March 22-23 Storm Thread: Cabins and Pony-Os?

[powderfreak]

9 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

NW hills CT didn’t get much so Synoptics definitely  more involved. 

Yeah great point, westerly or NW upslope would've dropped most moisture in Litchfield.

[powderfreak]

I just saw 25.4" for Lyndonville, VT.  

Holy crap that's a huge event for that part of NEK.

[Damage In Tolland]

Just got the fields in EW. There was evidence on the hill in Ellington and salt on roads of 2” or so. By the Ellington Green, no salt on road and not a flake fell . 

[Ginx snewx]

1 hour ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

This is what drives me nuts ......the inconsistency. I measure just as the LCD sites do, yet they tossed my measurement in the blizzard last year. How do you have two different guidelines for cohras and LCD??? Makes zero sense, and utter BS.

Once a day is a joke. Much more subject to wind, melting, compaction. That's why in 78 you see these reports of 20 inches with 3 inch w/e High winds compact the crap out of snow. Are they interested in how much fell or what the depth is at 24 hours. If so just say snow depth after 24 hrs.

[mreaves]

1 hour ago, powderfreak said:

I just saw 25.4" for Lyndonville, VT.  

Holy crap that's a huge event for that part of NEK.

I’ve seen reports of 28” in Canaan. I’m heading to Island Pond tomorrow to ride. One of the trails tops out at 2700’ or so. It’ll be interesting to see how much there is. 

[J.Spin]

5 hours ago, powderfreak said:

But you need a standard to compare to.  

I mean there's zero doubt in my mind that JSpin could average over 200" of snow a year at 495ft elevation if he cleared every couple hours all winter long.  He started doing the 6-hour thing a decade ago and continues to do so to keep his measurements consistent.  But you need some standard. 

I know I lose snowfall by not being that diligent but I've always been more concerned about the ski resort measurements than at home.  I could probably average 150" if I measured every couple hours during those multi-day light snow events.  Same with even first order stations.  Maybe ORH would average 95" if they measured every 2-3 hours during storms. 

Heck, even Ray (40/70) had his amount tossed by BOX in a big storm recently because he cleared the board.

I mean at Stowe we measure once in the morning early and once in the afternoon at the end of the ski day.  It makes sense for skiers because there are two important factors to powder skiing...how much fell since the lifts closed and how much fell during the operating day.  

The northern Greens would average 400-500" if we had some way or wanted to measure every 3 hours all the time.  

 

4 hours ago, wxmanmitch said:

To each his own, but I just hate that the "standard" penalizes meticulousness and therefore refuse to follow it exactly. As such, I also don't see why the set standard shouldn't be questioned. I've always been one to question authority and the conventional wisdom on how things "should" be done in the interest of doing things the right way - not how one (be it an organization or individual) says it should be done.

I agree with some aspects of it such as averaging and measuring at changeover time during snow to rain scenarios, but not others like the frequency of board clearing. I do count sleet toward my totals, but not freezing rain.  If people don't accept or believe my totals, that's on them, not me. 

When I joined CoCoRaHS, I did the reading/training on their techniques, and the 6-hour minimum clearing interval (1/4 of a day) seemed like a reasonable amount of time.  Even when the 24-hour clearing thing became more popular, I checked with my CoCoRaHS organizer here and he said that continuing with the 6-hour minimum for clears was fine.  The shorter intervals may not make much of a difference in a typical synoptic-only snowfall site, but I think that something less than 24-hour clearing is necessary to really give you a good sense for the snowfall climatology in the type of mountain/upslope environment we have around here.  Heck, with the frequency that storms/events roll through around here at times, we can be finishing up an event, have a break before a second one runs through, and move on to starting a third one in the span of 24 hours.  I just don’t think you’re going to capture the nuances of snowfall (qualitatively or quantitatively) for that sort of climate with only 24-hour observations.  I could also see 12-hour intervals being the standard, and a lot of the ski resorts here are approximating that.  My clears here at my site are often in the 12-hour range on work days, which I think is fine, but I’ll try to do 6-hour clears when I can.  Sometimes my interval times are in between as well (for example, we were skiing today, so I had an 8-hour interval for the end of the storm, 6:00 A.M. and then 2:00 P.M.).  But, you have to draw the line somewhere (see my example below), and 6 hours seems to be a reasonable accepted minimum standard.

