NNE Cold Season Thread 2020-2021

[Patriot21]

 

15 minutes ago, mreaves said:

I was going to say Riddle Pond. I’ve seen them towards Groton on 302 as well. Near the Butterfield parking lot. 

Oh cool, I'll have to keep my eyes peeled next time I'm over that way. 

[wxeyeNH]

25" final.   Light snow ended just before dark.  Great storm.  Lowest vis.  I have seen outside of a snow squall.  Since we had basically bare ground before the storm the piles along the road don't look very high.  Town will come back with the wing plow and widen the roads.

Phin,  I don't know if you are familiar with wing plows?  Never had seen them in Maryland.  After a storm the roads are plowed normally.  Then after basic plowing is done they come back with a wing attachment on the trucks which pushes the piles further back.  That way as the winter progresses the roads don't become narrower.  At least that is what they do here,  assume the same in other areas of NNE.

[PhineasC]

19 minutes ago, wxeyeNH said:

25" final.   Light snow ended just before dark.  Great storm.  Lowest vis.  I have seen outside of a snow squall.  Since we had basically bare ground before the storm the piles along the road don't look very high.  Town will come back with the wing plow and widen the roads.

Phin,  I don't know if you are familiar with wing plows?  Never had seen them in Maryland.  After a storm the roads are plowed normally.  Then after basic plowing is done they come back with a wing attachment on the trucks which pushes the piles further back.  That way as the winter progresses the roads don't become narrower.  At least that is what they do here,  assume the same in other areas of NNE.

I saw one after the early December storm up on Randolph Hill Road!

Definitely not something I had seen before, took me a second or two to figure out what the heck it was doing.

[wxeyeNH]

Here are 2 pictures from the webcam taken 24 hours apart.  Tomorrow i am going to fly the drone from  the cam to the most distance point I could see during the heaviest snow.  That will give me the true visibility.  People always say zero visibility but what is it in reality during extremely heavy snow?

[wxeyeNH]

1 minute ago, PhineasC said:

I saw one after the early December storm up on Randolph Hill Road!

Definitely not something I had seen before, took me a second or two to figure out what the heck it was doing.

Yep,  that's it.  They will be everyplace during cleanup phase.

[J.Spin]

34 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

3.5” here which is 3.5” more than expected, ha.  North shift clipped us.  Nothing at all in the northern part of the county.

I wasn’t expecting to ski this storm at all, and hadn’t even been paying attention to it until Phin popped into the thread and gave us a heads up.  But it definitely put down some liquid equivalent, even this far north.

When I made noon observations today and saw that we’d picked up almost a half an inch of liquid equivalent by that point, I figured it was worth a quick tour to see how conditions were faring up at Bolton.  They’ve got the elevation, but they’re also a few miles farther to the northwest of our site, so accumulations I found at 2,000’ in the Village were 4-5”, roughly the same as what we picked up here at the house.  I’m not sure how low in elevation it goes, but there was still decent base snow left at 2,000’, so low-angle powder turns were quite smooth and bottomless on fat skis with the L.E. that just fell.

Snowfall has been in a bit of a lull in the past few days, but the pattern looks like it’s picking up in the coming week, with potentially three systems that could bring snow.  The BTV NWS isn’t saying too much about that Sunday through Wednesday period at this point, but it certainly looks like some bread and butter potential for the mountains.  Even the usual modest amounts could be great atop the snow from this recent system.

[Patriot21]

Down to -5 at 6:30 am

[qg_omega]

Washington county got slammed

[IrishRob17]

14 hours ago, wxeyeNH said:

Yep,  that's it.  They will be everyplace during cleanup phase.

Wing plows are fairy common, although not so much in cities.  Wing plows are used throughout the storm and you are correct once the snow stops crews will then use the wing plow to push the snow further back off the shoulders.  Once the banks get high enough many crews have a wing plow on road graders and those will both cut the banks down and/or push them further back. Here's an example, yes its from Sweden, but it happens throughout the US in snow country as well:

 

[wxeyeNH]

Beautiful day today.  Not a cloud in the sky and no wind.  Low 20's were very comfortable. The snow settled quite a bit, down to 18" at the snowstake.  Hired someone to rake  the flatter parts of the roof.  Roofs in NNE can easily handle 25" of snow but if we get a quick cutter around Christmas and a flash freeze that will start adding up the weight so early in the season.

