Spring 2019 New England Banter and Disco

[tamarack]

On ‎5‎/‎22‎/‎2019 at 9:47 PM, ORH_wxman said:

Biggest difference fozz will see is more "snow on snow" events. His old stomping grounds in NE MD was pretty good for big storms. Plenty of 12"+ storms there and of course some 20"+ storms.

But they don't get a lot of moderate events in between with snow on the ground. N RI will have a lot more events where snow falls on top of existing snowpack. So if you are into the "winter appeal" aspect, then it's a positive change. 

Even in NNJ, snow on snow wasn't all that common, and the base snow was usually a crummy crust by the time storm 2 came along - made for easy measuring, though.  Pow on pow was almost unknown (with the huge exception of Jan 19-Feb 4, 1961.)

[CoastalWx]

1 hour ago, powderfreak said:

Now this is some May.  

Just north of the town of Crested Butte, CO... looks to be just up the road past the base of the ski resort when you plot the coordinates.

41" of snow this month with a depth over 30" still on May 23rd  

Whoever does this station is real diligent and got 380" of snow this winter with a max depth of 93".   

Thats like living at the Mount Mansfield Stake climate.

Snow down to mtns of San Diego. Quite the pattern out west.

[ORH_wxman]

1 hour ago, powderfreak said:

Now this is some May.  

Just north of the town of Crested Butte, CO... looks to be just up the road past the base of the ski resort when you plot the coordinates.

41" of snow this month with a depth over 30" still on May 23rd  

Whoever does this station is real diligent and got 380" of snow this winter with a max depth of 93".   

Thats like living at the Mount Mansfield Stake climate.

That area in SW CO can go gangbusters at times. I remember a couple years back, Crested Butte was the snowiest town in the country. January 2017 I think it was...they got something like 9 or 10 feet of snow in 2 weeks.

[powderfreak]

9 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

That area in SW CO can go gangbusters at times. I remember a couple years back, Crested Butte was the snowiest town in the country. January 2017 I think it was...they got something like 9 or 10 feet of snow in 2 weeks.

The CoCoRAHS records are incredible out of there.  

Check out this period in early March.  

10 days, 6.90" water and 79.5" snow.  

Craziest thing is the depth compacting on itself.  See this on Mansfield a lot at the summit.  Towards the end there it snowed 8.5" with depth increase 2".  Then another 10.5" snow with depth only going up 2".  

 

I was so interested as it's obscene to see the daily snow/water that goes into a 380" season.... this is the guy/site there, just up the road from Crested Butte resort entrance:

Looks like he's holding some sort of coring device and the snowboard he uses looks similar to what we put on Mansfield.  He's done twice daily obs since the 1970s when he came there as a ski bum...that's some JSpin level dedication.

[TalcottWx]

On 5/17/2019 at 11:27 AM, Fozz said:

I'm about to start a new job in RI next week, so I'll soon be joining you guys here in this forum.

Welcome to the friendly confines of the SNE subforum 

[ORH_wxman]

56 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

The CoCoRAHS records are incredible out of there.  

Check out this period in early March.  

10 days, 6.90" water and 79.5" snow.  

Craziest thing is the depth compacting on itself.  See this on Mansfield a lot at the summit.  Towards the end there it snowed 8.5" with depth increase 2".  Then another 10.5" snow with depth only going up 2".  

 

I was so interested as it's obscene to see the daily snow/water that goes into a 380" season.... this is the guy/site there, just up the road from Crested Butte resort entrance:

Looks like he's holding some sort of coring device and the snowboard he uses looks similar to what we put on Mansfield.  He's done twice daily obs since the 1970s when he came there as a ski bum...that's some JSpin level dedication.

Yeah that's awesome. I love pristine snow records from weenie sites like that.

 

I remember posting these two pics from that January 2017 dumping there...and these pics were before they got another 2 feet a day or two later.

 

[powderfreak]

That's absolutely nuts.  Crested Butte is high enough that they get those heavy moist snowfalls when it's rain at 7-8000ft and below but then mix it in with the dry continental snows.  Though their snowpack in town seems more "man-snow" than high desert fluff you see elsewhere in Colorado/Utah/Wyoming/Montana.  They do get plenty of high ratio stuff I'm sure but there's just that "look" to it that means the snow has some body to it.

