NNE Warm Season Thread

[tamarack]

Topped out at 86 yesterday, a bit less hot than I'd anticipated.  Dropped into the upper 60s this morning. 

[J.Spin]

It’s been mostly cloudy here in Waterbury with occasional periods of sun, and we’ve had a few spits of rain as well.  Even though it’s only mid-morning, we’re already feeling pulses of drier air coming through when the wind picks up.  Typically having the dew around 60 °F isn’t that big of a deal, but I’d say it’s going to be more noticeable after this recent spike.

[J.Spin]

We were out in town and noticed some fairly dark clouds off to the west - it looks like something is building into the area:

[backedgeapproaching]

85F, 88F, 85F for the 3 day heatwave here. 77 dew was impressive, but just last year was more impressive.

 July 2018 DDH had 5 straight 90+ days, this year they didnt hit 90F once during this 3 day stretch looks like, although close--- 89F/89F/86F. 

[powderfreak]

Been dry for a bit but finally got another soaker yesterday with the storms.  

Severe wind damage in an axis from Barrows Rd by the Stowe High School (trees down across the road) and it continued to Holmes Lane and Shaw Hill near the Lower Village with trees/wires down.  Pretty much most of the town lost power yesterday as the transmission lines run through there.  

Ended up with a solid soaking rain though, the CoCoRAHS station near the village center had 1.17”, but I’m not sure where the other Stowe station was that had 1.55”. 

Up to 4.22” on the month, probably close to average for a summer month is roughly 1”/week? 

[dendrite]

The min is not in the books yet for today, but close enough. Basically 2 big precip events this month and that's it minus a measly early tenth.

      MAX   MIN  PCPN  WND SNOW  DEPTH
07/01 81.8  56.0 0.00   18  0.0  0
07/02 83.6  62.2    T   12  0.0  0
07/03 85.0  59.4 0.00   14  0.0  0
07/04 86.6  60.4 0.00    9  0.0  0
07/05 88.3  61.3 0.00   14  0.0  0
07/06 88.6  67.2 0.09   26  0.0  0
07/07 77.7  57.6 0.00   14  0.0  0
07/08 80.3  51.7 0.00    8  0.0  0
07/09 83.1  53.0 0.00   14  0.0  0
07/10 84.6  57.0 0.00   10  0.0  0
07/11 81.7  60.5 0.88   13  0.0  0
07/12 81.1  64.7 0.54   13  0.0  0
07/13 82.4  60.2 0.00   10  0.0  0
07/14 81.6  61.3 0.00   18  0.0  0
07/15 78.5  57.9 0.00   19  0.0  0
07/16 81.6  55.1    T   15  0.0  0
07/17 83.2  65.4    T    9  0.0  0
07/18 78.6  60.4 0.00   13  0.0  0
07/19 87.6  59.1 0.00   11  0.0  0
07/20 91.5  71.1 0.00    9  0.0  0
07/21 89.2  67.7 0.00   20  0.0  0
07/22 72.7  62.5 0.95    9  0.0  0
07/23 70.5  59.5 0.36    8  0.0  0
07/24 77.1  58.2 0.00   16  0.0  0
07/25 78.9  53.4 0.00   10  0.0  0
07/26 82.5  57.2 0.00    9  0.0  0
07/27 83.6  59.6 0.00   11  0.0  0
07/28 86.1  61.1 0.00   12  0.0  0
07/29 86.1  65.5 0.00   10  0.0  0
07/30 89.1  64.1 0.00   11  0.0  0
07/31 80.9  64.5    T    8  0.0  0

 

[tunafish]

3.48" precip for July, mostly falling in 3 events (1.01" on the 6th, 0.98 on the 11th, and 1.02" on the 22nd/23rd).

 

I don't keep temp records, but the PWM ASOS is 3.5mi away and had its warmest July on record and warmest month ever on record.

[J.Spin]

July Precipitation: 5.15”

2019 Precipitation: 37.58”

2019 Water Year Precipitation:  56.05”

 

July wound up about average here at our site with respect to precipitation, so we’re still running a bit ahead on the annual total after the wet spring.  According to my data set, August and September are our driest warm-season months here before things ramp back up in October.

