NNE Cold Season Thread 2020-2021

[powderfreak]

This is incredible.  Like old times in N.VT.

It is just nuking snow at Mansfield in these 30+ DBZ.

[powderfreak]

3+ at the ski area since 6am.

[J.Spin]

6 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

3+ at the ski area since 6am.

Rates have definitely been impressive here, with 2.5” in the past hour – from the radar it does look like this pulse might be ending though.

[powderfreak]

This is wild.  It snows every single day.  Locals on cloud nine, high fives and hoots and hollers coming from all over the ski area.

[PhineasC]

Some snow showers here this morning with the sun shining brightly too. 

[PhineasC]

1 hour ago, alex said:

Was just entering the 2" from yesterday on the snow table, and notice how much shaft we've been getting comparatively speaking. It was usually "neck and neck" between JSpin and I on past years - as I've noted before, with us overperforming on coastals and the Mansfield area overperforming in uplsope. This year the upslope has been decent - but of course here in the valley never at those levels - while coastals have pretty much shafted us since October, so we're quite a bit behind. No complaints, it's been a nice winter with very consistent snowcover with the exception of (of course) the Xmas period, and skiing has been awesome and far better than last year. Nevertheless, it's interesting to notice! This is also the time of the year when (blasphemy) I start looking forward to Spring, and Spring is NOWHERE in sight.

Randolph Hill is running at about 110" now. So I am carrying the torch for NNH. The three big coastal storms made all the difference here. Been at a 30" depth for a while now too.

Hard to stay on top in the race when getting very little synoptic action and relying exclusively on upslope over here. We sort of keep up with the Northern Greens in general terms, but when we get 1 inch, they get 2 - 2.5 and when we get 2 they get 3-3.5 it seems like. That adds up to create a delta over the course of a season. I am assuming as we head into mid to late March and beyond it gets a little harder for J. Spin to rack up fluff down in the valley and spots like ours can still clean up on some amped-up coastal lows. 

Getting to the average of 185" for the CoCoRaHS site still seems to be within grasp for here so can't complain, and I have had good snowcover for weeks now with no end in sight. Need the storm track to lift back north soon, however.

 

[alex]

10 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

Randolph Hill is running at about 110" now. So I am carrying the torch for NNH. The three big coastal storms made all the difference here. Been at a 30" depth for a while now too.

Hard to stay on top in the race when getting very little synoptic action and relying exclusively on upslope over here. We sort of keep up with the Northern Greens in general terms, but when we get 1 inch, they get 2 - 2.5 and when we get 2 they get 3-3.5 it seems like. That adds up to create a delta over the course of a season. I am assuming as we head into mid to late March and beyond it gets a little harder for J. Spin to rack up fluff down in the valley and spots like ours can still clean up on some amped-up coastal lows. 

Getting to the average of 185" for the CoCoRaHS site still seems to be within grasp for here so can't complain, and I have had good snowcover for weeks now with no end in sight. Need the storm track to lift back north soon, however.

 

It's actually snowing quite nicely at the moment. Super fluffy stuff so it stacks easily. I do remember saying "don't count on a sunny day on a NW wind" yesterday

[J.Spin]

Event totals: 8.2” Snow/0.24” L.E.

 

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

New Snow: 2.7 inches

New Liquid: 0.06 inches

Snow/Water Ratio: 45.0

Snow Density: 2.2% H2O

Temperature: 28.9 F

Sky: Partly Cloudy

Snow at the stake: 24.5 inches

[powderfreak]

High Road Stake on Mansfield had 9" stack from last 30 hours or so.

[powderfreak]

4 hours ago, alex said:

Was just entering the 2" from yesterday on the snow table, and notice how much shaft we've been getting comparatively speaking. It was usually "neck and neck" between JSpin and I on past years - as I've noted before, with us overperforming on coastals and the Mansfield area overperforming in uplsope. This year the upslope has been decent - but of course here in the valley never at those levels - while coastals have pretty much shafted us since October, so we're quite a bit behind. No complaints, it's been a nice winter with very consistent snowcover with the exception of (of course) the Xmas period, and skiing has been awesome and far better than last year. Nevertheless, it's interesting to notice! This is also the time of the year when (blasphemy) I start looking forward to Spring, and Spring is NOWHERE in sight.

