NNE Cold Season Thread 2020-2021

[powderfreak]

Still snowing surprisingly well.

About 4-6" depending on wind around the base area.

It is frigid though at 16F and windy.

[PhineasC]

My outdoor furniture keeps doing weird shit. That swing was on the deck area in front of it, but somehow pretzeled itself out over night. Time to bring that all into the barn, obviously.

[alex]

18 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

My outdoor furniture keeps doing weird shit. That swing was on the deck area in front of it, but somehow pretzeled itself out over night. Time to bring that all into the barn, obviously.

 

That poor thing stands no chance of surviving a winter in Randolph

[PhineasC]

I had a few small chairs from an outdoor dining table blow way into the woods too, I just noticed. Crazy how they managed to get through all the columns and obstructions to find their way into the field. The wind is relentless here when it gets going. It swirls too which is part of how this furniture managed to escape I think. Time to clear the decks. Lesson learned.

[backedgeapproaching]

8 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

I had a few small chairs from an outdoor dining table blow way into the woods too, I just noticed. Crazy how they managed to get through all the columns and obstructions to find their way into the field. The wind is relentless here when it gets going. It swirls too which is part of how this furniture managed to escape I think. Time to clear the decks. Lesson learned.

I get big time wind storms in the right setup here.  I've lost of a bunch of stuff to wind here...I'm like how did my trashcan end up in the woods 250 yards away? ha

[jculligan]

I logged our total as 0.3" overnight, but at least there was a somewhat whitened landscape to wake up to this morning. This brings my total up to 0.6" on the season lol. 

The synoptic storms will come. Last night's Euro is trying to throw us a bone the night before Thanksgiving. La Nina winters tend to be active up here, so I think my patience will ultimately pay off, especially (as others have mentioned) I'll have a little bit of immunity to cutters in this CAD-prone area. Once the snow is here, it's going to take a lot for it to go away.

[CoastalWx]

4 minutes ago, jculligan said:

I logged our total as 0.3" overnight, but at least there was a somewhat whitened landscape to wake up to this morning. This brings my total up to 0.6" on the season lol. 

The synoptic storms will come. Last night's Euro is trying to throw us a bone the night before Thanksgiving. La Nina winters tend to be active up here, so I think my patience will ultimately pay off, especially (as others have mentioned) I'll have a little bit of immunity to cutters in this CAD-prone area. Once the snow is here, it's going to take a lot for it to go away.

It’s also been a shit pattern. Even for you guys, that means you need to wait.

[qg_omega]

Cold

 

 

[backedgeapproaching]

9 minutes ago, jculligan said:

I logged our total as 0.3" overnight, but at least there was a somewhat whitened landscape to wake up to this morning. This brings my total up to 0.6" on the season lol. 

The synoptic storms will come. Last night's Euro is trying to throw us a bone the night before Thanksgiving. La Nina winters tend to be active up here, so I think my patience will ultimately pay off, especially (as others have mentioned) I'll have a little bit of immunity to cutters in this CAD-prone area. Once the snow is here, it's going to take a lot for it to go away.

Euro 10 days says there will at least be some chances as you stated..not any epic pattern, but chances possibly. We'll see. In and Up with the best odds, as per usual in NOV.

[mreaves]

18 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

It’s also been a shit pattern. Even for you guys, that means you need to wait.

Even up here it isn't all that normal to have the snowpack start this early, the last couple of years notwithstanding.  I would estimate that we have snow on Thanksgiving maybe half the time?  Other than the truly ridiculous week of San Diego weather we had, we seem to be on a somewhat normal progression.

[J.Spin]

Event totals: 5.2” Snow/0.88” L.E.

 

Snowfall has continued all morning at varying intensities, with a good burst taking place at observations time that quickly put down another 0.3” just in the time I was out there taking measurements and getting cores.

 

Details from the 12:00 P.M. Waterbury observations:

New Snow: 0.7 inches

New Liquid: 0.02 inches

Snow/Water Ratio: 35.0

Snow Density: 2.9% H2O

Temperature: 25.9 F

Sky: Snow (3-15 mm flakes)

Snow at the stake: 2.0 inches

[jculligan]

22 degrees at 12:15pm. Hard to believe we were pushing 80 a little over a week ago. Solid negative departure on the day today, that's for sure.

[powderfreak]

Another 1.5” since 8am at 1500ft.  Still snowing.  This will end up being like 8” of fluff up here.  Wild.

