Winter 2020-2021

[dendrite]

1 hour ago, ORH_wxman said:

 

I sorted the winters in your sig based on snowfall. (I estimate the 2019-2020 snowfall...CON had 46 but you prob had at least 15-20" more I'm betting)

 

I think I had 63.3". I'll have to tally it up later. I've been lazy with my climo data averages this year. I have 61.1" in Kevinma's snow table, but I don't think I put the 2.2" from May in there.

[Typhoon Tip]

Is that list all time ? ...as in going back hundreds of years

[mreaves]

58 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Welcome to Christmas in the NNE Mtns that year, Phin.

Only time since 1954 without even a trace of snow at the Mansfield COOP.  I honestly never thought it was possible to do before 2015.  I mean, at 4000ft there isn't even ice bulges on the cliffs, nothing at all.  Not even a drift.  Just bare ground straight to the summits.  It might as well have been mid-October.  We'll never see anything like that again is my guess.

I now have to make an emergency call to my therapist after this trigger picture

[dryslot]

2 minutes ago, mreaves said:

I now have to make an emergency call to my therapist after this trigger picture

If this winter turns out looking like that one, I will make a special trip over to VT to address that with Scott for posting this.

[dendrite]

1 minute ago, dryslot said:

If this winter turns out looking like that one, I will make a special trip over to VT to address that with Scott for posting this.

#blamephin

[dryslot]

Just now, dendrite said:

#blamephin

He's on the way over too.

[mreaves]

37 minutes ago, dryslot said:

He's on the way over too.

And on the way back too, just for good measure.

[powderfreak]

48 minutes ago, dryslot said:

If this winter turns out looking like that one, I will make a special trip over to VT to address that with Scott for posting this.

 

45 minutes ago, dryslot said:

He's on the way over too.

Hahaha, making the rounds.  Come and do snowmobile burnouts in our brown lawns as a thank you.

[dryslot]

1 minute ago, powderfreak said:

 

Hahaha, making the rounds.  Come and do snowmobile burnouts in our brown lawns as a thank you.

It would be a sod farm when i was done.................

[powderfreak]

1 hour ago, PhineasC said:

That picture is like one of those pictures of a starving emaciated polar bear standing on some melting ice up north.  

That’s an appropriate description, ha.  

Whenever you think winter is going bad, just let me break open the photos from 15-16 and you’ll suddenly feel all warm and fuzzy with only 4-6” on the ground. 

[ORH_wxman]

1 hour ago, powderfreak said:

Ha I'm with you.  I've been on the +1 train for a while but Will has always been able to show that as a wrong assumption with BTV data, but their climo definitely probably favors cold in the valley.  Maybe the difference is we tend to "jackpot" more in a +1 to +2 or something regime because we are on the gradient line.... maybe it's snowier on the whole in a colder regime?  But I still think we have a better chance of being in the sweet spot of storms in a bit warmer pattern.... ie last winter.  But last winter's overall snowfall wasn't great, but we jacked in quite a few storms, haha.  Even got a couple CCBs which seem rare up here.

It probably has more to do with a jackpot or sweet spot of individual storms vs. overall seasonal snowfall total.

I think it depends on the jackpot fetish too....would you rather be in a local jackpot and get near normal or slightly below normal snow (ala last winter)? Or miss the jackpot and have solidly above average snow?

I'm basing the stats strictly off total snowfall for the season....obviously not accounting for whether Scooter had more snow in Weymouth even if you were still doing ok (like 2014-2015).

 

The two biggest NNE snowfall winters in the last 50 years are 2007-2008 and 1970-1971....one was near normal temps ('07-'08) and the other was frigid ('70-'71). I'm trying to think of some other blockbusters....2000-2001 in NNE, that was below avg temps. So was '68-'69...another blockbuster NNE winter.

[CoastalWx]

Give me a nice AN snowfall winter. If I get 18” and someone gets 25” in a storm, I’ll live.

[J.Spin]

2 hours ago, PhineasC said:

2015-2016 really was horrible for you guys, wasn't it?

 

2 hours ago, powderfreak said:

In the past 25 years at Stowe, there hasn’t been another winter within even 75” of that one.  We got 154”.  The next closest contestant in 25 years is like 2011-12 with 246”.  

 

2 hours ago, powderfreak said:

We'll never see anything like that again is my guess.

The statistics say your guess is probably correct.  Using the latest stats for our location, the snowfall deviation on that 2015-2016 season was an incredible -2.29 σ, meaning it should fall in the bottom 1.1% of all seasons.  So, it’s essentially a 1 in 100-year event that most of us will probably not see again in our lifetimes.