I've been hanging with you in the totals this season.  Normally you are up with J.Spin and out of reach of me.  This winter we seem to be running fairly identical.

J.Spin is about where he usually is relative to me.

[powderfreak]

It's pretty nuts in the upslope zone for ski conditions.  5" in 3 hours this morning, and I think it's snowed 12 of the last 14 days.

[alex]

4 hours ago, powderfreak said:

I've been hanging with you in the totals this season.  Normally you are up with J.Spin and out of reach of me.  This winter we seem to be running fairly identical.

J.Spin is about where he usually is relative to me.

We are practically snow starved. What is this Maryland or something??? 

[CoastalWx]

Our family in Waterbury sent me a pic and was like WTF when he had 8”. Where is the mountain magic meme. 

[powderfreak]

14 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Our family in Waterbury sent me a pic and was like WTF when he had 8”. Where is the mountain magic meme. 

I saw some photos from Gabe at Sugarbush today, looks like they got the same amount in these squalls as Mansfield.

This was one of those high ratio moose fart snows but models had no real indication of a flare up of any consequence.  I definitely was caught off guard with pockets of 30-40dbz rolling into the Spine.

This was last evening's 18z EURO output for 4am-10am the next morning, ha. This ended up dropping 5-6" in like 3 hours at the ski areas where zero measurable water was expected.  Tough to forecast that.

 

[Hitman]

4 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

I saw some photos from Gabe at Sugarbush today, looks like they got the same amount in these squalls as Mansfield.

This was one of those high ratio moose fart snows but models had no real indication of a flare up of any consequence.  I definitely was caught off guard with pockets of 30-40dbz rolling into the Spine.

This was last evening's 18z EURO output for 4am-10am the next morning, ha. This ended up dropping 5-6" in like 3 hours at the ski areas.

Yup, we had like 8” overnight into this morning.

[CoastalWx]

9 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

I saw some photos from Gabe at Sugarbush today, looks like they got the same amount in these squalls as Mansfield.

This was one of those high ratio moose fart snows but models had no real indication of a flare up of any consequence.  I definitely was caught off guard with pockets of 30-40dbz rolling into the Spine.

This was last evening's 18z EURO output for 4am-10am the next morning, ha. This ended up dropping 5-6" in like 3 hours at the ski areas where zero measurable water was expected.  Tough to forecast that.

 

I’m dying to get up there. It probably won’t happen this season, but when this vaccination happens, I’ll be right there next season snowplowing nude down the hill. 

[PhineasC]

1 hour ago, alex said:

We are practically snow starved. What is this Maryland or something??? 

Move south to ORH.

[mreaves]

1 hour ago, CoastalWx said:

I’m dying to get up there. It probably won’t happen this season, but when this vaccination happens, I’ll be right there next season snowplowing nude down the hill. 

PF takes some great action photos, hope he misses that one! 

[CoastalWx]

1 minute ago, mreaves said:

PF takes some great action photos, hope he misses that one! 

Just a wave of fluff covering the necessary parts. 

[J.Spin]

2 hours ago, CoastalWx said:

Our family in Waterbury sent me a pic and was like WTF when he had 8”. Where is the mountain magic meme. 

Yeah, I was both east and west of the spine in my travels today, and it was obvious that the accumulations fell off in both directions.  It wasn't as if the full 8.2" from Winter Storm Roland fell in one shot overnight though; that’s a total from back when the system started, representing a span of probably 30 to 36 hours.  But seeing the totals drop off away from the spine, and picking up 2.5” in an hour this morning, yeah…

[J.Spin]

10 hours ago, PhineasC said:

Hard to stay on top in the race when getting very little synoptic action and relying exclusively on upslope over here. We sort of keep up with the Northern Greens in general terms, but when we get 1 inch, they get 2 - 2.5 and when we get 2 they get 3-3.5 it seems like. That adds up to create a delta over the course of a season.