Flew the drone to figure out my visibility experiment.  The  visibility during the "deathband" was 300 feet.  I never truly got into the most intense part of that band as it sat about 10 or 15 miles south closer to Brian.  That was around 1/16 of a mile.  The lowest visibility that I have ever seen was a snowcat ride to the summit of Mt Washington on Jan 1 2008.  That was during a nor'easter and you could not see more than 25 or 30 feet past the front of the tractor.

[J.Spin]

I put together the north to south listing of available snowfall totals from the Vermont ski areas for Winter Storm Gail.  The data show the trend of snowfall peaking around Okemo, and falling off to the north and south.  The totals tapered off very quickly north of the Pico/Killington area, and nothing new was reported in the far northern part of the state by either Jay Peak or Burke.  The relative accumulations aren’t perfectly reversed relative to more typical events, since Mount Snow isn’t reporting the highest total, but this could easily be one of those events from which casual observers in the big cities get the impression that the Southern Vermont Ski Areas have the highest annual snowfall averages.  As we talked about in the ski thread, when the big coastal cities are affected with snow from a substantial coastal storm such that it gets a lot of publicity, it’s typically those ski areas down south that have higher accumulations.  This is just the theory mind you, but we know the perception comes from somewhere, and that might explain it.

 

Jay Peak: 0”

Burke: 0”

Smuggler’s Notch: 3”

Stowe: 3”

Bolton Valley: 4”

Mad River Glen: 6”

Sugarbush: 4”

Pico: 25”

Killington: 25”

Okemo: 35”

Bromley: 33”

Magic Mountain: 30”

Stratton: 24”

Mount Snow: 26”

[MRVexpat]

58 minutes ago, J.Spin said:

As we talked about in the ski thread, when the big coastal cities are affected with snow from a substantial coastal storm such that it gets a lot of publicity, it’s typically those ski areas down south that have higher accumulations.  This is just the theory mind you, but we know the perception comes from somewhere, and that might explain it.

 

Pictures I saw on social media today confirmed this phenomenon! But yes like you said, the correlation there exists for a reason. 

[dendrite]

On 12/17/2020 at 6:17 PM, jculligan said:

Calling it 6.0" on the nose here. I'm going to ignore the numbers to my south and be content with two 6" events in the books prior to Christmas 

In all seriousness...what an incredible, historic event for central VT/NH. I can't imagine there have been many 36"+ events in the Lakes Region of NH. I know the March 2001 event has been discussed in the larger observation thread, but that moves too fast for me to keep up with!! Does anyone here know of any historical events that even remotely compare to today's event in the southern Lakes?

Feb 1969...35.5" and 32" at the 2 Franklin COOPs (depths 56" and 62"). Lakeport 35.9" (depth 57"). Wolfeboro 40" (depth 68").

Apr 1933 was huge around here. Franklin had 35". Newport 31". Wolfeboro Falls 26". Plymouth 26".

I'll have to dig for more. Honorable mentions would be Feb 2001 and March 2001 with some totals over 2ft.

[wxeyeNH]

If yesterday's storm had come later in the season with a deep exsisting pack with an ice layer on top the 30-40" storm would have resulted in an amazing depth.  Driving around today the piles where not that high since we had nothing to begin with.  (Not that I'm complaining or anything!)

[alex]

Just hit 0. Kids outdoors Xmas concert was soooo cold 

[powderfreak]

3 hours ago, J.Spin said:

I put together the north to south listing of available snowfall totals from the Vermont ski areas for Winter Storm Gail.  The data show the trend of snowfall peaking around Okemo, and falling off to the north and south.  The totals tapered off very quickly north of the Pico/Killington area, and nothing new was reported in the far northern part of the state by either Jay Peak or Burke.  The relative accumulations aren’t perfectly reversed relative to more typical events, since Mount Snow isn’t reporting the highest total, but this could easily be one of those events from which casual observers in the big cities get the impression that the Southern Vermont Ski Areas have the highest annual snowfall averages.  As we talked about in the ski thread, when the big coastal cities are affected with snow from a substantial coastal storm such that it gets a lot of publicity, it’s typically those ski areas down south that have higher accumulations.  This is just the theory mind you, but we know the perception comes from somewhere, and that might explain it.

