NNE Warm Season Thread 2021

[OceanStWx]

8 minutes ago, tamarack said:

We cracked 20" this past February though it was still below our average - 1st 20"+ month since Feb '19 (most recent "snow month" [DJFM] with AN snowfall.)  Our current 51.0" is 2nd only to 15-16 (48.2") for low snow and dragged our average down to 88.9" from 90.6".  3rd worst was 05-06 with 52.8" (and 11" max pack, lowest of any winter) followed by 64.8" in 09-10.  Doesn't look good or any additional snow thins month though surprises can happen.  If the skunk prevails we'll have recorded 0.2" for March-April.  Previous low was 21 times higher (4.2") in 09-10.  

Same bottom 3 seasons for GYX. We just missed the best banding in December at the office and so were kind of a local minimum preventing us from topping 20".

[OceanStWx]

11 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Ahh ok so not *that* long ago.  But long enough.  Sort of like setting temp records at the MVL ASOS, ha.

Not a long period of record by any means, but long enough to nearly be the climate "normal" period of record. 

T13 least snowy at PWM which goes back to 1881 with snowfall records.

[backedgeapproaching]

1 hour ago, OceanStWx said:

We have a battle almost every year about end of season depth. We measure in the woods west of our parking lot to prevent drifting, but that means that it retains more snow than the surrounding area as we melt out. So we always have bare ground to PWM and some people want to report more than a T because that's what is physically at the snow board. 

I prefer to be a little more subjective about depth and not tied to the stake.

I mean I though it was pretty much common knowledge for those that actually report snow depth to cocorahs or COOPS or whatever that you don't just take the snow depth in the shade and report that number without averaging out the other areas that might be bare or have less.  But I guess that is what some are doing.  I actually had a 12" glacier in the shadier part of my yard and totally bare in a full sun part at one point in March..certainly wasn't reporting a 12" depth.  

 

 

[PhineasC]

2 minutes ago, backedgeapproaching said:

I mean I though it was pretty much common knowledge for those that actually report snow depth to cocorahs or COOPS or whatever that you don't just take the snow depth in the shade and report that number without averaging out the other areas that might be bare or have less.  But I guess that is what some are doing.  I actually had a 12" glacier in the shadier part of my yard and totally bare in a full sun part at one point in March..certainly wasn't reporting a 12" depth.  

 

 

To be fair, the Randolph guy is officially reporting 3 inches, which still seems super generous but I am not there to verify. 

The reference to 8” at the stake was in the text of his report. So that might be a ruler stuck in a plow pile kind of deal. 

[tamarack]

2 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

Same bottom 3 seasons for GYX. We just missed the best banding in December at the office and so were kind of a local minimum preventing us from topping 20".

1.9" from that event.  The max of 14° that day was season's coldest.  Afternoon of March 2 matched it but 25 at my obs time the previous evening spoiled it.  Only 01-02 with coldest mx of 16° failed to record a colder afternoon.  (3 others failed to have a max lower than 10 while 5 had subzero highs, 4 at 1° and 3 with 2°, making just over half of our 23 winters notching a max of 2° or colder.)
I thought last winter was utter meh, at least until after the equinox.  This one had exactly one non-meh event here, the super-Grinch.   

[backedgeapproaching]

33 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

To be fair, the Randolph guy is officially reporting 3 inches, which still seems super generous but I am not there to verify. 

The reference to 8” at the stake was in the text of his report. So that might be a ruler stuck in a plow pile kind of deal. 

Sticking a ruler in a plow pile is even more egregious.. lol.  Even if he is saying its just at the "stake".

[PhineasC]

Just now, backedgeapproaching said:

Sticking a ruler in a plow pile is even more egregious.. lol.  Even if he is saying its just at the "stake".

Yes, agreed. I find it really hard to believe he has 8 inches outside of a pile like that unless he hiked up another couple hundred feet and measured behind a boulder. Even there is melted out now. 

[mreaves]

1 hour ago, PhineasC said:

To be fair, the Randolph guy is officially reporting 3 inches, which still seems super generous but I am not there to verify. 

The reference to 8” at the stake was in the text of his report. So that might be a ruler stuck in a plow pile kind of deal. 

Want me to drive up and sneak some pics?

[powderfreak]

1 hour ago, OceanStWx said:

Not a long period of record by any means, but long enough to nearly be the climate "normal" period of record. 

T13 least snowy at PWM which goes back to 1881 with snowfall records.

Yeah for sure, should be enough to get some standard deviations on snowfall too.  There’s no doubt that area of New England was about the absolute shaft relative to normal.

Did you gets get into that December band? 

[OceanStWx]

3 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Yeah for sure, should be enough to get some standard deviations on snowfall too.  There’s no doubt that area of New England was about the absolute shaft relative to normal.