This is why it’s so useful to have more and more diligent observers throughout the mountains of NNE participating in the thread here.  You’re literally observing, over the course of an actual season, what the deal is with snowfall in the Northern Greens.  That ratios you’re talking about above are literally the type of seasonal snowfall ratios that bump the Northern Greens snowfall up each year relative to the surrounding ranges.  Yeah, Jay Peak will sometimes pull off a 60” storm cycle because they got right in the pivot point of a big system and/or sat under a mesoscale snow band, and then the low went and parked itself up in Northern Maine for another 48 hours before departing, but it’s not as if the Northern Greens specifically get hit with more synoptic storms.  Getting hit by the pivot point or ending up in some meso band from a big synoptic storm is fairly random, and those sort of things will typically average out over a season or two across the region.  But it’s the extra bit of upslope at the end of storms, or those extra one, two, or a few inches from so many bread and butter events over the course of a very long season that really make the difference.

The number of times I’ve seen casual/semi-casual observers catch wind of the 300”+ snowfall averages that the local resorts report, and then immediately call it “marketing B.S.”, is too numerous to recall.  “Yeah, right, all of the snowiest resorts in NY, NH, and ME get 200” or so of snowfall a season, and these VT resorts are the only ones that get 300”+… yeah, right.”  “Oh, and don’t get me started on Jay Peak, the biggest liar of them all, reporting their 350”+ snowfall that they slant-stick from a drift.”

Yeah, it’s all one big fat conspiracy.  All four resorts along the spine of the Northern Greens conspire each day to make sure they jack up their totals so they can claim to have the most snowfall in the Eastern U.S.  Because everyone knows, that’s the main driver that delivers the customers and makes everyone rich.  And those so called “snow reporters” like PF, they’re the most culpable purveyors in the whole charade.  They’re all in on it.  They get together on the phone each morning before reporting to confer on just how much they’re going to inflate the day’s snow totals so that everyone stays nicely in their north-to-south-snowfall hierarchy.  Don’t tell on us, and we won’t tell on you.  The photos PF takes of the snowfall at the stake every day to try and accurately document the season’s snowfall?  Totally doctored…  of course.

[CoastalWx]

PF takes some of the most diligent reports and we know we can rely on him. But Jay Peak?    I haven’t seen their recent reports much over the last few years, but I know people who went up there several years ago and were basically like WTF are they talking about when it comes to measurements. 

[PhineasC]

39 minutes ago, J.Spin said:

This is why it’s so useful to have more and more diligent observers throughout the mountains of NNE participating in the thread here.  You’re literally observing, over the course of an actual season, what the deal is with snowfall in the Northern Greens.  That ratios you’re talking about above are literally the type of seasonal snowfall ratios that bump the Northern Greens snowfall up each year relative to the surrounding ranges.  Yeah, Jay Peak will sometimes pull off a 60” storm cycle because they got right in the pivot point of a big system and/or sat under a mesoscale snow band, and then the low went and parked itself up in Northern Maine for another 48 hours before departing, but it’s not as if the Northern Greens specifically get hit with more synoptic storms.  Getting hit by the pivot point or ending up in some meso band from a big synoptic storm is fairly random, and those sort of things will typically average out over a season or two across the region.  But it’s the extra bit of upslope at the end of storms, or those extra one, two, or a few inches from so many bread and butter events over the course of a very long season that really make the difference.

 

The number of times I’ve seen casual/semi-casual observers catch wind of the 300”+ snowfall averages that the local resorts report, and then immediately call it “marketing B.S.”, is too numerous to recall.  “Yeah, right, all of the snowiest resorts in NY, NH, and ME get 200” or so of snowfall a season, and these VT resorts are the only ones that get 300”+… yeah, right.”  “Oh, and don’t get me started on Jay Peak, the biggest liar of them all, reporting their 350”+ snowfall that they slant-stick from a drift.”