Stowe: 3”

 

Really? I honestly haven't heard that one yet.  In all my social media days I don't know if I've come across that, ha.  But it sounds like something a casual 3-5 day a year skier might say, ha.

Anyway, here's the 3" at Mansfield 3,000ft High Road Plot that I reported.  It snowed lightly for another couple hours after this but wasn't worth rechecking, figured it just topped off the 3" line.

[dendrite]

Down to 9°. Wonder if we go below zero with the deep fresh pack.

[Patriot21]

3 degrees out back, beautiful clear night

[powderfreak]

11 minutes ago, dendrite said:

Down to 9°. Wonder if we go below zero with the deep fresh pack.

What did you hit last night with the fluff after clearing out?

-9F this morning up this way... even 3.5" of snow radiates like mad, ha. 

On that note, I finally melted down the snow and found 0.38" in it.  Cold but dense, the classic north side of the fluffy deform band.  Zero settling today.

4F currently.

[dendrite]

10 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

What did you hit last night with the fluff after clearing out?

-9F this morning up this way... even 3.5" of snow radiates like mad, ha. 

On that note, I finally melted down the snow and found 0.38" in it.  Cold but dense, the classic north side of the fluffy deform band.  Zero settling today.

4F currently.

12° but it never went calm. LEB is the coldest in the state right now with -2°.

[#NoPoles]

So, the snow guns at Bretton Woods have created diamond dust fog over the entire village of Bretton Woods. It's quite amazing. 

[backedgeapproaching]

Deep pack and dropping--down to 1F

[backedgeapproaching]

Crazy to think I got 32" and was fringed by the meat of the mega band by 3-4 miles. Took a tour one town to the north of me where the big totals were and found 31-32" settled depth at 11am this morning! This was in East Dorset in the valley at 730ft, not some 2k east slope spot. No question they had 39-40" OTG with no clears.  

[PhineasC]

7 here. Not a radiator.

[wxeyeNH]

19 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

7 here. Not a radiator.

Just a mile south of you along the Moose River is the place to be for that.  

[wxeyeNH]

NWS updated their snow amounts.   Added a 48" total for Danbury NH.  That is about 8 miles SW of me.  Going to take a ride tomorrow and see what the settled depths are.

Brian, what was your grand total?  

[klw]

KLEB was -6 at 20:53 but have bounced back to -5.

 

Wing plows get used over here a couple of times a winter but usually seem to jinx things into a lull.

[LaGrangewx]

2 hours ago, backedgeapproaching said:

Crazy to think I got 32" and was fringed by the meat of the mega band by 3-4 miles. Took a tour one town to the north of me where the big totals were and found 31-32" settled depth at 11am this morning! This was in East Dorset in the valley at 730ft, not some 2k east slope spot. No question they had 39-40" OTG with no clears.  

Went to Magic today and the snow on the drive up from NY was incredible once you hit Manchester. Do you think a favorable location probably had 50” if they cleared?

[Ginx snewx]

6 hours ago, backedgeapproaching said:

Crazy to think I got 32" and was fringed by the meat of the mega band by 3-4 miles. Took a tour one town to the north of me where the big totals were and found 31-32" settled depth at 11am this morning! This was in East Dorset in the valley at 730ft, not some 2k east slope spot. No question they had 39-40" OTG with no clears.  

Yet no pics

[dendrite]

7 hours ago, wxeyeNH said:

NWS updated their snow amounts.   Added a 48" total for Danbury NH.  That is about 8 miles SW of me.  Going to take a ride tomorrow and see what the settled depths are.

Brian, what was your grand total?  

34.4”

I still don’t like that Danbury total. The water equiv is way too high. The observer better have a valid reasoning for it.