NNE Warm Season Thread

[powderfreak]

Cinco de Mayo was a beautiful one. 

With some buds showing on trees in town, maybe we are starting to turn the corner! 

Upper 60s at MVL and beautiful 50s up on the mountain.  Got quite the sunburn today, probably means its time for a new NNE thread.

[wxeyeNH]

Dim sun today, living on the edge

Birch popped small leaves the past 2 days, aspen too.  This is the week everything really starts to open.  My guess is first lawn cut later this week but boy is the soil wet.

[Whineminster]

NNE warm season....ticks, black and deer flies, sub par severe, and double thick hoodies during July nights

[powderfreak]

1 hour ago, Whineminster said:

NNE warm season....ticks, black and deer flies, sub par severe, and double thick hoodies during July nights

Crisp clear lakes, rivers, mountains to escape the heat and some might argue the mountains do thunderstorms pretty well comparatively.  Lines of storms go nuts once they hit the terrain usually.  

[wxeyeNH]

Another cold and snowy run on today's Euro 

Clown maps for next week

[tamarack]

That's only valid for elevations above 5,000'.  

Gorgeous full sun day, and mild enough that the breeze isn't a problem.

[J.Spin]

6 hours ago, wxeyeNH said:

Another cold and snowy run on today's Euro 

Clown maps for next week

We should probably give PF a hard time for starting the warm season thread a bit too soon.  Cold/snow/ski season is essentially October through May – the beautiful image in his opening post clearly speaks to that.  Those “other” four months of the year are the warm season around here – although you never know with June and September… and even August, especially later August can start the slide some years.

I guess that leaves July.

…and there’s an old saying somewhere along those lines.

[wxeyeNH]

Early next week continues to look very miserable.  Cold rain mixed with cat paws.  Snow in higher elevations.  Looks like going to have to fire up the wood stove yet again. 

Leafout continues in my area of Central NH.  Forest canopy is just about ready to explode with green but it has been another slow week of progress.  Usually, by mid May I'm pretty much leafed out so definitely behind this year.  Should fall further behind through next week before any warm weather arrives at the end of the week.  

[powderfreak]

On 5/8/2019 at 4:39 PM, J.Spin said:

We should probably give PF a hard time for starting the warm season thread a bit too soon.  Cold/snow/ski season is essentially October through May – the beautiful image in his opening post clearly speaks to that.  Those “other” four months of the year are the warm season around here – although you never know with June and September… and even August, especially later August can start the slide some years.

I guess that leaves July.

…and there’s an old saying somewhere along those lines.

From yesterday in the main thread... pulling this thing out of the woods means it's probably going to snow again.

-----

No new snow at 3,000ft Stake...I ended up pulling it out and bringing it down this evening for the season.  Still 20-30" on the ground in that 3,000ft elevation band.



[powderfreak]

Some impressive rain this morning. 

Already 1.20" rain since midnight at home and 1.61" up at the office.  With the snow melt there is an eye-opening amount of water coming down off the hills.  Whitewater in every little creek.  

0.85" in 3 hours at MVL.

[mreaves]

46 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Some impressive rain this morning. 

Already 1.20" rain since midnight at home and 1.61" up at the office.  With the snow melt there is an eye-opening amount of water coming down off the hills.  Whitewater in every little creek.  

0.85" in 3 hours at MVL.

 

Only .38 at MPV.  But as your radar loop shows, the heaviest stuff has stayed north of us.

[tamarack]

Dumped 0.18" from the gauge at 7 AM, but the heaviest was still to the west.  At this point we'd need a 3-4" RA to threaten even moderate flooding, and that's not in the picture.

[powderfreak]

36 minutes ago, mreaves said:

Only .38 at MPV.  But as your radar loop shows, the heaviest stuff has stayed north of us.

Yeah, it's crazy what a short term dump of water coupled with continued ski area melt will do to area waterways.  Nothing will flood but everything went from low water to raging really fast.  

1.76" at the base of the ski area station now and I live a half mile SW from the 1.4" station in town.  The river that follows RT 108 from mountain to town is really moving. 

[J.Spin]

From my office the other day I saw that there was quite a bit of white still visible on the slopes of Bolton Valley, so I headed up for a ski tour on Thursday and can pass along the beta on the snowpack.

