NNE Cold Season Thread 2020-2021

[DavisStraight]

18 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

On the flip side there are maps like this one that always stands out to me as the exact opposite, it tried so hard to isolate the real snowy zone that it diluted the vast majority of land as all one color that fell into a 52-inch range of 73-125”.

This type of map is like the flip side of the ones that lack detail in the higher snowfall zones.  It seems very difficult to capture all of the variations in a visually appealing way and be accurate.

Mansfield got 252" last year in a ratter?

[powderfreak]

1 minute ago, DavisStraight said:

Mansfield got 252" last year in a ratter?

That’s 2010-11, just as a map example, ha.  And that winter was more along the lines of 330” on the ground based snowboard at 3000ft.  That reading was the COOP’s, measured in an elevated precipitation can up on the ridge.  It’s no longer in service but was extremely prone to drastic under-catch due to high winds.

But yeah last year by mid-May was probably in the 260-275” range but hard to say final numbers with COVID halting measurements in the first half of March.

[backedgeapproaching]

9 minutes ago, DavisStraight said:

Mansfield got 252" last year in a ratter?

PF explained it was 10-11, but I wouldn't call last year a ratter in NNE either.  Southern NH prob the most below average, steep gradiant as you headed down towards SNE.

[PhineasC]

2 hours ago, J.Spin said:

 

Those broader regional snowfall maps are great, but a downside of where you live now is that you’re typically going to be off scale and get stuffed into the highest gradation.  The scale on that map is even nonlinear, but it still stops at 120”, which is probably well below the amount of snow that fell at your site.  You can see how NNH is just one solid color, so it’s hard to get a sense for any distribution in those high snowfall areas.  Unless you happen to have a numeric entry right near you, maps like that aren’t as helpful as they could be.

That's what they call a "winner's problem."

Randolph had 207" last winter. It's a microclimate considering we average 185" and nearby Gorham/Berlin average 85-90".

[powderfreak]

40 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

That's what they call a "winner's problem."

Randolph had 207" last winter. It's a microclimate considering we average 185" and nearby Gorham/Berlin average 85-90".

I still don’t understand how Berlin/Gorham average that little, it seems the mountains are pretty tight in there...I would’ve guessed 115” at least.  Whitefield makes sense, it’s a larger open area removed from the mountains but Gorham is tucked in pretty good.

I guess looking at the topomaps, the Randolph CoCoRAHS measurements are coming from around 1,775ft elevation, and Gorham is down around 800ft or even a tad below... so that is definitely a huge difference all else being equal.  

Thats practically 1800ft, way the hell up there, lol and 1,000ft higher than Gorham.  I don’t know why I was thinking CoCoRAHS was down in the RT 2 area at like 1200-1400ft.  For sure once you get near 1800ft it’s going to get really crazy snowy.  I know around here it seems to even double in snowfall/snowpack going up say 800ft to 1800ft, so it makes sense in that light.  

[PhineasC]

11 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

I still don’t understand how Berlin/Gorham average that little, it mountains are pretty tight in there...I would’ve guessed 115” at least.  Whitefield makes sense, it’s a larger open area removed from the mountains but Gorham is tucked in pretty good.

I guess looking at the topomaps, the Randolph CoCoRAHS measurements are coming from around 1,775ft elevation, and Gorham is down around 800ft or even a tad below... so that is definitely a huge difference all else being equal.  Thats practically 1800ft, way the hell up there, lol and 1,000ft higher than Gorham.  I don’t know why I was thinking it was down in the RT 2 area at like 1200-1400ft.  For sure once you get near 1800ft it’s going to get really crazy snowy.  I know around here it seems to even double in snowfall going up say 800ft to 1800ft.

I'll be honest, I don't get it either. I just know the guy who manages my property when I am not there and lives a little north of Berlin said the plows get stuck on my driveway every year and he has to come pull them out with an even bigger machine. LOL

He called me tonight and told me I needed to have my property graded in several spots because the plows slip into the lower spots off the driveway and get stuck. Silly plow guy, I said.