The lawn is doing well, and we’re a couple of weeks past peak climate temperatures around here now, so hopefully we won’t have any big scorching temperatures for the lawn to deal with.  There’s really nothing too hot in the forecast over the next week, and by then we’re getting to the point where it gets really hard to get that midsummer type heat around here, so hopefully those couple of days we had earlier in the month were the peak of our heat and humidity.

August 1^st marks the start of one of my favorite three-month stretches of weather around here.  The humidity typically wanes pretty quickly, and we’ve got late summer warmth, early season cool shots, fall food and festivals, crisp nights, foliage, and usually first snows.  It’s definitely a fun period for outdoor stuff around here.

[wxeyeNH]

Congrats Alex   43.3F    Nice and toasty on the hill,  low 54.1F

 

[backedgeapproaching]

50F on the nose last night.

ALY has upper 70's pretty much for the next week--nothing above 80 with most nights in the 50's--maybe it does get a little bit dewey mid next week, but i will take this if it pans out.

[J.Spin]

2 hours ago, backedgeapproaching said:

50F on the nose last night.

ALY has upper 70's pretty much for the next week--nothing above 80 with most nights in the 50's--maybe it does get a little bit dewey mid next week, but i will take this if it pans out.

Seeing the fairly normal temperatures heading out to the end of next week means we’re probably not going to get back to any of those big July-like temperatures we had.  Around August 10^th is a notable cutoff date I found out about for this area from my wife.  During her years as a summer lifeguard, she learned from the management (and reinforced with personal observation) that it was a critical tipping point for pool visitation.  It’s not because of people’s schedules (it’s certainly not the point where school is starting up around here), but it’s likely a combination of available daylight for heating the water, lowering sun angle, and I’d bet most importantly, lowering humidity levels, that have people not needing/wanting to hit the water quite as much.  It’s interesting to note that the date is about halfway between the solstice and the equinox, but it’s obviously specific for this latitude/location, so I’m not sure I’d read too much into that.  That date is for the Champlain Valley though, so if anything the mountains around here would be a bit earlier to hit that point.

I’m always partial to the (certainly arbitrary) August 1^st cutoff for “high summer” heat around here because of the convenient calendar change, but there is a bit more to it than just that.  I’ve never had an August day in this area with quite the heat and humidity of the big July days we get.  That’s the way it’s generally going to be of course with the peak climate temperatures around here being in mid-July, but when the date has August in it, you already know it’s likely to have much more of a “late summer” feel than a midsummer feel.  There is the old adage here about our one week of summer being around July 4^th, but there’s also the one about our summer being “July”, with the other 11 months being “winter”.  July definitely has its own feel.  Last year seemed to be a bit of an exception with the lingering humidity farther into the summer, but that certainly wasn’t what we typically see this far north.  Our real “dog days” are generally going to be in July vs. August.  I guess that’s true for a lot of places, but hearing about temperatures around 90 F in SNE yesterday vs. the 70s F here was striking, it’s quite a different world down there.

[tamarack]

August 10 is the day my average daily mean is below 65.00 for the first time since July 8.  And while on average August is cooler and less dewy than July, the memory of 1988 shows that things can be different.  The first 2 weeks that month were as hot/dewy as any 2-week period I've experienced since moving to Maine.  During the first week PWM set a new TD mark at 77°, though I'm not sure it remains at the top.

[J.Spin]

15 minutes ago, #NoPoles said:

August is the month that @powderfreak will post pictures of the waning green foliage and the first splashes of real color. Can't wait!

I was actually going to comment in my previous post that I saw my first yellow leaves of the season this morning while ascending I-89 along French Hill.  They were on bushes on one of the ledges, so presumably in a stressful spot, but the process always starts at some point.  Our old butternut tree out back will usually start dropping some yellow leaves at this time of year as well.  I saw a couple of yellow leaves on the lawn this morning, but didn’t have time to look more into it.  The actual butternuts have been dropping for a while already, and I’d expect to see some leaves falling any day now if the tree follows its usual schedule.  I’m sure there are plenty of more subtle signs out there on our property, but that butternut tree starting to drop its leaves is typically the first harbinger of late summer that’s obvious at our house.