The first signs of snow along the Bolton Valley Access Road, are at 1,500’ near the base of the Timberline area, and there are even skiable lines farther up on Timberline.  Up at the main mountain, continuous snowpack starts right at the base at around 2,100’.  Multiple trails on the upper mountain have skiable snow, and the Bear Run/Sprig O’ Pine area on the lower mountain has quite solid coverage.  Descending from up near 3,000’ on Spillway, I was able to ski almost continuous snow to the main base.  There were a few small breaks in the snowpack, but nothing that required taking off my skis.

The level of coverage they have right now wouldn’t be too surprising on the eastern slopes of the Greens this time of year, but that’s quite impressive for the western slopes.  I’m not sure if it was the hearty snowpack we had this winter, the amount of snow the resort made, the lack of any hot spells this spring, or a combination of these factors, but Bolton definitely has a solid amount of snow on the ground for this far into May.

A few shots from the tour:

[Ginx snewx]

9 minutes ago, J.Spin said:

From my office the other day I saw that there was quite a bit of white still visible on the slopes of Bolton Valley, so I headed up for a ski tour on Thursday and can pass along the beta on the snowpack.

The first signs of snow along the Bolton Valley Access Road, are at 1,500’ near the base of the Timberline area, and there are even skiable lines farther up on Timberline.  Up at the main mountain, continuous snowpack starts right at the base at around 2,100’.  Multiple trails on the upper mountain have skiable snow, and the Bear Run/Sprig O’ Pine area on the lower mountain has quite solid coverage.  Descending from up near 3,000’ on Spillway, I was able to ski almost continuous snow to the main base.  There were a few small breaks in the snowpack, but nothing that required taking off my skis.

The level of coverage they have right now wouldn’t be too surprising on the eastern slopes of the Greens this time of year, but that’s quite impressive for the western slopes.  I’m not sure if it was the hearty snowpack we had this winter, the amount of snow the resort made, the lack of any hot spells this spring, or a combination of these factors, but Bolton definitely has a solid amount of snow on the ground for this far into May.

A few shots from the tour:

Impressive,  Sunday River looks like you could ski top to bottom on some peaks

[wxeyeNH]

Run after run the models insist on some sloppy snow for the hills and mountains of NNE.  Not that unusual for May 14th but fun to see.  If we are going to have a rain storm and temps in the upper 30's and low 40's we might as well have some snow. 

[powderfreak]

12z EURO has MVL at 34F with snow early Tuesday morning. 

[OceanStWx]

13 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

12z EURO has MVL at 34F with snow early Tuesday morning. 

Time to change the thread title? 

[dryslot]

Spring!

[powderfreak]

A rare Dryslot sighting in the NNE thread!  

Holy crap that is a lot more widespread than any other run to date.

[dryslot]

14 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

A rare Dryslot sighting in the NNE thread!  

Holy crap that is a lot more widespread than any other run to date.

That would create a lot of damage for some of those areas.

[LongBeachSurfFreak]

https://www.stratton.com/the-mountain/webcams

snowing nicely on the mid mountain cam. 

[powderfreak]

25 minutes ago, dryslot said:

That would create a lot of damage for some of those areas.

I don't think there's a lot of leaves out there in the areas that have best chance, say 1000ft and higher but still wet snow is wet snow.

[J.Spin]

On ‎5‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 7:33 AM, Ginx snewx said:

Impressive,  Sunday River looks like you could ski top to bottom on some peaks

Indeed, that looks nice – there are plenty of skiable lines throughout the resort.  Although they don’t get the snowfall numbers that the Northern Greens do, I think the temperature regime/snow retention is similar in the Sunday River/Sugarloaf region.  Sugarloaf seems to have some of the best spring snow retention anywhere in NNE.  I don’t think Wildcat does quite as well as Sugarloaf, and somehow I get the impression that Cannon is notably worse with snow retention vs. those others despite being at fairly high elevation up there in the mountains of New Hampshire.

[tamarack]

7 hours ago, powderfreak said:

I don't think there's a lot of leaves out there in the areas that have best chance, say 1000ft and higher but still wet snow is wet snow.

Just under 400' here, maples are about 1/3 full size, probably 1/2 by Tuesday, oaks barely breaking bud, ash still asleep.  Only aspen/willows would be past the halfway point by the time that Euro goes crazy, and we're not getting 6-8 here (unless it's 6-8 catpaws.)