Based on snowfall observations up to that point, it seemed that 100” of snow was probably the practical floor for snowfall around here – even that very poor 2011-2012 season brought 115” of snow.  Indeed, the stats say that getting below 100” of snow in a season here should only happen in the bottom few % of seasons (probably something in the range of 1 in 20 to 1 in 50 seasons, so the 72.2” that season was a massive aberration as your Stowe numbers indicated).

It’s also interesting to note that even in that very unusual/aberrant season, our snowfall here was still right around 50% of your Stowe/Mansfield number as it usually is.

[ORH_wxman]

9 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Give me a nice AN snowfall winter. If I get 18” and someone gets 25” in a storm, I’ll live.

Yeah I do not care about local jackpots that much....they are fun, but I wouldn't sacrifice snowfall for them to occur. Like I wouldn't take a +0.5 sigma snowfall winter when many others were normal or below normal over a +1 sigma snowfall winter where say, NNE, was +1.5 sigma.

[tamarack]

4 hours ago, dryslot said:

50.1" when i avg 72", Awful.

48.2" when we average 90.6" - awfuller. 
I think some VT sites take the booby prize.  IIRC, a couple places had their biggest 2015-16 snowfall on May 16, with about 4".  I thought we were deprived here in 05-06 when we failed to have a 6" event; can't imagine not even reaching 4.

[ORH_wxman]

4 minutes ago, tamarack said:

48.2" when we average 90.6" - awfuller. 
I think some VT sites take the booby prize.  IIRC, a couple places had their biggest 2015-16 snowfall on May 16, with about 4".  I thought we were deprived here in 05-06 when we failed to have a 6" event; can't imagine not even reaching 4.

I think the closest I ever came to not reaching 4" was 1988-1989. We didn't reach a 4" event until 3/24/89. It was poorly forecasted too....was supposed to be all rain, but we had fat aggregates at 31F for hours late afternoon and all evening....had about 7" where I was in Holden, MA (just NW of ORH).

[tamarack]

2 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

I think it depends on the jackpot fetish too....would you rather be in a local jackpot and get near normal or slightly below normal snow (ala last winter)? Or miss the jackpot and have solidly above average snow?

I'm basing the stats strictly off total snowfall for the season....obviously not accounting for whether Scooter had more snow in Weymouth even if you were still doing ok (like 2014-2015).

 

The two biggest NNE snowfall winters in the last 50 years are 2007-2008 and 1970-1971....one was near normal temps ('07-'08) and the other was frigid ('70-'71). I'm trying to think of some other blockbusters....2000-2001 in NNE, that was below avg temps. So was '68-'69...another blockbuster NNE winter.

Those choices would be 2003-04 and 2007-08 up here.  Dec 03 brought storms of 24" and 13" by the 15th and the rest of the winter only added another 35".  Given the comparative regularity of snowfall thru the 4 snowy months, having more than half the season's production coming that soon is anomalous for sure.  Then 2007-08's biggest event was 12.5" and only one other storm cracked 10, barely.  But for nearly all 4 "winter" months (here) we saw 2 [or more] storms per week and finished with 142.3" and over 3800 SDDs.

[PhineasC]

Randolph Hill site had 92.2" in 2015-2016. Still would have been the biggest winter of my life by like 40 inches. LOL

Off an average of 185", it's a big drop.

[tamarack]

8 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

I think the closest I ever came to not reaching 4" was 1988-1989. We didn't reach a 4" event until 3/24/89. It was poorly forecasted too....was supposed to be all rain, but we had fat aggregates at 31F for hours late afternoon and all evening....had about 7" where I was in Holden, MA (just NW of ORH).

• To find another winter like 05-06 with no 6"+ storms I had to go back to 67-68 in NNJ.  To find a third I'm probably back in the early 50s before I began to even measure the stuff.   (Looking at the stats, winters 1949-50 thru 54-55 were a sixpack of ratters in NYC and anyplace in the general region.)

[ORH_wxman]

10 minutes ago, tamarack said:

• To find another winter like 05-06 with no 6"+ storms I had to go back to 67-68 in NNJ.  To find a third I'm probably back in the early 50s before I began to even measure the stuff.   (Looking at the stats, winters 1949-50 thru 54-55 were a sixpack of ratters in NYC and anyplace in the general region.)

The early 1950s were absolutely horrific for snow in New England. Those winters were torches too.

 

13 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

Randolph Hill site had 92.2" in 2015-2016. Still would have been the biggest winter of my life by like 40 inches. LOL

Off an average of 185", it's a big drop.

