NNE Cold Season Thread 2020-2021

J.Spin · March 13, 2021

1 hour ago, powderfreak said:

1,500ft... looked like a couple inches overnight. At least a fresh white look again. Only an inch in town with the wind basically just filling in the footprints.

I was just checking our BTV NWS point forecast here, and it’s got close to 2-5” for tonight’s edition. They had 1-2” here for last night’s system, which seemed right on track, so maybe they’re seeing something that makes this next one a bit more robust in our area. Our forecast for this next one is through Sunday night, so it may be the duration that helps. The summit point forecasts are in the 5-9” range up near Jay Peak, but that’s a bit more than they suggest in their discussion.

Area Forecast Discussion

National Weather Service Burlington VT

649 AM EST Sat Mar 13 2021

NEAR TERM /THROUGH SUNDAY/...Next embedded shortwave trough in northwest flow arrives tonight with strong 700-500mb height falls noted. Should see widespread light snow shower activity develop after 03Z Sunday, and persist through the overnight hours. Orographic ascent and developing shallow daytime instability should allow scattered snow showers to persist thru Sunday across the higher terrain, especially for the central and northern Green Mtns. Should see snowfall amts of 0.5"-1" across valley locations, with snow-to- liquid ratios a fluffy 20:1. Orographic ascent brings 1-3" snowfall to the higher terrain, and possibly locally higher for the summits from Mt. Mansfield to Jay Peak (3-5") by late afternoon on Sunday.

Bread&Butter.jpg

PhineasC · March 13, 2021

Yep, the streak of no snowfalls over 2" has been broken at 39 days.

Hopefully a sign of more snow to come.

timp · March 13, 2021

Had 3” on the deck this morning but the sun has already obliterated it all. Still makes the remaining pack look fresh which is nice. Hopefully tonight delivers similar results.

wxeyeNH · March 13, 2021

1 hour ago, PhineasC said:

Yep, the streak of no snowfalls over 2" has been broken at 39 days.

Hopefully a sign of more snow to come.

I have posted a few times that I have not had more than 3.5" since Dec 17th. I am sure that has never happened before since I bought the house in 1989.

I guess the good thing for you Phin is that even without any good synoptic storms this winter you have had a constant snow cover. Consider this a very low bar winter for you. It can only be better in future years even with cutters, the back side will always re whiten you up there.

tamarack · March 13, 2021

50 minutes ago, wxeyeNH said:

I have posted a few times that I have not had more than 3.5" since Dec 17th. I am sure that has never happened before since I bought the house in 1989.

Even with my 9.5" on 2/2 I'm nearly a foot below your total, mainly because 12/17 brought only 1.9 - inches, not feet.

J.Spin · March 13, 2021

1 hour ago, wxeyeNH said:

I have posted a few times that I have not had more than 3.5" since Dec 17th. I am sure that has never happened before since I bought the house in 1989.

I do recall a period a few years back when PF was monitoring a stretch where hadn’t had a warning-level event for quite some time, but I’m not sure if I’ve ever looked into periods without hitting storm totals of a certain threshold the way you guys have this season. It could be due in part to the snowfall climate over here in the Northern Greens – I’m just used to recording very frequent, modest storms. I think it would probably take a long time before I noticed something like that. It might come to mind though in a season that was way behind average snowfall though, being curious about what was missing.

Looking into my data for the season, we’ve had 16 storms with snow totals >3.5” this season, and most of them are post-12/17. We may be somewhat behind average pace on larger storms this season though, in that we typically average one storm of ≥20”, and two storms ≥15”, and we haven’t had any storms hit those thresholds yet. We also average three storms of ≥12”, and we’ve only had one that just barely made the cut. We seem to be roughly on track (±1) for storms in the 6-10” range though, so perhaps even around here it’s just one of those seasons where the snow comes in more modest doses than usual. We can still get some very large storms in March though, so we’ll have to see if Mother Nature does anything to fill that in.

12.2” 1/16/2021 Winter Storm Malcolm - Midwest low forming triple point low over New England

10.2” 2/2/2021 Winter Storm Orlena - slow moving system along Northeast coast

8.4” 1/21/2021 Weakening low pressure tracking through southern Quebec

8.2” 2/9/2021 Winter Storm Roland - weak wave of low pressure passing south of the region

7.7” 2/19/2021 Winter Storm Viola - low SE of benchmark with multiple shortwaves in deep SW flow

7.4” 2/5/2021 Winter Storm Peggy - deep, mature cyclone moving north through the Great Lakes

7.1” 11/1/2020 Surface/upper-level trough + upslope from low departing near Northern Maine

6.0” 3/2/2021 Well-defined shortwave trough moving into the area

5.9” 12/26/2020 Lake-effect snow band extending northeastward off Lake Ontario

5.8” 1/1/2021 Winter Storm John - low to our west redeveloping over Gulf of Maine

5.5” 11/15/2020 Broad trough with surface low passing through central Quebec + backside LES/upslope