[powderfreak]

1 hour ago, J.Spin said:

I was actually going to comment in my previous post that I saw my first yellow leaves of the season this morning while ascending I-89 along French Hill.  They were on bushes on one of the ledges, so presumably in a stressful spot, but the process always starts at some point.  Our old butternut tree out back will usually start dropping some yellow leaves at this time of year as well.  I saw a couple of yellow leaves on the lawn this morning, but didn’t have time to look more into it.  The actual butternuts have been dropping for a while already, and I’d expect to see some leaves falling any day now if the tree follows its usual schedule.  I’m sure there are plenty of more subtle signs out there on our property, but that butternut tree starting to drop its leaves is typically the first harbinger of late summer that’s obvious at our house.

Off-topic but were you and the family biking the Stowe Rec Path last night?  I was walking my black lab and waited at the end of one of the bridges for a family of bikers to pass and it looked like it might have been you and the wife.  Only reason I wasn’t sure is your boys looked so old! If it was you, wow they grow up fast, ha.  

It was the bridge just downhill of Sushi Yoshi... I’m back there on the river towards the end of that dirt road you cross at Tres Amigos.

[J.Spin]

2 hours ago, powderfreak said:

Off-topic but were you and the family biking the Stowe Rec Path last night?  I was walking my black lab and waited at the end of one of the bridges for a family of bikers to pass and it looked like it might have been you and the wife.  Only reason I wasn’t sure is your boys looked so old! If it was you, wow they grow up fast, ha.  

It was the bridge just downhill of Sushi Yoshi... I’m back there on the river towards the end of that dirt road you cross at Tres Amigos.

LOL, indeed that was us!  We even saw you waiting with your dog (thanks), although apparently none of us had time to recognize you unfortunately as we were working to navigate our bikes in the bridge area.  Our wedding anniversary was Monday, but we decided to go out and celebrate Thursday evening to try out Tres Amigos for the first time.  We parked at the church lot in the village so that we could get in a ride with dinner.  All the restaurants along the bike path have such a sweet setup for going by bike, so we try to do that whenever we can.  We’ve been missing Frida’s since it closed, but it’s nice to have another Mexican place in town.  They have a cool ice cream stand there as well, which is genius of course being right along the bike path.

[mreaves]

52 minutes ago, J.Spin said:

LOL, indeed that was us!  We even saw you waiting with your dog (thanks), although apparently none of us had time to recognize you unfortunately as we were working to navigate our bikes in the bridge area.  Our wedding anniversary was Monday, but we decided to go out and celebrate Thursday evening to try out Tres Amigos for the first time.  We parked at the church lot in the village so that we could get in a ride with dinner.  All the restaurants along the bike path have such a sweet setup for going by bike, so we try to do that whenever we can.  We’ve been missing Frida’s since it closed, but it’s nice to have another Mexican place in town.  They have a cool ice cream stand there as well, which is genius of course being right along the bike path.

I’ve only been to Tres Amigos a couple of times but it is pretty good. Happy Anniversary!

[powderfreak]

15 hours ago, J.Spin said:

LOL, indeed that was us!  We even saw you waiting with your dog (thanks), although apparently none of us had time to recognize you unfortunately as we were working to navigate our bikes in the bridge area.  Our wedding anniversary was Monday, but we decided to go out and celebrate Thursday evening to try out Tres Amigos for the first time.  We parked at the church lot in the village so that we could get in a ride with dinner.  All the restaurants along the bike path have such a sweet setup for going by bike, so we try to do that whenever we can.  We’ve been missing Frida’s since it closed, but it’s nice to have another Mexican place in town.  They have a cool ice cream stand there as well, which is genius of course being right along the bike path.

Congrats dude! The owners of Tres Amigo have done a great job in the past couple years.  The remodeled and modern interior, to go along with good food and drink is pretty sweet.  It's a good Mexican option in town. 

Add in the Creeme stand along the Rec Path and the business has a good opportunity.

Also, Rec Path etiquette drives me insane on those bridges...First come first serve.  The group already on the bridge has right of way, whether walking, running, biking, rollerblading, whatever.  Yield and let them come all the way over before starting.

[J.Spin]

On ‎8‎/‎2‎/‎2019 at 10:33 AM, tamarack said:

August 10 is the day my average daily mean is below 65.00 for the first time since July 8.  And while on average August is cooler and less dewy than July, the memory of 1988 shows that things can be different.  The first 2 weeks that month were as hot/dewy as any 2-week period I've experienced since moving to Maine.  During the first week PWM set a new TD mark at 77°, though I'm not sure it remains at the top.