It’s fine to push back against norms if you want, but I’m sure you can see the issues that arise if everyone does their own thing with respect to minimum snowfall clearing intervals.  During some of our upslope events, the flakes (technically flake aggregates I guess) are so large and fluffy that I could literally sit in a chair by my elevated snowboard, clear it every 60 seconds and accumulate a half inch each time.  Then, I could report 30 inches of accumulation or more for every 6 to 8-inch storm we have with fluffy flakes like that, and nobody could tell me otherwise.  Reaching the 200” average seasonal snowfall figure that PF mentioned above would be a breeze, 300” or 400” would probably be attainable.  Engaging in that practice simply seems disingenuous though (not to mention silly, impractical, and woefully inaccurate with respect to real world effects) in terms of the goal of the process, but I’m bringing the example to the extreme to make the point.  You have to draw the line somewhere to avoid such data collection silliness, and the traditional 6-hour minimum always seemed to make sense to me.

[powderfreak]

1 hour ago, Ginx snewx said:

Once a day is a joke. Much more subject to wind, melting, compaction. That's why in 78 you see these reports of 20 inches with 3 inch w/e High winds compact the crap out of snow. Are they interested in how much fell or what the depth is at 24 hours. If so just say snow depth after 24 hrs.

I agree.  Once a day is just snow depth.

[CapturedNature]

1 hour ago, powderfreak said:

I just saw 25.4" for Lyndonville, VT.  

Holy crap that's a huge event for that part of NEK.

That is impressive...when I was there, there always seemed to be some reason or another why Lyndonville never made out.

In terms of NE CT, I think there were multiple factors that played a role.  They rarely come together but I have seen them in the past.  I remember one event in the early 90s where there was 6"+ in Somers/Stafford and nothing just a few miles west of there.  A few years later there was a NorLun event that dumped up to 20" in just a few hours over and certain area that places just a few miles away had no snow.

[powderfreak]

Mansfield Stake came in at 124" at 4pm, a 16" increase in 24 hours.  NWS said their camera saw a max of 127" earlier but to stay consistent with the past records it was 124" at 4pm.  I agree with them to stay consistent do it at end of day as that's how it's always been done.

So we cleared the 10-foot mark.

I know everyone was holding their breath.  

[HoarfrostHubb]

1 minute ago, powderfreak said:

Mansfield Stake came in at 124" at 4pm, a 16" increase in 24 hours.  NWS said their camera saw a max of 127" earlier but to stay consistent with the past records it was 124" at 4pm.  I agree with them to stay consistent do it at end of day as that's how it's always been done.

So we cleared the 10-foot mark.

I know everyone was holding their breath.  

The long national nightmare is over...

[Damage In Tolland]

5 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Mansfield Stake came in at 124" at 4pm, a 16" increase in 24 hours.  NWS said their camera saw a max of 127" earlier but to stay consistent with the past records it was 124" at 4pm.  I agree with them to stay consistent do it at end of day as that's how it's always been done.

So we cleared the 10-foot mark.

I know everyone was holding their breath.  

I’m going to bed now. Was gonna wait to hear till 9:00

[backedgeapproaching]

ALY always uses Mitch's reported totals in their PNS, I guess they would toss them if they knew he was doing clears that frequent.

I think I mentioned this once before,  but ALY had a cocorahs event in the fall and the METS encouraged 6 hour clears to the cocorahs observers-not saying its right or wrong, but it is what they said that day. 

I also do 6 hours--sometimes. Like Jspin mentioned, can be a number of factors in not doing it that often. I only did one clear for this last event and it probably lasted 24 hours.

 

 

 

[Lava Rock]

I just saw 25.4" for Lyndonville, VT.  
Holy crap that's a huge event for that part of NEK.

I missed it, but what did Stowe get?

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

[powderfreak]

8 minutes ago, Damage In Tolland said:

I’m going to bed now. Was gonna wait to hear till 9:00

Ha yeah I knew that was keeping SNE awake and restless with anxiety.  

[powderfreak]

22 minutes ago, Lava Rock said:

I missed it, but what did Stowe get?

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk
 

I only had 6" at my place.  

The Ski Resort had 21".  

Not bad for a few miles as the crow flies and some elevation change.  

RT 100 north of I-89 was definitely the "screw zone" in this event...because RT 100 runs up the valley east of the Spine.  The meso-scale snow band went from central VT up through the NEK and into NNH.  So this area was just NW of that and from what everyone said and the MVL obs show, is that it snowed steadily all day but not at the 1-4"/hr rates that the meso-band zone saw.  Temps were 33-34F with steady snow but it just couldn't accumulate. 