[powderfreak]

24 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

I'll be honest, I don't get it either. I just know the guy who manages my property when I am not there and lives a little north of Berlin said the plows get stuck on my driveway every year and he has to come pull them out with an even bigger machine. LOL

He called me tonight and told me I needed to have my property graded in several spots because the plows slip into the lower spots off the driveway and get stuck. Silly plow guy, I said.

Ha yeah those dirt roads get canted and you can easily go into the ditches/snow banks on the side if it’s not level.

But regarding the snow numbers there, the elevation makes sense.  Looks like the observer is near the black dot (those contour lines are 40 foot intervals) and up on that shelf between the 1760-1800ft lines... I bet that’s even decently snowier than down in the river valley at 1200-1300ft (I bet that area radiates like mad though down by the pond lol).

Just thinking about it at the ski resort here, there’s a pretty noticeable difference from 1300ft to 1800ft, much less an elevation like Gorham at 800ft.  It gets *really* snowy around here at 1800ft, that’s where you get the 4-6 foot snowpacks in big winters.  That elevation is about equal to the highest inhabited elevation here in Stowe at like the Kellogg family mansion lol.  

[backedgeapproaching]

9 hours ago, powderfreak said:

I still don’t understand how Berlin/Gorham average that little, it seems the mountains are pretty tight in there...I would’ve guessed 115” at least.  Whitefield makes sense, it’s a larger open area removed from the mountains but Gorham is tucked in pretty good.

I guess looking at the topomaps, the Randolph CoCoRAHS measurements are coming from around 1,775ft elevation, and Gorham is down around 800ft or even a tad below... so that is definitely a huge difference all else being equal.  

Thats practically 1800ft, way the hell up there, lol and 1,000ft higher than Gorham.  I don’t know why I was thinking CoCoRAHS was down in the RT 2 area at like 1200-1400ft.  For sure once you get near 1800ft it’s going to get really crazy snowy.  I know around here it seems to even double in snowfall/snowpack going up say 800ft to 1800ft, so it makes sense in that light.  

It also seems that the Randolph cocorahs observer is extremely meticulous with obs and measuring. I think Phin mentioned in one post that the observer was measuring every few hours in some event, obviously that would be too frequent, but the point is they probably aren't missing any event.  Every .8" and 1.3" are probably being logged immediately before any sublimation/melting. 

We talk about this frequently, but if you are doing once a day measuring or waiting long periods before logging measurements, its not going to accurately portray the snowfall in a region where there are many frequent smaller events, especially in the Jspin, Alex, etc upslope zones.

 

[powderfreak]

25 minutes ago, backedgeapproaching said:

It also seems that the Randolph cocorahs observer is extremely meticulous with obs and measuring. I think Phin mentioned in one post that the observer was measuring every few hours in some event, obviously that would be too frequent, but the point is they probably aren't missing any event.  Every .8" and 1.3" are probably being logged immediately before any sublimation/melting. 

We talk about this frequently, but if you are doing once a day measuring or waiting long periods before logging measurements, its not going to accurately portray the snowfall in a region where there are many frequent smaller events, especially in the Jspin, Alex, etc upslope zones.

 

Yeah their written obs are gold but you can tell he’s paying attention around the clock.  I found one that they had 6” of snow and it even said “only a dusting down in the valley at RT 2 but we were plowing up on top of the hill.”

Thats what made me look up his lat/lon and he takes a weenie zone to its max at pretty much 1800ft lol.  That’s almost the elevation of the base of Bolton Valley up here.

It definitely explains the difference between the towns under 800-1000ft as even a baseline.

[CoastalWx]

11 hours ago, powderfreak said:

On the flip side there are maps like this one that always stands out to me as the exact opposite, it tried so hard to isolate the real snowy zone that it diluted the vast majority of land as all one color that fell into a 52-inch range of 73-125”.

This type of map is like the flip side of the ones that lack detail in the higher snowfall zones.  It seems very difficult to capture all of the variations in a visually appealing way and be accurate.

That is an awful map. I understand it is difficult to capture all the variations, but a little detail would help instead of just blanketing the whole area in one color. Look at the ranges within the shade of blue/grey. You could try to add some detail in there IMO in the higher spots. 