[J.Spin]

3 hours ago, powderfreak said:

6" on the snow cam at the mountain before it flipped this morning at 6am.  Looks like another inch since then.

Mansfield should be around 9" total for this event just by that board that usually is a little lower in total than the ground based board.

That’s great PF, nice to see the accumulations going on.  If there was a base in place this event would probably make for some excellent turns.  We’ll need to get some sort of synoptic system to put down that base snow though – this snow is awesome, but on its own it’s not quite going to get things going for the slopes.  I’m getting ratios in the 30:1 to 50:1 range out of this, which is of course without compaction of the full accumulation, but even after some compaction this is still champagne.  Actually, there might be some reasonable areas for turns up high, depending on how much of that denser snow from earlier in the storm is still present.  I’m only seeing 4 inches at the Mt. Mansfield Stake as of yesterday though.

[PhineasC]

18 degrees at 1:15 PM. Impressive for sure.

[powderfreak]

51 minutes ago, J.Spin said:

That’s great PF, nice to see the accumulations going on.  If there was a base in place this event would probably make for some excellent turns.  We’ll need to get some sort of synoptic system to put down that base snow though – this snow is awesome, but on its own it’s not quite going to get things going for the slopes.  I’m getting ratios in the 30:1 to 50:1 range out of this, which is of course without compaction of the full accumulation, but even after some compaction this is still champagne.  Actually, there might be some reasonable areas for turns up high, depending on how much of that denser snow from earlier in the storm is still present.  I’m only seeing 4 inches at the Mt. Mansfield Stake as of yesterday though.

Yeah a little gnome may have access to a stake camera up there, and he told me there’s 9” at that stake right now .  Today’s report should double yesterday’s depth.

Still snowing, ha.

[powderfreak]

12z GFS has some front end snow on Sunday evening... like an inch in Vermont but this is Phin's time to shine as it looks like he'd pick up 2-3" on the front side on this output before the warmth over-rides it.

[Patriot21]

Some flurries and 18 degrees in West Topsham right now. Wife sent me this picture from this morning. 

[slow poke]

I enjoy reading your guys conversations about the different microclimates you have over there. Like your guys area we have our fair share of them in Michigan also. Between the Great Lakes and the elevation differences we have it makes for some pretty interesting ones actually. Our elevation differences are nothing compared to what you guys have out there though. Ours range from around 600’ at our lowest points near the great lakes to a little over 1700’ in the lower peninsula and almost 2000’ in the upper. I could go on and on about our different microclimates we have but I don’t want to bore you guys too bad.

[J.Spin]

Event totals: 5.5” Snow/0.88” L.E.

 

This is probably the last round of accumulation for this storm?  The radar is pretty quiet, and the forecast doesn’t suggest any precipitation tonight, so unless something changes, the above totals should be the final numbers here.

 

Details from the 6:00 P.M. Waterbury observations:

New Snow: 0.3 inches

New Liquid: Trace

Temperature: 21.7 F

Sky: Flurries

Snow at the stake: 1.5 inches

[J.Spin]

9 hours ago, mreaves said:

Even up here it isn't all that normal to have the snowpack start this early, the last couple of years notwithstanding.  I would estimate that we have snow on Thanksgiving maybe half the time?  Other than the truly ridiculous week of San Diego weather we had, we seem to be on a somewhat normal progression.

This looks like a good place for some data!  Your estimate is probably pretty darned close – my 14 years of data from our site have white Thanksgiving occurrence at 64.3%, with the past four years all being white.  Mean Thanksgiving snowpack depth is not all that substantial, just 3.2”, with 2.0” for the median value.

I agree that this November has felt like a fairly normal progression for the month.  Indeed, we had the warm spell, but we’re also ahead of average snowfall here to this point in November due to the storms at the beginning of the month.  The mean snowpack depth value for Nov 18^th here is 1.2”, so we’re really quite “normal” in that regard.  However, the mean snowpack value for this date doesn’t mean too much because November is very early winter down here in the valley and is typically quite a roller coaster with respect to freezing temperatures.  Thus the snow on the ground is usually coming and going at this point.

As folks have mentioned, this is still on the early side for the winter snowpack to start down at this elevation; the average snowpack start date is around the end of November/beginning of December, so snowpack averages before that point are typically going to be the mean of lots of crazy ups and downs.

[tamarack]

11 hours ago, J.Spin said:

This looks like a good place for some data!  Your estimate is probably pretty darned close – my 14 years of data from our site have white Thanksgiving occurrence at 64.3%, with the past four years all being white.  Mean Thanksgiving snowpack depth is not all that substantial, just 3.2”, with 2.0” for the median value.