People said it was like 2" and then it snowed steady for 10 hours and it was still 2-3" on the ground through the day on Friday.  Probably a case where if we were getting 2-3"/hr rates it would've stacked up fast despite the temps but 0.5-1.5sm visibility just wasn't enough to accumulate faster than the melt/compaction during the daylight hours.  Even just a few hundred feet up in elevation I saw significantly more snow in Stowe (village area)...like what looked like 8-9".  So I think we were just too low in town yesterday afternoon, whereas that steady snow was able to accumulate much better just a little bit above us.

Then as expected, once the storm went to upslope, the east side valley was getting half or less the snow the mountain/Spine and west slopes were getting.  So we got 4" of paste instead of 8-12 for that portion of the storm.  Basically a narrow zone here in town up through eastern Lamoille County between the meso-band yesterday and then the upslope on Friday night.

[CT Valley Snowman]

Photo 1.  Tolland Middle School: 10 AM

Kids sledding.

Snow drifts up to my waist near the school building. 32 degrees NW Wind gusting to 30. 

 

 

[CT Valley Snowman]

Photo 2.  Enfield Little League Field 2 PM.  

Practicing Baseball

38 degrees.  NW winds 15 mph

[Ginx snewx]

9 minutes ago, CTValleySnowMan said:

Photo 2.  Enfield Little League Field 2 PM.  

Practicing Baseball

38 degrees.  NW winds 15 mph

Lol I can remember the exact same setup.  I took the kids sledding in Foster RI and had them out playing pass that day 15 minutes away.

[CT Valley Snowman]

5 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

Lol I can remember the exact same setup.  I took the kids sledding in Foster RI and had them out playing pass that day 15 minutes away.

I've done it going both west and east. This one was closer and more abrupt.  You could see the hills covered in snow from the Somers farmland.  Cool stuff.  

[HIPPYVALLEY]

7 minutes ago, CTValleySnowMan said:

I've done it going both west and east. This one was closer and more abrupt.  You could see the hills covered in snow from the Somers farmland.  Cool stuff.  

Wow, that's nuts!  Lol.

Definitely more a CT/RI phenomenon this storm.  We drove up to over 1500' in Colrain and beyond MPM's former residence and there was maybe 2" of snow. 

[Ginx snewx]

5 hours ago, CoastalWx said:

This was defintely a synoptic thing to it. I’ll have to look when I get in later. Westerly flow doesn’t explain lift at 600mb over the valley

Totally synoptic with embedded standing wave

[HIPPYVALLEY]

5 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

Totally synoptic with embedded standing wave

 

Yeah, nobody could have predicted Kevin getting 8"+  and Savoy MA getting 3".   Wild stuff. 

[Ginx snewx]

7 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

Totally synoptic with embedded standing wave

 

[powderfreak]

Ski Patrol had to shovel out the Mountain Triple chairlift.  This was the only lift that could run for a lot of the day, everything else holding for the wind to die down.

The snow pack is deep.  This is wind transport out of the woods into the opening.  Just pounding winds.

[Damage In Tolland]

8 hours ago, CTValleySnowMan said:

I've done it going both west and east. This one was closer and more abrupt.  You could see the hills covered in snow from the Somers farmland.  Cool stuff.  

That’s absolutely awesome 

[tamarack]

12 hours ago, Ginx snewx said:

Once a day is a joke. Much more subject to wind, melting, compaction. That's why in 78 you see these reports of 20 inches with 3 inch w/e High winds compact the crap out of snow. Are they interested in how much fell or what the depth is at 24 hours. If so just say snow depth after 24 hrs.

That's most(*) of the reason Ft. Kent reports 15% less snow than CAR, which in the 10 years we lived in FK was just silly, and I doubt it's been any less silly the other years.

(*)  Sometimes the reports seem like the observer glanced at the stake, thought "24 inches yesterday, 32 today, so 8 inches fell", maybe because the lot got plowed before measurements made.  (Or that it was a quicker method than walking around with a yardstick measuring the new snow.)

[OceanStWx]

13 hours ago, Ginx snewx said:

Once a day is a joke. Much more subject to wind, melting, compaction. That's why in 78 you see these reports of 20 inches with 3 inch w/e High winds compact the crap out of snow. Are they interested in how much fell or what the depth is at 24 hours. If so just say snow depth after 24 hrs.