I was living in the Champlain Valley back then, but don’t recall what the period was like, so I did a quick check at the BTV NWS site.  On their temperature extremes page, it looks like that period holds a record for days with max temperatures of 80 F or higher, so that says something about that stretch:

The forecast is looking pretty good at this point with respect to avoiding excessively uncomfortable July-style heat, and once we’re into the second half of the month it gets even harder to have those sort of days.  That map PF just posted of the departures up here vs. farther south revealed quite the demarcation for temperatures this month, so there’s certainly some variability around the region.

[backedgeapproaching]

Aug 1988 is interesting-its mentioned  a lot on the forum for the Dews. The first 2 weeks looked pretty warm for sure.  Looks like it was an abrupt change for the second half of the month, even dropped into the 30's on 8/23 at MVL.

 

[tamarack]

19 hours ago, backedgeapproaching said:

Aug 1988 is interesting-its mentioned  a lot on the forum for the Dews. The first 2 weeks looked pretty warm for sure.  Looks like it was an abrupt change for the second half of the month, even dropped into the 30's on 8/23 at MVL.

One of the most abrupt reversals of pattern I can recall.  Farmington co-op averaged 86/62 for Aug. 1-14 and then 70/50 the rest of the month, with 3 mornings in the upper 30s.  Went from 8.4° AN to 2.5° BN.

[J.Spin]

12 hours ago, powderfreak said:

Some real nice storms around these parts today but locally we only saw some brief downpour and a couple weak rumbles.

Looked much more intense in the BTV area over to the Mad River Valley.

There was definitely some intense rain in the MRV area yesterday afternoon/evening.  I dropped the boys off around 5:00 P.M. for their evening soccer camp session at Mad River Park with just some light showers in the air, but within a half hour we got a text message to the tune of “S.O.S., practice is cancelled, we need to be picked up!”  The major factor in canceling the session was the thunder and lighting, but apparently the downpours were pretty intense.  Thankfully they have a nice pavilion there for shelter.  Checking on CoCoRaHS, I see some precipitation totals up around two inches down in the southern part of Washington County.

[J.Spin]

I posted the data and analysis below in the ski thread, but it’s also very much NNE snowpack related, so I’m cross-posting it here as well.

Let’s take a look at where last season sits with regard the start of the natural snow/off piste skiing around here.  As usual, I use the date of hitting 24” depth at the Mansfield stake as an approximation of that and for comparative purposes.  The updated plot is below, with last season represented by the red star:

Before I add a bit of context to last season’s start, here are the stats for the data set:

n:  64

Mean:  Dec 12^th

Median:  Dec 9^th

Mode:  Dec 16^th

S.D.:  18.8 days

 

Entry of this year’s data point had no effect on the mean, mode, or S.D. (within a tenth of a day), but it did drop the median by one day from Dec 10^th to Dec 9^th.

The plot would suggest a reasonably good start, but nothing insane:  last year’s 24” date was Nov 27^th, which is only 0.78 S.D. ahead of the mean, so well within 1 S.D.  That puts it in roughly the top 22% of seasons, so about 1 in 5 seasons will have a similar or earlier 24” date.

While the 24” date is a nice snapshot for the start of the natural/off piste season, there are of course a number of other factors to take into account that made last November more impressive than that number alone:

1) Near miss:  If you look at the raw November stake depth data (posted below), you can see that the snow depth at the stake reached 23” on Nov 21^st.  That’s as close of a miss as you can get to hitting 24”, so even as of the 21^st of the month, the snowpack had essentially hit that two-foot level.  Getting to that level by the 21^st brings a season past 1 S.D. and into that top ~15% of seasons.  That’s not a huge bump in this regard, but having nearly an extra week of borderline two-foot snowpack at that part of the season could easily mean an entire additional weekend of natural snow skiing potential.