You're gonna be like college kid who's only had a beer in high school and then does a keg stand their first party....lol.

Even a ratter up there will seem great the first year or two. But once you get a real winter, then you'll start calibrating.

[tamarack]

2 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

The early 1950s were absolutely horrific for snow in New England. Those winters were torches too.

 

NNE did a little better, at least in Maine.  Oddly, 3 of those 6 NYC ratters, 52, 54 and 55, had big dumps on Feb. 17-18.  The 1952 event has been pushed back to #3 at PWM but it was a far more powerful storm in Maine than PWM's bigger snows of Jan 79 and Feb 13.  When I read "Their Finest Hours" (have not seen the movie) I was reminded that the Maine Turnpike had about 1,000 stranded vehicles at the height of the '52 blizzard.  Not much snow at CHH but it was plenty exciting. 

[dryslot]

40 minutes ago, tamarack said:

48.2" when we average 90.6" - awfuller. 
I think some VT sites take the booby prize.  IIRC, a couple places had their biggest 2015-16 snowfall on May 16, with about 4".  I thought we were deprived here in 05-06 when we failed to have a 6" event; can't imagine not even reaching 4.

I try to forget those seasons but i have a hard enough time remembering the good ones.

[backedgeapproaching]

51 minutes ago, tamarack said:

48.2" when we average 90.6" - awfuller. 
I think some VT sites take the booby prize.  IIRC, a couple places had their biggest 2015-16 snowfall on May 16, with about 4".  I thought we were deprived here in 05-06 when we failed to have a 6" event; can't imagine not even reaching 4.

30" here with an average prob in the low-mid 80"s. More awfuller. I have mentioned this before, but I honestly think Bennington VT had under 10"..like 7-8". Absurd even for Bennington standards, they still prob average 60-65". 

15-16 was all time rat in SVT.

 

[powderfreak]

3 hours ago, CoastalWx said:

Give me a nice AN snowfall winter. If I get 18” and someone gets 25” in a storm, I’ll live.

Ha, of course.  That’s not what I meant with jackpots.  I’m talking like I feel like in a slightly warmer regime we have less of a chance of getting 2-3” of sand while other folks get 18-24”.  Not necessarily jackpots but just being even in the game in individual storms vs a season long slow build up.  Sometimes you just want a good CCB dropping 1” QPF in 6 hours...

I liked 2010-11.... that January while SNE was cleaning up we were at least doing 8-12’s in those storms.  

It does seem though like NNE gets above normal snows residually when SNE gets smoked, but it’s sort of like HubbDave “mehing” 2015’s 100+ inches at his place lol.  

[ORH_wxman]

1 hour ago, powderfreak said:

Ha, of course.  That’s not what I meant with jackpots.  I’m talking like I feel like in a slightly warmer regime we have less of a chance of getting 2-3” of sand while other folks get 18-24”.  Not necessarily jackpots but just being even in the game in individual storms vs a season long slow build up.  Sometimes you just want a good CCB dropping 1” QPF in 6 hours...

I liked 2010-11.... that January while SNE was cleaning up we were at least doing 8-12’s in those storms.  

It does seem though like NNE gets above normal snows residually when SNE gets smoked, but it’s sort of like HubbDave “mehing” 2015’s 100+ inches at his place lol.  

There is a pretty decent covariance between NNE and SNE snowfall. It’s generally quite rare for one region to get smoked for the winter while another has a ratter. There’s exceptions in each direction of course. 

When I line up the NNE blockbuster winters, I’m usually saying “that was a good (or great) one down here”.

Though if you have to pick a region with the lowest covariance outside of N Maine (might as well be in Labrador there), it’s probably yours. We tend to have the highest covariance with the southern half of Maine and then NH....no surprise, as those areas are most likely to share huge storms with us. 

But even when I look at huge N VT winters, most of them were good or great here. There’s a few head scratchers like ‘98-‘99. 

[J.Spin]

3 hours ago, tamarack said:

48.2" when we average 90.6" - awfuller. 
I think some VT sites take the booby prize.  IIRC, a couple places had their biggest 2015-16 snowfall on May 16, with about 4".  I thought we were deprived here in 05-06 when we failed to have a 6" event; can't imagine not even reaching 4.

Our snowfall relative to average was even worse at around 46%, so I thought our area had it bad relatively speaking – until I saw some of the SVT numbers from backedge.  I guess they really got the shaft.