[tamarack]

12 hours ago, dryslot said:

Damn close on totals here, 74.6" on that map, I had 72.9".

 

On ‎9‎/‎21‎/‎2020 at 4:07 PM, backedgeapproaching said:

Can see why Phin left MD and made bee line for NH. Forgot what disaster winter was in the Mid-Atl last year.  .3" in Philly..ouch.

 

Noted that someone evidently is still reporting snowfall (129.3") from Clayton Lake even though the co-op obs disappeared in 2011.

[dryslot]

6 minutes ago, tamarack said:

 

Noted that someone evidently is still reporting snowfall (129.3") from Clayton Lake even though the co-op obs disappeared in 2011.

I'm not sure how they are coming up with the areas and where the data source's are coming from.

[backedgeapproaching]

23 minutes ago, tamarack said:

 

Noted that someone evidently is still reporting snowfall (129.3") from Clayton Lake even though the co-op obs disappeared in 2011.

Yea, I would assume the data is coming from COOP or first order stations, but the nearest one to me on that map would be Rutland COOP which they have as 71.7" but they were actually 66 or 67" last year. So, not sure where the number are coming from.

That said, the map still looks decent shading wise, at least in this area.

[mreaves]

Had .03" of rain last night but it was enough to make it pretty foggy.  MPV visibility at < .25 of a mile

[J.Spin]

On 9/22/2020 at 9:52 PM, powderfreak said:

That said, I do think that’s one of the better ones I’ve seen.  It highlights the “snowy climate” zones even if the numbers might be broad.  120”+ gets the message across.  Those things will never nail in the higher ranges up to 300” at the summits, but I liked that map more than others... many just stop at 100”, ha.

I agree, it definitely seems like a quality map – based on comments I’ve seen here it appears that it’s generally matching people’s snowfall quite well.  And naturally, my perspective stems from being someone in the solid yellow area where the needle is pegged and you don’t get that additional level of detail.  I think it would have been cool if they could even have just added a couple more gradations (maybe even if they covered up to 300” or 350” in 50” gradations.  You’d obviously be able to get a little more sense for how things played out along the spine, up there in NNH, and that huge expanse of solid yellow up in northern Maine.  In this case they’ve got the lake-effect belts in WNY/NNY on the map as well, so you’d get some detail there.  It’s a great map in any case – it’s never going to be easy to effectively cover a region where the snowfall goes from roughly 0” up to 300” in one fell swoop and provide sufficient detail for everyone.

[wxeyeNH]

Surface well down about 15 feet.  Don't use it anymore as we have the deep drill well.  Rain is coming to the rescue next week

[J.Spin]

22 hours ago, powderfreak said:

Yeah, driving around today it was obvious that peak is passing and more and more bare trees are showing up.  The rain should take it all down if we get some heavy downpour type stuff.

Maybe that's the drought and early freeze... it didn't hurt the colors but it was literally like a 48-72 hour show.

One from the weekend at one of my perches around the hill:

Even as of a couple of days ago we were already past my preference for peak down here in our area of the Winooski Valley.  Having some fallen leaves on the ground is a nice look, but once bare trees appear, it’s past peak for me, and even as of this weekend we already had some notable areas of stick season trees.  Ahead of the precipitation, the winds from this current system are bringing the leaves down like rain in the yard, so after this passes we’re going to be well on our way into stick season.

[powderfreak]

Yeah it’s done.  Can see through the forest now in the backyard.  Just yellows and orange but the deep red is gone and many leaves down.

The entire process took about a week in total from change to peak to leaf drop.

[J.Spin]

57 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Yeah it’s done.  Can see through the forest now in the backyard.  Just yellows and orange but the deep red is gone and many leaves down.

The entire process took about a week in total from change to peak to leaf drop.

Yeah, as people have noted, the process of going from color to leaf drop is apparently relatively quick up here in general, and this year is doing that typical progression, augmented by that cold spell to push it forward a bit.  I assume Mother Nature knows that as we hit October in this area, snow can fall at any time, and the trees are hopefully on a good pace to avoid the type of fiasco that SNE faced several years back when they had that October snow with lots of leaves still on the trees.  There are already some of those early shots of snow for the elevations popping up in the models.