2) No going back:  This is a much bigger feather in last season’s cap.  Even from about mid-month, the snowpack never really took a major hit, and once it did hit that 24” mark on Nov 27^th, there was really no going back.  It sailed past 24” and just kept climbing as you can see in the numbers at the end of the month.  I haven’t added the December numbers below, but even with the lackluster December we had, the snowpack never dropped below ~40”.  That can’t be said for all of the seasons on the left side of the plot (certainly not Mr. October out there in front, which was the 2006-2007 season – he was back to 0” at the stake by mid-November).

3) Snow-depth days:  I haven’t calculated this for any November with the stake data, but it will obviously be a good integrative measure of how much snow was on the ground for the start of the season.  I’m sure last November would have a solid ranking if I put those data together.

So, if we look into that left side of the plot, do we have any other recent seasons in there that we can use for comparison to last season?

Actually, that lone star (Nov 25^th) just to the left of the red star for last season is for 2007-2008.  We know that was a solid season around here.  The snowpack began building in the first week of November, and there was really no going back there either.  Unlike this past season, that solid November was followed up by a stellar December (almost 70” of snow here at the house) and the Mansfield snowpack was hitting five feet by the holidays.  With a solid December, last season certainly would have given 2007-2008 a run, but instead it was languishing at around 40” at the stake during the holiday period.

With regard to some of the other stars up at that end of the plot:

The two compatriots of last season on the plot, those other two stars on Nov 27^th, are 1997-1998 and 1977-1978.  1997-1998 looks pretty solid with a snowpack start in the first week of November, and snowpack at about that five-foot mark by the holiday period.  There’s also a nice-looking bonus stretch of snow at the end of October, with snow at the stake for almost the last third of the month, and the depth peaking at 16”.  Checking my archives, I actually went for some lift-served skiing at Sugarbush on Oct 28^th, so that speaks to that period snow being a bit of something special.  1977-1978 was before my time around here, but it looks a bit tamer.  There was nothing in October, then snowpack began to build around mid-November and was getting around the four-foot mark by the holidays.

The two stars right at Nov 20^th are interestingly, back-to-back seasons of 1967-1968 and 1968-1969.  Both had a little October snow, and then a snowpack start in the first week of November.  Both had pretty steady climbs right through November and December, with 1967-1968 getting to around 40” for the holiday period, and 1968-1969 hitting a very robust 6+ feet of snowpack for the holidays.  I guess that shouldn’t be too surprising, as that was just the start of a season that would become legend.

The star at Nov 18^th is 1965-1966, and the progression looks sort of like 1967-1968.  Boy, that’s quite a 4-year stretch of good early seasons from ’65-’66 to ’68-’69 with those three solid starts.

The star at Nov 16^th is 1980-1981.  That season is interesting in that the snowpack started building on Oct 20^th and sailed right into November without ever going back to zero.  Snowpack was 4+ feet for the holidays, but the rest of the season looks modest (relatively speaking) with the snowpack depth never getting above 6 feet.

The star on Nov 14^th is for something more recent:  2003-2004.  I was out in Montana for that one, but snowpack started building in the second week of November, it was 4+ feet at the holidays, and hit the 100” mark in March.

The star on Nov 13^th is for 1976-1977.  That looks like an impressive start, with snowpack taking hold in the second half of October, climbing right through November, and hitting roughly the 4-foot mark for the holidays.  The stake didn’t quite top out at 100” that season, but it did pretty well topping out at 94”.

The final early star I haven’t mentioned yet is the one on Nov 11^th, that’s for the 1990-1991 season.  It seems like the only other boom and bust start to go with Mr. October (2006-2007).  There was a little inkling of snow at the end of October and start of November, but snowpack started building at the end of the first week of the month and topped out at a very impressive 45” on Nov 14^th!  It was a downhill slide after that though.  The snowpack never went lower than 9” but there were only 12-18” on the ground for the holiday period, and on Dec 30^th it dropped from 18” to 13”, so that must have been quite a dagger in the holiday week (I guess that depends on whether it was a nice spring skiing day or a nasty rainstorm).  The rest of that season seemed pretty blasé because the snowpack never even hit 5 feet.  I don’t recall much about that season, but I’m assuming there was nothing too remarkable.