 

14 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

This is what drives me nuts ......the inconsistency. I measure just as the LCD sites do, yet they tossed my measurement in the blizzard last year. How do you have two different guidelines for cohras and LCD??? Makes zero sense, and utter BS.

Very emotional about snow measurement. My overall feelings are meh, it's not that important whether you do 24 and clear or every 6 and clear. If Ray called me with a report, I trust that he's being meticulous about it. I don't know who was working at BOX that day, but they didn't feel it was representative enough to include (or it just simply got lost in all the reports - it happens).

But like I said you can stick your ruler on the board as many times and often as you like during a storm, you just can only report the maximum depth in that measurement period. So have at it before wind and compaction/melting takes place, that is still a valid ob. Even if you only clear it after 24 hours. Getting into semantics about what actually is fallen snow is silly though. I don't shovel un-compacted snow in the morning. The only argument for shorter intervals when it comes to impacts is for plowing. If you are trying to keep a road clear, then what's coming down hour by hour is important. 

[Ginx snewx]

12 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

 

Very emotional about snow measurement. My overall feelings are meh, it's not that important whether you do 24 and clear or every 6 and clear. If Ray called me with a report, I trust that he's being meticulous about it. I don't know who was working at BOX that day, but they didn't feel it was representative enough to include (or it just simply got lost in all the reports - it happens).

But like I said you can stick your ruler on the board as many times and often as you like during a storm, you just can only report the maximum depth in that measurement period. So have at it before wind and compaction/melting takes place, that is still a valid ob. Even if you only clear it after 24 hours. Getting into semantics about what actually is fallen snow is silly though. I don't shovel un-compacted snow in the morning. The only argument for shorter intervals when it comes to impacts is for plowing. If you are trying to keep a road clear, then what's coming down hour by hour is important. 

Knowing its not your fault  I will say this, sloppy record keeping at  historical COOPs, counting missing data as 0, etc has basically rendered NCDC past snow climo records as useless. The army of weather observers now taking snow measurements will correct that some. Pains me to see national news, researchers,  climate scientists use NCDC snow data as fact and then report for (example a just recently seen paper) on the changing snow climo. I screamed in my head based on what? NCDC records of course. You may think some weenie worrying about accuracy is emotional and it really doesn't matter but  standardize once a day measurements, or depth when precip change  on the board as the standard for all because its confusing as all hell what our Govt wants from us volunteers 

[OceanStWx]

2 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

Knowing its not your fault  I will say this, sloppy record keeping at  historical COOPs, counting missing data as 0, etc has basically rendered NCDC past snow climo records as useless. The army of weather observers now taking snow measurements will correct that some. Pains me to see national news, researchers,  climate scientists use NCDC snow data as fact and then report for (example a just recently seen paper) on the changing snow climo. I screamed in my head based on what? NCDC records of course. You may think some weenie worrying about accuracy is emotional and it really doesn't matter but  standardize once a day measurements, or depth when precip change  on the board as the standard for all because its confusing as all hell what our Govt wants from us volunteers 

It's not really confusing though. We pay LCD observers to take 6 hourly measurements, we ask coops to take 24 hourly measurements. Finding volunteers to take 4 observations a day just isn't feasible for the NWS.

LCD sites have always had 6 hourly measurements because there were mets there taking obs for synoptic hours, we continue that practice for consistency. Coops have never been required to take 6 hourly obs, so the standard is 24 hours (greatest depth of new snow during that time whenever it is that they choose to measure). The standard is 24 hours, but some don't like that because it's less snow than if you did every 6 hours. If you choose to do 6 hours that's fine, but CoCoRaHS and coop guidance is pretty clear that it is the maximum depth of new snow in a 24 hour period.

[Ginx snewx]

9 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

It's not really confusing though. We pay LCD observers to take 6 hourly measurements, we ask coops to take 24 hourly measurements. Finding volunteers to take 4 observations a day just isn't feasible for the NWS.

LCD sites have always had 6 hourly measurements because there were mets there taking obs for synoptic hours, we continue that practice for consistency. Coops have never been required to take 6 hourly obs, so the standard is 24 hours (greatest depth of new snow during that time whenever it is that they choose to measure). The standard is 24 hours, but some don't like that because it's less snow than if you did every 6 hours. If you choose to do 6 hours that's fine, but CoCoRaHS and coop guidance is pretty clear that it is the maximum depth of new snow in a 24 hour period.

Not so clear to many here . What is LCD by the way.  You govt guys and your acronyms lol.