I guess their best snows would be SW/S/SE flow stuff given their position in the Rockies which is probably of the more moisture rich variety.  Northerly flow has to cross a lot of high terrain from Vail, Aspen, etc before getting to them.

[powderfreak]

41 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

Yeah that's awesome. I love pristine snow records from weenie sites like that.

I'm glad I stumbled on this from his CoCoRAHS observations because people like this in true weenie snow sites are hard to come by.  Wish there were more of them.

If anyone really wants to waste some time like I have this morning... go down the rabbit hole and weather records of his at http://www.gothicwx.org/

The guy turned into a local legend and climate specialist because of how meticulous his records are.  I like his attitude about it, like how we argue on the forums about the best/proper snow measuring practices... "even if I did it wrong, I've done it wrong every single day for 44 years." 

"I recorded all this out of a personal interest in the weather. And because I’ve done it for so long, it has some benefit and some value. It wasn’t like I was some sort of forethinker, thinking ‘Oh, I’m going to write all this down and have absolutely no life whatsoever so I can stay here for 50 years,’ ” 

"Scientifically, my data are good because I had no goals, therefore no one can say ‘Well, you are just taking data to prove a point.’ It’s just numbers. I just wrote them down,” he says. “It’s the same person in the same location doing it in the same method, so even if I did it wrong, I did it wrong every single day for 44 years.”

[ORH_wxman]

32 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

That's absolutely nuts.  Crested Butte is high enough that they get those heavy moist snowfalls when it's rain at 7-8000ft and below but then mix it in with the dry continental snows.  Though their snowpack in town seems more "man-snow" than high desert fluff you see elsewhere in Colorado/Utah/Wyoming/Montana.  They do get plenty of high ratio stuff I'm sure but there's just that "look" to it that means the snow has some body to it.

I guess their best snows would be SW/S/SE flow stuff given their position in the Rockies which is probably of the more moisture rich variety.  Northerly flow has to cross a lot of high terrain from Vail, Aspen, etc before getting to them.

Yeah the terrain is insane there....when I flew into Montrose on my Telluride trip in 2016, I noticed how ridiculous steep the wall was to the east...that's where Crested Butte was.....inside the mountains that created that monstrous wall....and Telluride was to the south, another monster wall of terrain. The upslope from some direction is crazy good and of course they can handle the moiste southwest flow deep-moisture at 500mb...events that turn 7,000 foot areas into rain as you said, but they are just getting smoked.

 

I marked all the areas with an X on the terrain map....

 

 

 

[Baroclinic Zone]

What's their seasonal total there now?  Snowbird has topped 700" now, which is a single-season record.

[mreaves]

Left LGA this morning with bright blue skies and nice warm temps. Got back to BTV just in time for 58 and overcast. Happy summer!

[powderfreak]

20 minutes ago, Baroclinic Zone said:

What's their seasonal total there now?  Snowbird has topped 700" now, which is a single-season record.

That guys site is at 380" but he's got a bunch of years over 500".  His 44-year record looks like 646.1" in 1994-95.  The .1 cracks me up...like after 600" you keep measuring to the tenth on an inch.

The bigger snow was further north this season than the Crested Butte area.  Even in California, Mammoth had 460" or something like that to Squaw's 715".  I think Jackson Hole also set their snowfall record this season.

[CoastalWx]

We door. Dropping now. 

[Ginx snewx]

35 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

That guys site is at 380" but he's got a bunch of years over 500".  His 44-year record looks like 646.1" in 1994-95.  The .1 cracks me up...like after 600" you keep measuring to the tenth on an inch.

The bigger snow was further north this season than the Crested Butte area.  Even in California, Mammoth had 460" or something like that to Squaw's 715".  I think Jackson Hole also set their snowfall record this season.

Today's Mammoth report

• BASE DEPTH RANGE

• 90-155"
• 90" 
   

[Baroclinic Zone]

15 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

Today's Mammoth report

• BASE DEPTH RANGE

• 90-155"
• 90" 
   

 

Snowbirds

 

[powderfreak]

Ahh thanks @Ginx snewx for the clarification.  

Thats odd... as this version of their report on their mobile site only lists the 489" which is what I've been following.

[USCAPEWEATHERAF]

We had a big line of storms strengthen as they passed over the Cape and Islands this morning.  There could have been some reports of severe weather, like Hail and some wind with a lot of lightning, but it didn't wake me up at all.  Which is weird because thunder usually does wake me up at night.