I agree that this November has felt like a fairly normal progression for the month.  Indeed, we had the warm spell, but we’re also ahead of average snowfall here to this point in November due to the storms at the beginning of the month.  The mean snowpack depth value for Nov 18^th here is 1.2”, so we’re really quite “normal” in that regard.  However, the mean snowpack value for this date doesn’t mean too much because November is very early winter down here in the valley and is typically quite a roller coaster with respect to freezing temperatures.  Thus the snow on the ground is usually coming and going at this point.

As folks have mentioned, this is still on the early side for the winter snowpack to start down at this elevation; the average snowpack start date is around the end of November/beginning of December, so snowpack averages before that point are typically going to be the mean of lots of crazy ups and downs.

Our white Thanksgiving are 9 of 22, 41%, so the median is zero.  Pack for those 9 years totals 43" with both 2014 and 2018 tops with 11".

[PhineasC]

On the very short Randolph data set, it's about 70% I believe last time I checked.

Only 11 years however so not really definite. Certainly well-within normal to be bare on Thanksgiving.

Looks like there might still be a chance for NNE this year. The forecast around Turkey Day looks like a mixed bag mess setup. Will need to see which way it breaks.

There are several little events on the horizon that all have marginal temps. We could exit the next week+ period with a few inches of snow in the books or nothing but chilly rain.

[backedgeapproaching]

On 11/17/2020 at 7:57 PM, PhineasC said:

If they are so typical where the hell are they? LOL

Obviously a small sample size, but this fall (10/1-11/15)  is actually the second highest snow total for the Randolph cocorahs guy outside of the freakish 2018.

[powderfreak]

The sleeper 10” storm on the mountain in 48 hours plus some snowmaking... looks nice.

[ORH_wxman]

45 minutes ago, backedgeapproaching said:

Obviously a small sample size, but this fall (10/1-11/15)  is actually the second highest snow total for the Randolph cocorahs guy outside of the freakish 2018.

 

2018 and 2019 were both extreme cold/snowy Novembers in NNE. Definitely not the norm. Hell, even down here in 2018, we had like 10 days of snow pack which is crazy....usually November snow melts within a day or two down here.

[backedgeapproaching]

20 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

2018 and 2019 were both extreme cold/snowy Novembers in NNE. Definitely not the norm. Hell, even down here in 2018, we had like 10 days of snow pack which is crazy....usually November snow melts within a day or two down here.

2018 was just nuts, Bromley had 30-36" on the ground above 2500ft  when I was up there at the end of NOV. 

Even down here think I had around 30" for the month. What's funny is you had the kind of epic reverse bookend---March 2018 in SVT to end winter of 17-18 and then epic NOV 2018 to start 18-19.

[PhineasC]

1 hour ago, backedgeapproaching said:

Obviously a small sample size, but this fall (10/1-11/15)  is actually the second highest snow total for the Randolph cocorahs guy outside of the freakish 2018.

Yep, that 5 inches he measured in mid-October really put him over the top on this analysis.

I have noticed that his measurements are super-accurate to the point that it doesn't always reflect the sensible weather on the ground, if that makes sense. In both of the 5 inch storms for Randolph so far things were so stretched out and marginal there was never more than 3 or so inches OTG at any given time. 

[backedgeapproaching]

3 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

Yep, that 5 inches he measured in mid-October really put him over the top on this analysis.

I have noticed that his measurements are super-accurate to the point that it doesn't always reflect the sensible weather on the ground, if that makes sense. In both of the 5 inch storms for Randolph so far things were so stretched out and marginal there was never more than 3 or so inches OTG at any given time. 

Oh yea, absolutely. In those snowy upslope zones you can lose a lot of reported accumulation without diligent measuring because of the frequency of snowfalls.  We talk about that from time to time in here and why there can be decent discrepancies across close areas. You really don't know if someone is measuring the second the snow stops and every 6 hours or if they are just waiting to 7am every day like some COOPS do.

The Randolph guy is obviously meticulous ala JSpin.  Even down here while we don't get as many snowfalls as NVT and NNH, we still get  a lot of smaller scale squalls/upslope stuff and i try to get everything measured and recorded as some as I can.

[jculligan]

Classic CAD day here on the eastern slope. Started the day at 10F and we've crept our way up to 26F as of 1pm. Looks like the SNOTEL site at Hermit Lake (3900') is up to 35F, so a pretty solid inversion. I'm envisioning many days like this.