In terms of receiving sizeable storms, it doesn’t seem as if it was as bad around here relative to some places – the top five storms in terms of snowfall amounts were:

1.  11.2” - 1/18/16 - Upper level low/inverted trough + upslope

2.  7.3” - 1/12/16 - Clipper-redeveloper

3.  6.6” - 12/29/15 - Southwest flow event; Winter Storm Goliath

4.  5.4” - 2/8/16 - General upper level trough moving into Northeast plus moisture from Winter Storm Mars offshore

5.  5.0” - 4/6/16 - Low pressure tracking through St. Lawrence Valley

It’s relative of course, but another aspect of that season that makes it such a pain in the data set is that it’s the only one in my records without a storm ≥ 12”, so it screws with any calculations involving that parameter.

[powderfreak]

37 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

There is a pretty decent covariance between NNE and SNE snowfall. It’s generally quite rare for one region to get smoked for the winter while another has a ratter. There’s exceptions in each direction of course. 

When I line up the NNE blockbuster winters, I’m usually saying “that was a good (or great) one down here”.

Though if you have to pick a region with the lowest covariance outside of N Maine (might as well be in Labrador there), it’s probably yours. We tend to have the highest covariance with the southern half of Maine and then NH....no surprise, as those areas are most likely to share huge storms with us. 

But even when I look at huge N VT winters, most of them were good or great here. There’s a few head scratchers like ‘98-‘99. 

Yeah that sounds about right.  In my head I sort of lump you guys in with up to Dryslot's area, as I bet Dryslot has more in common with ORH snowfall than he does with Vermont at the same latitude.  The snowfall climatology in the northeast seems to run in SW to NE axis, mirroring the coastline.  Like up here we often share storms that deliver NW of ALB, more than we do with say far N.NY or Massena despite the similar latitude.  I know you know this, ha, just speaking out loud.

The main point though is what you made, if one region really does well, the other normally does pretty good too.  Relative to normal as a percentage, I still think SNE often gets the nod in those "good/great" winters.  Like 120% snowfall up here is a huge winter and I bet when that happens, it's not uncommon for BOS/BDL/ORH to have at least 120% of normal, maybe more.  That's probably a pretty poor metric though to compare, as standard deviations would be more useful.  Maybe that's where I'm stuck at, looking at it as a percentage of normal snowfall... it's hard to beat the non-immediate coastal SNE stations in that metric during a good winter.

 

[ORH_wxman]

34 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Yeah that sounds about right.  In my head I sort of lump you guys in with up to Dryslot's area, as I bet Dryslot has more in common with ORH snowfall than he does with Vermont at the same latitude.  The snowfall climatology in the northeast seems to run in SW to NE axis, mirroring the coastline.  Like up here we often share storms that deliver NW of ALB, more than we do with say far N.NY or Massena despite the similar latitude.  I know you know this, ha, just speaking out loud.

The main point though is what you made, if one region really does well, the other normally does pretty good too.  Relative to normal as a percentage, I still think SNE often gets the nod in those "good/great" winters.  Like 120% snowfall up here is a huge winter and I bet when that happens, it's not uncommon for BOS/BDL/ORH to have at least 120% of normal, maybe more.  That's probably a pretty poor metric though to compare, as standard deviations would be more useful.  Maybe that's where I'm stuck at, looking at it as a percentage of normal snowfall... it's hard to beat the non-immediate coastal SNE stations in that metric during a good winter.

 

Yeah you gotta use standard dev so that you are comparing apples to apples. A place like BOS has a much higher variance on their annual snowfall relative to average than Stowe does or even dendrite or ORH. Likewise, mid-Atlantic cities have an even higher variance than BOS relative to their averages. 

Using standard deviation adjusts for all of this. 

Years where BOS gets like 90”+ is probably like when Stowe (village, not mountain) gets like 175”+. (Can’t remember for sure but I recall you saying 175 was a monster number for in-town snowfall)

[powderfreak]

1 hour ago, ORH_wxman said:

Yeah you gotta use standard dev so that you are comparing apples to apples. A place like BOS has a much higher variance on their annual snowfall relative to average than Stowe does or even dendrite or ORH. Likewise, mid-Atlantic cities have an even higher variance than BOS relative to their averages. 

Using standard deviation adjusts for all of this. 

Years where BOS gets like 90”+ is probably like when Stowe (village, not mountain) gets like 175”+. (Can’t remember for sure but I recall you saying 175 was a monster number for in-town snowfall)

Yeah that would be a huge winter here.  We had 150-160" here in the village between 2 sites in 2010-11.  That seasonal snowfall map looked like a NW flow model prog when it was all done.

2000-01 would probably be at that level of 175" locally at this level, with over 400" in former ski area measurements.  It's a huge season. 

 

[PhineasC]

You guys are making me drool for this winter. LOL

I have never wanted summer to end so badly.