Did you gets get into that December band? 

PWM did and the mountains did, but it was too transient at GYX. I actually beat the office season total, and that can't happen too often.

[#NoPoles]

@PhineasC I skied Deception Bowl and Darbys Drop, yesterday. They were in good condition. With no rain in the forecast, Bretton Woods should do just fine making it to April 11th snow wise. However, the Bethlem lift went down yesterday...only lifts open for remainder of season are Bethlehem and Learning Quad. If Bethlehem keeps acting up, I can see the resort calling it quits.

[PhineasC]

18 minutes ago, #NoPoles said:

@PhineasC I skied Deception Bowl and Darbys Drop, yesterday. They were in good condition. With no rain in the forecast, Bretton Woods should do just fine making it to April 11th snow wise. However, the Bethlem lift went down yesterday...only lifts open for remainder of season are Bethlehem and Learning Quad. If Bethlehem keeps acting up, I can see the resort calling it quits.

Nice!

Seems like BW managed to keep things going a lot longer than it appeared they would in the third week of March.

[alex]

1 hour ago, PhineasC said:

Nice!

Seems like BW managed to keep things going a lot longer than it appeared they would in the third week of March.

I think PF or JSpin talked about it, but the stuff that's left on the trails at this point is as close to indestructible as snow gets... There are usually patches left into June, well after everything else has melted 

[PhineasC]

Just now, alex said:

I think PF or JSpin talked about it, but the stuff that's left on the trails at this point is as close to indestructible as snow gets... There are usually patches left into June, well after everything else has melted 

I have been really impressed with how BW handled everything this season. It was clearly a rough one for ski places.

Was neat watching a full season play out day after day. Never had that opportunity before.

[powderfreak]

2 hours ago, PhineasC said:

Nice!

Seems like BW managed to keep things going a lot longer than it appeared they would in the third week of March.

The melt slowed down dramatically... it's starting to ramp up again though as the next few days may be pushing 65+ even at 1,500ft base area elevations.

Basically all it has to do to not melt is be +20 over climo, lol.  As soon as the pattern went back to highs in the 40s there for a while the melt slowed to pretty much an non-noticeable rate.

I think the next 4 days are going to do another number on it.  We are about to get really warm again.

Here's Thursday and Friday afternoon's relative to normal 2-meter temps... back to back 20+ departures.

 

[PhineasC]

2 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

The melt slowed down dramatically... it's starting to ramp up again though as the next few days may be pushing 65+ even at 1,500ft base area elevations.

Basically all it has to do to not melt is be +20 over climo, lol.  As soon as the pattern went back to highs in the 40s there for a while the melt slowed to pretty much an non-noticeable rate.

I think the next 4 days are going to do another number on it.  We are about to get really warm again.

Here's Thursday and Friday afternoon's relative to normal 2-meter temps... back to back 20+ departures.

 

Stein + Torch.

Stowe burning soon?

[powderfreak]

2 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

Stein + Torch.

Stowe burning soon?

Spruce trees just igniting from spontaneous combustion.

[wxeyeNH]

3 years from today (April 8 2024)  Much of NNE will see a total eclipse of the sun.   N VT is the place to be.  Fingers crossed it is a clear day.

[klw]

3 minutes ago, wxeyeNH said:

3 years from today (April 8 2024)  Much of NNE will see a total eclipse of the sun.   N VT is the place to be.  Fingers crossed it is a clear day.

If we extrapolate from the NAM at 84hrs it says that there is a 50% chance the eclipse will be blocked by clouds up here.

[dendrite]

4 minutes ago, klw said:

If we extrapolate from the NAM at 84hrs it says that there is a 50% chance the eclipse will be blocked by clouds up here.

50% is a sunny day for VT. 

[J.Spin]

On 3/25/2021 at 9:04 PM, powderfreak said:

I won’t lie, I still think we have one in the bank.  It would be very hard to completely miss on a synoptic event from March 1 onward for the mountains.  Maybe it comes April 15th on Tax Day (it has in the past), or even April 27-28th in 2010 when 5-24” (5” BTV, 24” at 3,000ft plot) fell across NNE. Led to May 1st snow cover in the mountains.  CoCoRAHS early days back then.

PF, did our early April snowstorm count, or is there a higher threshold required to satisfy your prediction?

[PhineasC]

28 minutes ago, dendrite said:

50% is a sunny day for VT. 

I found the narrative of "gloomy cloudiness" in NNE for days on end to be a little overblown. I spent a year in NNH and it was sunny a lot. It didn't seem to me to be that different from MD. Nothing noticeable at least.

Maybe Stein had something to do with it. We have had very long stretches with very little precipitation.

[klw]

26 minutes ago, dendrite said:

50% is a sunny day for VT. 

