New Liquid: 0.01 inches

Snow/Water Ratio: 90.0

Snow Density: 1.1% H2O

Temperature: 19.9 F

Sky: Flurries

Snow at the stake: 25.0 inches

You must have absolutely zero wind for that. That's amazing. I probably would have had 200" in 2015 if I had your conditions.

[eyewall]

Some more pics from when the sun popped out yesterday:

[Redmorninglight]

5 hours ago, dmcginvt said:

Damn, wish I knew you were coming, I would have had you bring some snapper soup and cape may salts from the lobster house

I grow oysters!  Next year lol. 

[alex]

Amazing overnight event, looks like about half a foot!

[Lava Rock]

27 minutes ago, alex said:

Amazing overnight event, looks like about half a foot!

And still snowing judging by your cam. Nice. Rack 'em up.

[Hitman]

21 minutes ago, Lava Rock said:

And still snowing judging by your cam. Nice. Rack 'em up.

Sb reporting 5" at the base, 10" up top.

[dendrite]

6 hours ago, J.Spin said:

Event totals: 14.5” Snow/0.51” L.E.

 

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

 

New Snow: 0.9 inches

New Liquid: 0.01 inches

Snow/Water Ratio: 90.0

Snow Density: 1.1% H2O

Temperature: 19.9 F

Sky: Flurries

Snow at the stake: 25.0 inches

J,

What do you do? Melt down cores from your elevated board into a stratus gauge? Is this one of those deals where the meniscus is like halfway between 0.01" and 0.02" so it goes in the books as 0.01" or was it at 0.01" on the money? I've pulled off 0.6" I believe with 0.01" liquid, but 0.9" is crazy...even with amounts that small. That's some amazing growth either way.

[dendrite]

2 hours ago, Redmorninglight said:

I grow oysters!  Next year lol. 

oystergro system?

[alex]

1 hour ago, Lava Rock said:

And still snowing judging by your cam. Nice. Rack 'em up.

Yep, and STILL snowing. Today's partly sunny forecast not working out, but hey, we'll take it. It's going to be a busy weekend at the resort.

[Lava Rock]

22 minutes ago, alex said:

Yep, and STILL snowing. Today's partly sunny forecast not working out, but hey, we'll take it. It's going to be a busy weekend at the resort.

With 5 lifts, how busy will Wildcat be? Thinking of heading up but don't want to wait in 30min lift lines.

[Baroclinic Zone]

My dad just returned from Maine house (Knights Hill, Bridgton) and he said it's buried.  Easily 5'+ OTG and areas 7-8'+

[Whineminster]

Man....some sick totals up north.  I'm heading up to Stinson Lake tonight for some skimobiling, not as impressive there as Maine or Pinkham, but hopefully there's some freshies around. 

[Redmorninglight]

3 hours ago, dendrite said:

oystergro system?

I wish. Rack and bag. Delaware Bay is too open and rough for floating systems. We are real small but hoping to expand. Some of the big outfits are working an offshore grow methods. Jersey is tough for regulations as well. 

Sun is out at Kmart and woods holding nice snow. Wind has scoured out some trails but made for fun drifts. With warmer weather this weekend and crowds, hopefully groomers soften up for families. The easier glades at rams head have been super fun in the morning. Grabbing a beer at bear mtn and ready for steeper woods riding. 

[J.Spin]

4 hours ago, dendrite said:

J,

What do you do? Melt down cores from your elevated board into a stratus gauge? Is this one of those deals where the meniscus is like halfway between 0.01" and 0.02" so it goes in the books as 0.01" or was it at 0.01" on the money? I've pulled off 0.6" I believe with 0.01" liquid, but 0.9" is crazy...even with amounts that small. That's some amazing growth either way.

 

Great question about the coring process, and indeed in this case the snow actually contained 0.014” of liquid, almost halfway between 0.01” and 0.02” as you expected, but it was rounded down to 0.01”.  I actually had to go into my Excel spreadsheet and display the thousandths digits to know that, because I have it automatically set to round to hundredths since that’s what everything needs to be reported in.  I never even see the thousandths digits unless I’m curious and check.  I’m not sure what the exact resolution limit of my coring method (see below) is with respect to inches of liquid, but I’d say it’s well below a hundredth of an inch.  I figure the rounding up and down to hundredths of an inch evens out in the end, but indeed ratios will be often over- or underrepresented on samples down near 0.01” of liquid.