[Torch Tiger]

Mammoth skiing into August. That's what it's all about. 

[wxeyeNH]

In other snow/mountain/weather news.... 

I follow the climbing season on Mt Everest.  They have a short window each May that is good for summiting.   Not as cold as winter and before  Monsoon season that brings big snows.  Because the mountain is 29,029 feet in elevation the jet stream winds are a big factor.  This year it sat over the mountain for much of the month so the window of good days was pretty minimal.  This week Wednesday and Thursday were in one of those windows.  I guess about 800 permits were issued and many people all at once tried for the summit creating a traffic jam.  Several people died because it took so long to get up and down the last leg.  Incredible picture of the traffic jam.  

[powderfreak]

Yeah Gene I saw that too.  Following a couple pro skiers trying to get to the summit and it sounds like the route is packed like a box store on Black Friday.  

That is terrifying.  Two died in that crowd from altitude sickness because they couldn't get to lower elevation quick enough.  You can't go anywhere on that knife ridge and the Hillary Step rock.  

[Ginx snewx]

Just now, powderfreak said:

Yeah Gene I saw that too.  Following a couple pro skiers trying to get to the summit and it sounds like the route is packed like a box store on Black Friday.  

That is terrifying.  Two died in that crowd from altitude sickness because they couldn't get to lower elevation quick enough.  You can't go anywhere on that knife ridge and the Hillary Step rock.  

What a bunch of fools. Geezuz what a way to die, there is a reason the extreme adrenaline junkies don't last too long. 

[RUNNAWAYICEBERG]

Idiots. 

[Baroclinic Zone]

Been following that.  Just the perfect storm for a tragedy 

[Hoth]

2 hours ago, wxeyeNH said:

In other snow/mountain/weather news.... 

I follow the climbing season on Mt Everest.  They have a short window each May that is good for summiting.   Not as cold as winter and before  Monsoon season that brings big snows.  Because the mountain is 29,029 feet in elevation the jet stream winds are a big factor.  This year it sat over the mountain for much of the month so the window of good days was pretty minimal.  This week Wednesday and Thursday were in one of those windows.  I guess about 800 permits were issued and many people all at once tried for the summit creating a traffic jam.  Several people died because it took so long to get up and down the last leg.  Incredible picture of the traffic jam.  

Jesus, what a cluster. I wonder what percentage of those people are rich neophytes getting dragged to the top by a sherpa.

[Hoth]

Also, I would put Killian Jornet's single day summit of Everest from base camp to summit to base camp without supplemental oxygen solidly in the pantheon of greatest athletic feats of all time. Then he did it again a week later. 

[radarman]

2 hours ago, wxeyeNH said:

 

Fresh jjjjjjulius and doubleganger though, 3 can limit

[wxeyeNH]

1 hour ago, Hoth said:

Also, I would put Killian Jornet's single day summit of Everest from base camp to summit to base camp without supplemental oxygen solidly in the pantheon of greatest athletic feats of all time. Then he did it again a week later. 

Wow that is absolutely incredible.  

[Tom12309]

There was the guy that rode his bicycle over from Sweden, waited for weather to attempt Everest, got within a few hundred yards of the summit on his one chance, realized he didn't have time to get there and get back down so he turned back, returned to camp and got on his bike and rode home.

[Hoth]

37 minutes ago, Tom12309 said:

There was the guy that rode his bicycle over from Sweden, waited for weather to attempt Everest, got within a few hundred yards of the summit on his one chance, realized he didn't have time to get there and get back down so he turned back, returned to camp and got on his bike and rode home.

Smart guy. A lot of people would've tempted fate and likely end up a permanent fixture on the mountain.

[wxeyeNH]

Just to get to base camp is a bit of a feat itself.  Fly to Katmandu.  Take a puddle jumper to one of the most dangerous airports in the world,  Lukla.  One way dead end runway at 9300 feet.  About a week overland trek to basecamp at 17,600 feet.  Have to acclimate to the elevation.  Cost $40K to $60K to climb Everest with sherpas lugging all your gear.  Almost no one climbs Everest without fixed ropes going in first which are done by sherpa teams.  One of my wishes is to just see Everest.  12,000 relief mountain puts our New England hills to shame.

There is another option and that is to climb from the China side.  Bit more technical but I think easier access