Date                 Depth

11/1/2018        2

11/2/2018        1

11/3/2018        4

11/4/2018        4

11/5/2018        4

11/6/2018        3

11/7/2018        0

11/8/2018        3

11/9/2018        1

11/10/2018      7

11/11/2018      8

11/12/2018      8

11/13/2018     

11/14/2018      14

11/15/2018     

11/16/2018      19

11/17/2018     

11/18/2018     

11/19/2018      20

11/20/2018      21

11/21/2018      23

11/22/2018      23

11/23/2018      23

11/24/2018      20

11/25/2018      19

11/26/2018      19

11/27/2018      32

11/28/2018      43

11/29/2018      46

11/30/2018      44

[J.Spin]

4 hours ago, powderfreak said:

It went straight to October.  Too cold, we overshot the sweet spot for temps.

Orographic brief heavy showers (half expect graupel in these)... 

12:20pm on August 10th with 55-65F temps around.

62F in town

56F up at 1,500ft (squalls moving through).  Beautiful for the Folk Music Festival up in the base area.  DIT’s midday jackets and pants in full effect.

MVL down to 60F at the ASOS now.

We’ve got the big VAE Car Show going on right here at Farr’s Field, so they’re getting some of those classic Green Mountain orographic effects as well.  Down here, temperatures are a bit warmer than at 1,500’ of course.  60s and 70s F is actually great weather for things where you have to be out in the sun, but we’ve also got those pop up showers taking place, so I’m sure those have been a bit of a nuisance for the show.  I think we’ve had at least four rounds of showers this afternoon, with some nice sun in between and those rapidly fluctuating temperatures you referenced.  We were moving around a 300 to 400-pound boulder out of one of our drainage areas this morning, and let’s just say that this weather has been perfect for that work.  I can’t imagine doing a job like that down south right now with heat indices over 100 F that I heard about on TWC this morning.

We just had one of the bigger afternoon pop-ups come through.  There’s definitely an autumnal feel today though – a bit of a prelude to the approaching upslope season.

[#NoPoles]

Some friends hiked up Katahdin this weekened said they experienced sleet.

Brace yourselves weenies- Winter is Coming

[tamarack]

1 hour ago, #NoPoles said:

Some friends hiked up Katahdin this weekened said they experienced sleet.

Brace yourselves weenies- Winter is Coming

Zero C level was only about 2,000' above the summit, so no surprise.  On my first climb there, August 6, 1973, I met a family on the Knife Edge who said they'd had to walk just south of the ridge same time the year before, because the windblown sleet was so painful. 

[dendrite]

Absolutely brutal stretch, but we're doing our best to battle through it.

08/01 79.9  56.8 0.00   17  0.0  0
08/02 81.2  52.0 0.00    8  0.0  0
08/03 82.4  55.0 0.01   13  0.0  0
08/04 79.4  55.7 0.00   17  0.0  0
08/05 78.3  49.6 0.00   10  0.0  0
08/06 82.0  51.2 0.00   14  0.0  0
08/07 82.1  63.8 1.40   32  0.0  0
08/08 81.4  64.4 0.01   12  0.0  0
08/09 79.2  55.1 0.05   15  0.0  0
08/10 70.9  52.7 0.01   17  0.0  0
08/11 74.8  51.1 0.00   17  0.0  0
08/12 80.4  52.6 0.00   15  0.0  0

 

[#NoPoles]

Any foliage pics yet? I know the bright green chloroplasts are fading...

[alex]

18 hours ago, #NoPoles said:

Any foliage pics yet? I know the bright green chloroplasts are fading...

I posted one a couple of days ago lol. It's definitely noticeable if you pay attention. About 10-20% of trees have the more muted and at times bronzish colors that prelude to foliage season

[powderfreak]

Hike followed by a dip in the river, as often as possible.  Dog cools off by rolling around in any mud, then gets a rinse in the river.

A muddy dog is a happy dog.

The cold water flowing off Mansfield is a perfect way to cool down on these more humid 80 degree days.  Been swimming in the backyard pool daily... there's a surprisingly good sized area 5-6 feet deep, in the river right behind our place.

Summer as it should be.

[backedgeapproaching]

Some impressive skies 2 nights ago after that line of storms went through. Storms have been totally meh this summer, they seems to fall apart once out of Hudson, Mohawk valley. I dont want severe, just the rain really.

Rainbow to the east, purple/orange haze to the west and a little mid slope fog bank. The sky was crazy, reminded of the wildfire skies a bit out in CA in 2003ish when I was out there.