 

Yeah, it’s all one big fat conspiracy.  All four resorts along the spine of the Northern Greens conspire each day to make sure they jack up their totals so they can claim to have the most snowfall in the Eastern U.S.  Because everyone knows, that’s the main driver that delivers the customers and makes everyone rich.  And those so called “snow reporters” like PF, they’re the most culpable purveyors in the whole charade.  They’re all in on it.  They get together on the phone each morning before reporting to confer on just how much they’re going to inflate the day’s snow totals so that everyone stays nicely in their north-to-south-snowfall hierarchy.  Don’t tell on us, and we won’t tell on you.  The photos PF takes of the snowfall at the stake every day to try and accurately document the season’s snowfall?  Totally doctored…  of course.

 

Just to be clear, I wasn't questioning the data from the Northern Greens. I have zero reason to doubt any of the data being posted here at least (which is all I look at anyway).

I was just observing that the best situation here for snowfall is a mix of different types of storms. Coastals, SWFEs, inland runners over SNE, and then upslope all contribute in different ways. It's more slanted towards upslope over your way, and more slanted towards synoptic east of here (Sunday River, for example). Randolph is positioned to get bits of all of it.

I can say as someone from the south, one thing that throws people on the ski place measurements is that those measurements are up at 4000'+ and not at the base lodge or condos where most people are spending the bulk of their days. So they hear that Stowe has 60" on the ground and wonder why the outside of their condo only has 15". This issue doesn't occur as much on smaller hills further south where the delta between the base and "peak" at 1,500' is very little, and it's all manmade anyway. I can see why people who visit the NNE resorts once every few years aren't straight on this.

[bch2014]

21 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

Just to be clear, I wasn't questioning the data from the Northern Greens. I have zero reason to doubt any of the data being posted here at least (which is all I look at anyway).

I was just observing that the best situation here for snowfall is a mix of different types of storms. Coastals, SWFEs, inland runners over SNE, and then upslope all contribute in different ways. It's more slanted towards upslope over your way, and more slanted towards synoptic east of here (Sunday River, for example). Randolph is positioned to get bits of all of it.

I can say as someone from the south, one thing that throws people on the ski place measurements is that those measurements are up at 4000'+ and not at the base lodge or condos where most people are spending the bulk of their days. So they hear that Stowe has 60" on the ground and wonder why the outside of their condo only has 15". This issue doesn't occur as much on smaller hills further south where the delta between the base and "peak" at 1,500' is very little, and it's all manmade anyway. I can see why people who visit the NNE resorts once every few years aren't straight on this.

Isn’t this kind of the same in the South though?

For example, I’ve heard of people skiing at Snowshoe have situations where it’s been snowing at the peak (where the lodge is also located) but be raining at the bottom of the lifts. 

[PhineasC]

Just now, bch2014 said:

Isn’t this kind of the same in the South though?

For example, I’ve heard of people skiing at Snowshoe have situations where it’s been snowing at the peak (where the lodge is also located) but be raining at the bottom of the lifts. 

I grew up skiing those mountains. I guess that happens sometimes, especially at Snowshoe I could see that in a marginal event or another western MD/WV mountain. But I don't really recall that being very common. And so much of the snow is manmade that the delta from base to peak is pretty minimal anyway. They aren't building up 60" natural depths anywhere down there.

[J.Spin]

34 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

Just to be clear, I wasn't questioning the data from the Northern Greens. I have zero reason to doubt any of the data being posted here at least (which is all I look at anyway).

Oh, absolutely, I don’t think you’ve ever given that impression at all.  If anything, it would be the exact opposite in your case – you literally live up here in the mountains of NNE and see the snowfall trends first hand.

[BuffaloWeather]

4 hours ago, CoastalWx said:

Our family in Waterbury sent me a pic and was like WTF when he had 8”. Where is the mountain magic meme. 

The mountains in the Northeast are a completely different climate. I winter hike the Adirondack mountains (trying to hike all 46 peaks) and they get some upslope and lake Ontario enhancement. The snow depths up there right now are anywhere from 4-9'.

[bwt3650]

1 hour ago, CoastalWx said:

PF takes some of the most diligent reports and we know we can rely on him. But Jay Peak?    I haven’t seen their recent reports much over the last few years, but I know people who went up there several years ago and were basically like WTF are they talking about when it comes to measurements. 