[J.Spin]

58 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Yeah that was some impressive state wide rain in VT.  Just heavy rain all night ripping straight up the length of the state.

Any drought done.  September rainfall went from record low to probably within 1 SD of normal lol.

Well put - I don’t think we were in any sort of real drought in our area, but a 2”+ L.E. storm would definitely take care of any short term dryness.  Indeed, it brought the month to 2.79” of liquid here at our site, which is only 0.74 σ below the mean.

The new water year starts tomorrow, so today’s entry concludes the 2020 water year with 52.31” of liquid.  That’s really just an inch or two below average according to my data, so not consistent with any sort of longer-term drought in our area at this point.

[tamarack]

      3 hours ago, powderfreak said:

Yeah that was some impressive state wide rain in VT.  Just heavy rain all night ripping straight up the length of the state.

Any drought done.  September rainfall went from record low to probably within 1 SD of normal lol.

Still some work to do here.  Thru July 2020 was almost exactly on the average, but August's 1.79" was 44% of avg and 2.3" low.  If my 0.79" at 7 AM grew to 1.5" this morning then September will look a lot like August, 1.65" total, 45%, 2.1" BN.  October has been my wettest month, averaging 5.68".  If we meet that, Stein is in the grave.

[J.Spin]

Liquid Totals

September: 2.79” (-0.96”)

Calendar Year: 37.21” (-2.21”)

Water Year: 52.31” (-1.07”)

So September is complete, and thus the 2020 water year is as well.  Both were about an inch below the average I have in my data set, but certainly nothing too extreme.  Calendar year water is running a couple inches behind average pace, but has gotten a notable boost with 3-4” of liquid here in the past week.

[tamarack]

Water year here finished at 45.88" which is 3.11" BN, all due to AUG/SEP which combined for 3.08" compared to the average of 7.52".

[borderwx]

 

Westmore report. Going, going, ....

 

 

 

[J.Spin]

16 hours ago, raindancewx said:

This is what I ended up with for snow nationally. The numbers are percentages of normal for July-June. My forecast is basically done, just waiting for a few things to come in this week.

 

As we can see, Raindance doesn’t have any of those blanket (150-200%) of average areas that forecasters will unwittingly still put out in low variance climates where 200% of normal snowfall is actually +5-6 σ from the mean and has less than 0.00003% chance of happening.

That 125 sitting right over our site on the map (which I assume is actually for BTV of course) would still be quite a potent season.  It would be up there well above +1 σ and put our site in the 200” range for snowfall.  It’s certainly not unprecedented, as 2007-2008 delivered more than 200” here, and I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising with the way 2007-2008 is heavily enriched in the applied analogs.

The “Locally 130% of higher” listed in this area on the second map showing regions of snowfall deviations would be pushing things above 1.5 σ and snowfall toward 210”+ if it were to happen at our site.  That’s still not out of the question, but obviously more easily achieved at the higher variance sites around here vs. the more mountain-influenced, lower variance sites.

In any event, very few of our local skiers would complain if we had to negotiate another ‘07-‘08-esque season though.

[PhineasC]

I would be good with 240 inches this winter. 

[J.Spin]

46 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Heavy squall style weather.  Wind and sideways rain in these bursts.

 

On the composite imagining you can definitely see a northwest flow with that appearance of continuous rebuilding via upslope forcing:

[J.Spin]

7 hours ago, PhineasC said:

I would be good with 240 inches this winter. 

I think most people on the forum would accept it if they had to, but there would likely be some complaining in the process.  It’s hard to know the exact distribution on how all of that would fall, but many people aren’t really keen on what they call “nuisance snow”.

[tamarack]

10 hours ago, J.Spin said:

I think most people on the forum would accept it if they had to, but there would likely be some complaining in the process.  It’s hard to know the exact distribution on how all of that would fall, but many people aren’t really keen on what they call “nuisance snow”.

About half of my 142" in 07-08 was "nuisance snow" but it kept building the pack.  We take (unless my nuisance 2" is 12" both north and south of here.)

[dryslot]

Looks like its snowing up to Dixville notch.