[J.Spin]

9 hours ago, powderfreak said:

I bet it's more normal than it seems...at least 1 in 5 years if not less.  Even at 1,500ft up in Stowe that seems reasonable for a whitening of May snow.

 

On ‎5‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 3:46 PM, wxeyeNH said:

Run after run the models insist on some sloppy snow for the hills and mountains of NNE.  Not that unusual for May 14th but fun to see.

May snow is actually quite common – after poking around in my archives a bit, it looks like notable accumulations of May snow probably happen (on average) every year if one considers the entire Northeast.

I just checked my archives, and it looks like substantial (6”+) May snow here in the Northern Greens is at least an every other year occurrence on average.  Since 2010 I’ve got the following reports in my records:

Jay Peak 09MAY2010 (6”+)

Bolton Valley 10MAY2010 (8”+)

Stowe 06MAY2011 (10”)

Stowe 26MAY2013 (15”)

Stowe 16MAY2016 (8”)

If we were to get something substantial out of this potential upcoming event, that would be at least five significant May snowstorms in the past decade.

For the Northeast in general, I’m sure the occurrence is more than every other year, especially with the Presidentials in the mix.  I skied Mt. Washington on May 16^th the season before last, and they’d just had almost three feet of snow.  I don’t think the Greens had much with that event, as they were either out of the moisture/dynamics of the snow levels were just a bit too high.  Since the list above obviously wouldn’t include any May snowstorms in the Northern Greens that I missed and didn’t make a report on, or any events that hit other parts of the Northeast where the Central/Northern Greens weren’t quite in on the substantial snows, it’s definitely averaging more than once every other year.  Today’s event was a perfect example, with Mt. Snow getting some substantial snow.  If that happened a bit closer to home there would have been a good chance I’d get out for a tour in the fresh snow, but heading that far south is a bit more of a commitment, especially on such short notice.

[Ginx snewx]

https://unofficialnetworks.com/2019/05/11/watch-ski-the-east-boys-shred-stowe-tuckerman-ravine/

[wxeyeNH]

16 hours ago, J.Spin said:

 

May snow is actually quite common – after poking around in my archives a bit, it looks like notable accumulations of May snow probably happen (on average) every year if one considers the entire Northeast.

I just checked my archives, and it looks like substantial (6”+) May snow here in the Northern Greens is at least an every other year occurrence on average.  Since 2010 I’ve got the following reports in my records:

Jay Peak 09MAY2010 (6”+)

Bolton Valley 10MAY2010 (8”+)

Stowe 06MAY2011 (10”)

Stowe 26MAY2013 (15”)

Stowe 16MAY2016 (8”)

If we were to get something substantial out of this potential upcoming event, that would be at least five significant May snowstorms in the past decade.

For the Northeast in general, I’m sure the occurrence is more than every other year, especially with the Presidentials in the mix.  I skied Mt. Washington on May 16^th the season before last, and they’d just had almost three feet of snow.  I don’t think the Greens had much with that event, as they were either out of the moisture/dynamics of the snow levels were just a bit too high.  Since the list above obviously wouldn’t include any May snowstorms in the Northern Greens that I missed and didn’t make a report on, or any events that hit other parts of the Northeast where the Central/Northern Greens weren’t quite in on the substantial snows, it’s definitely averaging more than once every other year.  Today’s event was a perfect example, with Mt. Snow getting some substantial snow.  If that happened a bit closer to home there would have been a good chance I’d get out for a tour in the fresh snow, but heading that far south is a bit more of a commitment, especially on such short notice.

The May 26th storm stands out.  That was the one that gave me 3" and I think even Brian got some accumulation.  I believe some of the NY mountains got up to 18"

[Angus]

another accident at Tuckerman Ravine this weekend requiring helicopter evacuation. Here is the report https://www.mountwashingtonavalanchecenter.org/skier-fall-chute-2019-4-12/ 

Thinking my only visit will be Memorial Day weekend if weather cooperates, maybe a hike up to summit snowfields, take a couple of runs and then downhike to the bowl for a couple of runs. 

 

[powderfreak]

4 hours ago, wxeyeNH said:

The May 26th storm stands out.  That was the one that gave me 3" and I think even Brian got some accumulation.  I believe some of the NY mountains got up to 18"

Whiteface in the Adirondacks had deformation delight and got 30-36" in that Memorial Day Weekend storm.