 

So as for my method, I do core right off my elevated board (or a ground board if something affected the accumulation on the elevated board).  I use an adjust-a-cup:

 

 

 

…which allows me to compress my snow core into a nice tight disk (see the second image above) of packed snow that is easily manipulated.  I typically stack two or three cores right together into a single disk in the adjust-a-cup, and divide the numbers later for some sample averaging.  I then melt down the liquid in a round bottom measuring cup, and measure the liquid using a serological pipet.  With the bore of the adjust-a-cup, the ratio of liquid volume in the core to inches of precipitation is somewhere around 1 mL to 0.01” of precipitation liquid.  The serological pipets are pretty good down to a tenth of a mL, so barring some other limitation in the system, that that would probably put the resolution down around 0.001” of liquid.

[powderfreak]

1969 is a year popping up quite often these days.

#1 depth for this date is in 1969.

#2 depth for this date is now 2017.

[CoastalWx]

They may take a hit over the next 10 days but  they'll make a run again after for sure.

[ORH_wxman]

1 minute ago, CoastalWx said:

They may take a hit over the next 10 days but  they'll make a run again after for sure.

Hopefully we get a March 2001...lets see how the depths do up in NNE if we score a month like that.

[powderfreak]

10 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

They may take a hit over the next 10 days but  they'll make a run again after for sure.

Yeah it'll definitely take a hit.

Adk and I were talking about it earlier and we both think its probably like an 80" snowpack if it rains or really gets warm...right now its essentially 2 weeks worth of unconsolidated snow.  Similar to like a Colorado snowpack where its just snow on top of snow on top of snow.  If we were to get a rain event or a good period of above freezing temps (like 36 hours) I think we'd see a quick, steep drop that would level off somewhere in the 80s range.

I forgot to post my snow survey numbers from Wednesday...I had 72" at 3,000ft (now its up to 80") with 19.75" of liquid, so now there's probably over 20" of QPF at that elevation.  The official COOP stake is about 950ft higher up and is currently running 20" higher in depth, which probably is another 0.8" of liquid or so given the fluffy top-layer.

Down at 1,500ft there was 42" and 9.0" of liquid in the snowpack...(I hit 48" at this stake yesterday and today it held steady even with another 4" of snow).

[eyewall]

2 hours ago, powderfreak said:

1969 is a year popping up quite often these days.

#1 depth for this date is in 1969.

#2 depth for this date is now 2017.

truly awesome. Some pics from Barnes Camp and on the mountain:

[alex]

11 hours ago, Lava Rock said:

With 5 lifts, how busy will Wildcat be? Thinking of heading up but don't want to wait in 30min lift lines.

It will be busy for sure, but not as bad as most. Last year on the equivalent weekend I never waited more than 5 minutes, and the main chair goes top to bottom and it's very fast. I'm probably headed there tomorrow too!

[alex]

Skied Bretton Woods today for a bit by the way and conditions are incredible. 40" in 5 days. The woods had deep deep powder and the groomers were like butter. Finally stopped snowing in the afternoon and the views were magnificent. 

 

[wxmanmitch]

Took a trip up into the weenie belt of S VT today and I found 41-42" at the 2.2K level. The snow stick in the photo is 40.5" long. While not very official, it's the best I could do with what I've got. I need to get some better snow measuring equipment. Any suggestions? Anyway, the top 24" or so is soft, but everything underneath is a glacier. Pretty impressive, but probably not epic for that location. I'd probably reserve using "epic" for depths of >= 50" there. I wonder when they last had that amount. 2011? 2010? 2008? I'm not sure, modeled NOHRSC depth isn't always that accurate sometimes. 30" would meet epic criteria in Lenox, something we've not done in 6 years now.

Depth here in Lenox is around 12-14", depending on where you measure, down from 15-16" a few days ago. The snow pack depth is pretty uniform around here until you get a little north of North Adams where it increases to around 20". Once you start climbing in S VT it goes from 20" to 40" in a matter of 2-3 miles. Elevation is hugely important around there and the mesoscale differences are nothing short of amazing to observe as you drive around. 

Woodford had a nice upslope event on Wednesday and Thursday with 17" of fluff per the ALY PNS. The webcam on Route 9 at 2K just west of the crest looked like a full blown snowstorm while Dover just east of Mt. Snow looked partly cloudy . Yesterday's event was definitely a bit blocked.

 

 

[powderfreak]

Today at the ski area I had to put in 0" for Barnes Camp and 0" for High Road for the 6am 24-hour total on my spreadsheet.

The last time that happened was January 26th.  I had lost track of how long this snow run had been.  22 days between 0"/0" reports.

It honestly felt odd not to measure anything on the hill today.