5.3” 11/2/2020 Clipper/upper-level shortwave

4.9” 12/17/2020 Winter Storm Gail - coastal storm tight to NJ coast heading eastward

4.5” 2/15/2021 Winter Storm Uri - low pressure moving through New England with mixed precipitation

3.8” 1/26/2021 Winter Storm Nathaniel - low pressure tracking south of New England

3.8” 12/5/2020 Winter Storm Eartha - compact coastal storm tracking near Cape Cod + departing upslope

bwt3650 · March 13, 2021

Models look to be keying in on my area up here. Let's see if this event doesn't underperform like last weekend. Should be around 6 blown around by tmrw night. Could use the help on the natural trails.

powderfreak · March 13, 2021

1 hour ago, J.Spin said:

I do recall a period a few years back when PF was monitoring a stretch where hadn’t had a warning-level event for quite some time, but I’m not sure if I’ve ever looked into periods without hitting storm totals of a certain threshold the way you guys have this season. It could be due in part to the snowfall climate over here in the Northern Greens – I’m just used to recording very frequent, modest storms. I think it would probably take a long time before I noticed something like that. It might come to mind though in a season that was way behind average snowfall though, being curious about what was missing.

There was that time when Eyewall had just moved up here that BTV went 2 years without a warning level event around the 2015/2016 time frame.

I also think regarding event totals, some folks might break "events" up differently... I know you can tally an "event" for several days if it's the same trough or upper level low, right? Thinking of an event in a way that's different than looking at a list of individual CoCoRAHS 7am totals. Like an event may span several different morning reports... if you get 3 days of snow showers at 1.7" a day but it's all the same general pattern, that "event" may be registered as 5.1".

Lava Rock · March 13, 2021

Are anyone's camp roads worse this year then other years? Ours is terrible. Never seen it so bad. Looks like someone brought dirt in, that's how deep the ruts are. Of course nobody did, but it visibly looks much different than other years with warmups. I'm guessing it's likely the extra traffic from a house they are building just past ours, but most of the heavy equipment was on the road when it was frozen.

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wxeyeNH · March 13, 2021

Yesterday the first patches of grass appeared. Today's sun and 35F helped the melt to continue. The lawn mowing crew of 15 have arrived too. They usually hit our fields first with the south exposure.

PhineasC · March 13, 2021

2 hours ago, powderfreak said:

There was that time when Eyewall had just moved up here that BTV went 2 years without a warning level event around the 2015/2016 time frame.

I also think regarding event totals, some folks might break "events" up differently... I know you can tally an "event" for several days if it's the same trough or upper level low, right? Thinking of an event in a way that's different than looking at a list of individual CoCoRAHS 7am totals. Like an event may span several different morning reports... if you get 3 days of snow showers at 1.7" a day but it's all the same general pattern, that "event" may be registered as 5.1".

It’s definitely a mentality change for me because outside of NNE upslope regions most events last 12-24 hours at best. So they are discrete and measured as such.

J.Spin · March 14, 2021

4 hours ago, powderfreak said:

I also think regarding event totals, some folks might break "events" up differently... I know you can tally an "event" for several days if it's the same trough or upper level low, right? Thinking of an event in a way that's different than looking at a list of individual CoCoRAHS 7am totals. Like an event may span several different morning reports... if you get 3 days of snow showers at 1.7" a day but it's all the same general pattern, that "event" may be registered as 5.1".

I’m not sure it would make any difference with respect to what they’re calling a “storm” though – the sort of systems that become a bit more challenging to break into discrete events don’t even come up on people’s radar as either events or non-events; they’re for the most part ignored as snow showers, or end up being nothing at all outside of the mountains. I use the BTV NWS forecast discussion to assign the specific storms exactly as they describe them, and I’ll only occasionally have to go to the models to dissect the situation myself if they don’t detail the specific breakdown of the systems in the AFD.

I generally break down storms into the smallest definable units possible, so if anything, that would bias the numbers toward smaller events, not larger ones. You can see from the list below that I pasted in my response to wxeye – the vast majority of those storms were quite well defined, and over half of them were even notable synoptic storms that earned a name at the national level. The least defined storm in that list is maybe the 11/15/2020 one? But even that one had a defined surface low. The example you provided above would never be defined as an individual storm in my view, in that I’d never just group multiple days of similar “pattern” snows into some sort of system. There would at least be a defined upper level low creating the precipitation, and more than likely there would be discrete shortwaves involved, and they would each get defined as an individual system if at all possible.

Most places just don’t get winter weather like we do here, where it actually does snow for days and days, and one system often blends into the next. It’s dramatically different from the sort of systems they typically seem to get in SNE and father south along the coastal plain, and I can understand why Phin says it requires a change in mentality.

You can see the list of all this season’s storms delivering greater than 3.5” at our site below though, and I agree that it’s surprising that wxeye would have missed out on all of them post 12/17? I’m not sure how he records his storm data, but I don’t think anyone limits an actual full storm total to simply the 24 hour segments broken up by arbitrary observations times. That would obviously break many storms in half artificially if the bulk of their snowfall happened to span the observations time.