Not this year.  Days and days of cloudless skies this Spring.

[powderfreak]

29 minutes ago, J.Spin said:

PF, did our early April snowstorm count, or is there a higher threshold required to satisfy your prediction?

Yeah I was thinking a bit bigger. or at least a more intense dump though it was pretty healthy.  I guess in the end it did bring a nice moderate snowfall but I was figuring we had a 12+'er in 24 hours type deal left in the bank.  That was more our classic 7-12" that gets there over a bit of duration.  I'll count it though, ha.

[dendrite]

40 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

I found the narrative of "gloomy cloudiness" in NNE for days on end to be a little overblown. I spent a year in NNH and it was sunny a lot. It didn't seem to me to be that different from MD. Nothing noticeable at least.

Maybe Stein had something to do with it. We have had very long stretches with very little precipitation.

Definitely Stein. Get a spring/summer with near normal or above precip and a moose fart in the valley will climb the mtns and produce cumulus.

[J.Spin]

On 4/4/2021 at 8:35 AM, powderfreak said:

Happy Easter all.  Last push of the season this morning on Spruce Peak at Stowe.  Starting tomorrow only the Mansfield side is open.

 

On 4/5/2021 at 2:29 PM, powderfreak said:

Most of the people I know couldn’t wait to close Big Spruce so they can now skin it with friends and dogs.  Main Street is a bump run right now all from skinning traffic. I truly believe the local community enjoys the closure with snow still left because this is such a strongly uphill oriented town and area.

They know they can go to Sugarbush or Killington for a while, but it’s an odd mix of people who cannot wait for the lifts to stop running here.

You couldn’t be more on the mark with this one - when I saw your nice picture of the last push of the season at Spruce, my immediate thought was “Woo! Skinning time at Spruce!”

Would I probably do some lift-served skiing at one of the late-season resorts if I had a season’s pass there, sure, but in heading off to other areas, there are some pretty large thresholds to overcome to top just skinning for turns at a local resort.  Do I really want to travel an hour plus down to Killington, pay ~$100 for a ticket, and deal with potential crowds to ski, or do I want to travel less than 30 minutes, pay nothing, have less skier traffic, and get in my cardio for the day?  It’s not as if I’m interested in skiing anything near bell-to-bell anyway, I just want to get out for a couple of runs, get some turns, get some exercise, enjoy the nice snow and weather, and then have the rest of the day to do whatever else I want to do.

I mean one has to sort of LOL at the thought of paying $400 to bring the family for lift-served turns for a day when there’s a free alternative that’s closer and has so many other perks as well.  It’s not that I’m at all opposed to heading down to Killington for some great spring turns on Superstar, but they’ll have to get well into those reduced spring ticket prices if they want to compete against tickets that are priced at $0.

[PhineasC]

How many runs do you guys do on a typical day of skinning? I have never done it. It sounds like it would take a while to skin all the way up a slope and be pretty tiring.

[powderfreak]

9 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

How many runs do you guys do on a typical day of skinning? I have never done it. It sounds like it would take a while to skin all the way up a slope and be pretty tiring.

I’m usually a one and done but depends on where.  Mansfield gives 2,000 verts and that’s a good one run outing for me.  Maybe two at Spruce?

It’s the same as hiking but you get to ski down, haha.  Therefore it takes a lot less time.  In the summer if it’s an hour up then it’s an hour down too, but on skis I can pretty much go ski a lap and be back home in 2 hours including driving, etc.

I hear JSpin on the not needing to ski all day, even right now with the lift running, give me two hours and 6-7 Quad laps and I’m good for the day.  It’s mostly about getting outside and enjoying the nice weather.

[PhineasC]

11 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

I’m usually a one and done but depends on where.  Mansfield gives 2,000 verts and that’s a good one run outing for me.  Maybe two at Spruce?

It’s the same as hiking but you get to ski down, haha.  Therefore it takes a lot less time.  In the summer if it’s an hour up then it’s an hour down too, but on skis I can pretty much go ski a lap and be back home in 2 hours including driving, etc.

I hear JSpin on the not needing to ski all day, even right now with the lift running, give me two hours and 6-7 Quad laps and I’m good for the day.  It’s mostly about getting outside and enjoying the nice weather.

Yeah, I can see the appeal as a means of exercising that happens to include a downhill skiing aspect. It definitely wouldn't replace lift-serviced skiing, basically just complements it, for me at least.

[powderfreak]

3 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

Yeah, I can see the appeal as a means of exercising that happens to include a downhill skiing aspect. It definitely wouldn't replace lift-serviced skiing, basically just complements it, for me at least.

Yeah it’s a nice transition between skiing and then summer hiking season.  Get a little of both for a bit.