Since January 26th the totals are:

Barnes Camp 1,550ft: 71"

High Road 3,015ft: 105"

Probably my most memorable stretch of skiing and snowfall in the 10 years I've been here.

[wxeyeNH]

47F, clear skies and calm winds feels like 70F.  Outside without a jacket in a Tee shirt doing some snow cleanup.  Totally comfortable.  Neighbors just spend a couple hundred bucks having their entire roof shoveled today as well as patios etc.   Crew came over to see if I needed ours done.  Nope,  I think mother nature is going to take care of things all her own.  Here's a 3 minute drone clip of the hood, as you can see in this clip, Newfound Lake is finally frozen over but ice is very thin out in the main body.  Hope all is okay with so many people out on the big NH  lakes today

My world   2 18 2017

 

 

[CoastalWx]

16 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Today at the ski area I had to put in 0" for Barnes Camp and 0" for High Road for the 6am 24-hour total on my spreadsheet.

The last time that happened was January 26th.  I had lost track of how long this snow run had been.  22 days between 0"/0" reports.

It honestly felt odd not to measure anything on the hill today.

Since January 26th the totals are:

Barnes Camp 1,550ft: 71"

High Road 3,015ft: 105"

Probably my most memorable stretch of skiing and snowfall in the 10 years I've been here.

How much did the 3k spot have a few days ago in that big storm? Did you break 2'?  Jesus I only recall the two big dumpings....the other day and then I guess at the end of January when you had 18" of fluff up there. It must have snowed 5" every day there lol.

[powderfreak]

59 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

How much did the 3k spot have a few days ago in that big storm? Did you break 2'?  Jesus I only recall the two big dumpings....the other day and then I guess at the end of January when you had 18" of fluff up there. It must have snowed 5" every day there lol.

Yeah it was like a 22 day storm lol.  

Its really hard to seperate it out into "storms" as the climo is a bit different than other areas where there's usually a very distinct storm every time it snows (i.e. Increasing clouds, then it snows, then decreasing clouds).  Like where I grew up in Albany you had very specific storms that makes it easy to remember dates and stuff.  Like snow was almost always associated with a specific low pressure system.  

This up here is more like upper level trough moving across that triggers some snow for 8 hours then it stops after 4-6".  Then a return flow warm FROPA drops 4" like 12 hours later. Then a break fora few hours followed by a weak shortwave that leaves a few more inches before tapering off.  Then a few hours later the wind shifts to WNW and it rips out another several inches.  

Like the last "storm" left 4" of WAA snows overnight putting 4" in one day's total, then nothing happened for 8 hours.  The inverted trough organized and dropped 9" prior to the next 6am reading.  Then the NW flow dropped 5" that day and it stopped.  Some other disturbance 6-hours later rotating around the cyclonic flow (still associated with the upper level low that crushed Maine) came through and dropped another 6".  

So the upper level trough associated with that inverted trough and developing maritime low left the following:

Day 1...4"...12am-6am (overnight SW flow and WAA). 

Day 2...9"....4pm-6am (inverted trough and instability squalls). 

Day 3...11"....6am-2pm saw 5"...break for five hours...7pm-6am another 6" fell on NW flow.  

So that "storm total" is 24 inches but not in the way a lot of people think of it.  Like it didn't start snowing and drop 24" before ending...it was a combination of SW flow ahead of the trough, then break, then inverted trough, then break, then NW flow.  

And it did that off and on for 22 days, timed right so every 6am reading had measurable snow in the previous 24 hours.  

Lots of times it's just some vorticity or trough passing overhead fires up the snow for 6-8 hours then it shuts off...then SW flow brings a Lake Ontario snow band into the area that sprays a few more inches, etc.  As long as there's wind and moisture, there doesn't really need to be a specific storm.  

[powderfreak]

1 hour ago, wxeyeNH said:

47F, clear skies and calm winds feels like 70F.  Outside without a jacket in a Tee shirt doing some snow cleanup.  Totally comfortable.  Neighbors just spend a couple hundred bucks having their entire roof shoveled today as well as patios etc.   Crew came over to see if I needed ours done.  Nope,  I think mother nature is going to take care of things all her own.  Here's a 3 minute drone clip of the hood, as you can see in this clip, Newfound Lake is finally frozen over but ice is very thin out in the main body.  Hope all is okay with so many people out on the big NH  lakes today

My world   2 18 2017

 

 

Nice Gene!  Yeah feels like June out there right now lol. I'm walking the dog with just a long sleeve shirt.  Funny how 45F feels so warm but in October we are huddled around the wood stove.