Having spent a good chunk of winter up here this year, I haven’t seen any crazy exaggerations.  I’m not saying it doesn’t happen at all, but most days when I check the conditions report, they are pretty close to what I’m walking out to and I’m at 1850’.  They do report broader ranges and as I’ve mentioned, if you always use the higher number “we picked up 3-5 on the hill today” and adding the 5 up all winter, I could see that skewing it a little, but I’ve never woken up to 2 and the report says 6.  Those woods are deep right now.  
 

Pf is as accurate as they get, so I’m sure it’s not the same here.  Post mlk, it really has snowed almost non-stop.  Maybe one year I can be up here a full winter and really accurately document and see how off they are.

 

Tough to tell in the picture, but that’s outside my front door currently and while that’s where they cleared the sidewalk, you can still tell the overall depth is probably over three feet.

[J.Spin]

1 hour ago, CoastalWx said:

PF takes some of the most diligent reports and we know we can rely on him. But Jay Peak?    I haven’t seen their recent reports much over the last few years, but I know people who went up there several years ago and were basically like WTF are they talking about when it comes to measurements. 

Sure, but we hear about these sorts of anecdotal reports/complaints all the time.  How much credibility should they be given vs. the measurements made by the resort?  Personally, I just don’t have much faith in the average skier’s ability to measure snowfall accurately and objectively, and you’re talking to someone who literally skis around with a calibrated depth gauge on his ski pole.

We’ve talked about it in the thread before, but between super-dry snow settling subsequent the early morning measurement, potentially dramatic differences in accumulation at summit or base elevations with upslope snow, drifting, etc. they are definitely going to be discrepancies between the depths that the resort reports and what depths people encounter (or think they encounter) on the slopes.

The thing is, PF will be the first to tell you that Jay Peak appears to get at least a marginal bump in annual snowfall over the Mansfield area.  And yes, we know that Jay Peak’s snowfall measurement is more casual than the rigorous work that PF does, but how far off can they really be?  It’s not as if they’re reporting 700” a year or something.  Even if they’re reporting 10 or 20% more than what PF reports, that’s probably reasonably close to reality for that peak.  If they were constantly fudging the numbers to any great degree, they’d end up with some outrageous total relative to the rest of the resorts in the Northern Greens, and the numbers just don’t seem to come out that way.

I was going to say that bwt would be the person to ask, since he’s literally living there and observing the day-to-day snowfall, but it looks like he already chimed in.

[J.Spin]

You know, it’s interesting, we haven’t really had any of those stretches where snowfall has really gone off the hook by Northern Greens standards – we talked about that solid week we had a little while back, but it fell short of really being stratospheric or anything.  What we’ve had in the past few weeks though has been that nice steady pace of snowfall, bread and butter systems intermixed with the occasional larger synoptic storm.  And that snowfall has indeed been steady – since the start of the calendar year here at our site, we’ve only had four days without snowfall.  We haven’t had any massive blockbusters up here, but in many ways it’s felt like a fairly classic Northern Greens winter period since about the start of the calendar year.

I hadn’t planned to ski today, but with the way it was snowing those huge flakes here at the house, and once we picked up 2.5” in an hour, I started to reconsider.  I checked out the Bolton Valley Base Area Webcam and saw just a whiteout of massive flakes, and that pretty much sealed the deal.  I told the boys that if we they didn’t have any meetings this morning, we definitely needed to head up to the mountain for some turns.  And so we did.

We just stuck to Timberline, and skier traffic was low enough that there really wasn’t any need to go anywhere else.  We started with a run on Adam’s Solitude, but spent the rest of the day in Doug’s Woods and Doug’s Solitude.  Bolton is reporting 12” in the past 48 hours, but we were typically finding 12-16” off piste in the areas we were skiing.  The snow was absolute champagne, definitely in line with the ~2% H2O I’d gotten from my previous three snow analyses at the house, so it skied like a dream.  The boys had fun throwing themselves off just about any stump, bump, log, tree, ledge, or cliff they found.  And, Mother Nature even decided to treat us with some sun during the morning to let us get a bit more pop out of the photos from the session.

A few shots from this morning: