NNE Warm Season Thread 2021

[tamarack]

2 hours 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.

Biggest difference I noted going from NNJ-BGR-Fort Kent was that storms hung around longer in the north while in NNJ they'd blow and go.  Almost none had snow continuing 24 hours past first flakes while some in the north would taper off on a 3-4 day schedule.  That said, big storms in NNJ looked like big ones in Ft. Kent, except possibly for colder temps north on average.  (Not exclusively, however - most of the 15" on 2/7/67 came at 5-8° and 12/60 also 1/61 were in the 10-15° range.)    In 9.7 winters in FK (moved there 1/1/76) I recorded 3 events of 20"+ and 5 more 15-18.5".   In 60 (cherrypicked) NNJ months, 3/56-2/61, we had 4 storms of 20"+ and 3 more 15-18".  Also had storms in the 15-18 range 1/64, 12/66, 2/67 and 2/69.  The north country fills out their snow menu on lots of 4-10" events.   

As for the eclipse, Chain of Ponds FTW.

[powderfreak]

70F at MVL at 1:30pm .

Average high is like 48F.

[wxeyeNH]

I hope the weather 3 years from today is as nice.  The astronomical event of our lifetime in NNE.  Total solar eclipse.   Northern VT is closest to centerline.  Book your Stowe trip now!

 

[mreaves]

9 minutes ago, wxeyeNH said:

I hope the weather 3 years from today is as nice.  The astronomical event of our lifetime in NNE.  Total solar eclipse.   Northern VT is closest to centerline.  Book your Stowe trip now!

 

Looks like I'm right on the southern edge.

[wxeyeNH]

46 minutes ago, mreaves said:

Looks like I'm right on the southern edge.

This event will be on the news non stop in the months leading up to the eclipse.  

[eyewall]

1 hour ago, wxeyeNH said:

I hope the weather 3 years from today is as nice.  The astronomical event of our lifetime in NNE.  Total solar eclipse.   Northern VT is closest to centerline.  Book your Stowe trip now!

 

LOL you have about a 10% chance of it being clear in VT at that time.

[tamarack]

25 minutes ago, wxeyeNH said:

This event will be on the news non stop in the months leading up to the eclipse.  

Jackman, Maine - temporary population 40,000.

[OceanStWx]

13 minutes ago, tamarack said:

Jackman, Maine - temporary population 40,000.

We're going to need to adjust our forecast to account for eclipse cooling for a couple hours.

[J.Spin]

9 hours 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 absolutely a complement to lift-served, it’s not really meant to fully replace it for most of us.  With that said, I’m big on snow quality, so I’ll happily ski one run of quality powder (or even quality corn snow in the spring) that required skinning vs. four runs of lift-served chattery ice.

I’m like PF in that I’ll typically do one run via skinning, especially on Mansfield where you’re looking at 2,000’+ of vertical in one run, or nearly 3,000’ of vertical if you’re going all the way up to The Chin.  Sometimes I’ll do a run and a half if there’s fresh snow that’s good only from a certain elevation on up.  Or at Bolton, I might tour around and do a few half runs if I’m exploring across the mountain and hitting different pods that don’t require full descents in between.

You can think of it very much as a way of exercising with a free ski run at the end.  Skis with skins on them are very efficient mechanism for moving about on the snow.  It’s not as if it has to be arduous – you can pick whatever pitch you want for an ascent, and it can literally be the same amount of effort as going out for a walk or a gentle hike if desired.  I typically enjoy the up as much as the down, and I generally take a nice pace on the way up that’s comfortable, but gets the heart rate up if I want it to.  It all depends on if I’m looking for the up to be a leisurely stroll, or if I’m feeling like I want to put in a bit more effort and get more exercise out of it on any given day.  As long as the up isn’t arduous, it’s just a great overall experience because you’re out on the mountain, often alone or with some friends/family, enjoying the scenery at a much slower and quieter pace than lift-served skiing.  In the winter it’s fun to ascend and watch the fresh snow get deeper and deeper the more you climb, and all the while, you know you don’t even have to hike down because you’re going to just take off your skins and get a free ski run out of the deal.

[SJonesWX]

4 hours ago, wxeyeNH said:

I hope the weather 3 years from today is as nice.  The astronomical event of our lifetime in NNE.  Total solar eclipse.   Northern VT is closest to centerline.  Book your Stowe trip now!

 

sorry, but the 26,280 hour GFS says that it’s going to be 50, cloudy with drizzle.

[klw]

5 hours ago, wxeyeNH said:

I hope the weather 3 years from today is as nice.  The astronomical event of our lifetime in NNE.  Total solar eclipse.   Northern VT is closest to centerline.  Book your Stowe trip now!

 

I got so confused by this being posted but my response not showing up (not that was a great loss) but it is there 5 hours earlier on last page.  Did you mean to post twice?

[mreaves]

7 minutes ago, klw said:

I got so confused by this being posted but my response not showing up (not that was a great loss) but it is there 5 hours earlier on last page.  Did you mean to post twice?

I think he may have posted it in two threads. 

[powderfreak]

Sweet June evening.  Three slider doors open along with windows.  Mosquitos starting to come alive.

I don’t think the town of Stowe mountain bike trails in Cady Forest have ever been open anywhere remotely close to April 7-8.  Snow melted, ground thawed, dried out. Every trail good to go.

These trails can take until Memorial Day Weekend to open like this.  Full send across the board on summer.

[powderfreak]

BTV, BML, MVL all with 76F today.

HIE, MPV with 74F.

Thats some mid-June climo.

[mreaves]

1 hour ago, powderfreak said:

BTV, BML, MVL all with 76F today.

HIE, MPV with 74F.

Thats some mid-June climo.

It was a beautiful day. Took my son for a drive this evening, Rt.2 up to Williston. All the way up with the windows open. We ended up eating at Al’s Frys, long line at the creemee stand. Just like mid-summer

[PhineasC]

Earliest melt-out in Randolph in 80 years, according to the CoCoRaHS guy.

I brought some serious heat vibes to town!

[powderfreak]

Daily Operations Meeting today had like a war room battle field type vibe.  We will not lose the summit!  Never surrender.  Drawing up plans to move snow back to the wind-swept top of the Quad using anchor cats and the winches, while other snowcats feed the winches to yank it back up to the unload.  The top of the lift sits on a knob and just never builds depths due to wind stripping, that's actually the weakest spot on the hill right now.  But this is when we start to get creative and it's some of the most fun parts of operations... when everyone starts talking like kids in a sandbox. Just adults talking about playing in the snow with a fleet of quarter million dollar machines.

[tamarack]

14 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

Earliest melt-out in Randolph in 80 years, according to the CoCoRaHS guy.

I brought some serious heat vibes to town!

This year's 3/30 melt-out was only 6th earliest of 23 here.  2006 was earliest at 3/14 and 2010, 2012, 2016 all ended continuous 1"+ prior to the equinox.  (2000 melted out on 3/28.)

[J.Spin]

1 hour ago, PhineasC said:

Earliest melt-out in Randolph in 80 years, according to the CoCoRaHS guy.

I brought some serious heat vibes to town!

 

1 hour ago, tamarack said:

This year's 3/30 melt-out was only 6th earliest of 23 here.  2006 was earliest at 3/14 and 2010, 2012, 2016 all ended continuous 1"+ prior to the equinox.  (2000 melted out on 3/28.)

In my previous report I mentioned where this season sat with respect to winter snowpack duration (fourth lowest), but I hadn’t checked on where it sat in terms of melt out date.  This season’s April 5^th date came in third lowest ahead of ‘09-‘10 (April 4^th) and ’11-‘12 (March 22^nd).  It’s certainly in the lower half of seasons, but not any sort of grand aberration for our site because it’s also quite close to ‘08-‘09 (April 6^th), ’15-‘16 (April 8^th), and even last season (April 7^th).

It appears to be much more anomalous over by Phin, but I’m guessing the historical data must be coming from other sites as well because that current Randolph site only has about ten years of data as far as I know.

[PhineasC]

2 minutes ago, J.Spin said:

 

In my previous report I mentioned where this season sat with respect to winter snowpack duration (fourth lowest), but I hadn’t checked on where it sat in terms of melt out date.  This season’s April 5^th date came in third lowest ahead of ‘09-‘10 (April 4^th) and ’11-‘12 (March 22^nd).  It’s certainly in the lower half of seasons, but not any sort of grand aberration for our site because it’s also quite close to ‘08-‘09 (April 6^th), ’15-‘16 (April 8^th), and even last season (April 7^th).

It appears to be much more anomalous over by Phin, but I’m guessing the historical data must be coming from other sites as well because that current Randolph site only has about ten years of data as far as I know.

Yeah, that was a line from a recent report on CoCoRaHS from my neighbor, I wasn't even tracking that he was 80+ years old. LOL

The guy I have spoken to up there must have been his grandson or something... TBH I'm kind of confused now. It may have been a typo.

https://www.cocorahs.org/ViewData/ViewDailyPrecipReport.aspx?DailyPrecipReportID=dd25acd7-f6ed-4e59-84a4-54e2ddf445a1

It's just a datapoint, hard to know more without context, and as you pointed out the formal record only goes back 10 years or so, so who knows what really happened in the prior 70 years.

Either way, this season was on the earlier side for melt-out no matter how you slice it. It may have been a more noticeably poor season here given the climo of my site being 1,000' higher than your spot and probably better for retention overall. We would tend to always melt out later than your spot, assuming roughy normal snowfall.

I also noticed the peaks of Adams and Madison are rapidly melting out. That's probably pretty anomalous too.

[bch2014]

1 hour ago, powderfreak said:

Daily Operations Meeting today had like a war room battle field type vibe.  We will not lose the summit!  Never surrender.  Drawing up plans to move snow back to the wind-swept top of the Quad using anchor cats and the winches, while other snowcats feed the winches to yank it back up to the unload.  The top of the lift sits on a knob and just never builds depths due to wind stripping, that's actually the weakest spot on the hill right now.  But this is when we start to get creative and it's some of the most fun parts of operations... when everyone starts talking like kids in a sandbox. Just adults talking about playing in the snow with a fleet of quarter million dollar machines.

Skiing at Stowe last weekend it seemed that the trails off the triple had plenty of snow.. Have you ever closed with just the triple open?

[#NoPoles]

Holy cow it is beautiful in Bretton Woods today. The black flies havent hatched so it is perfect to be outside. Once the black flies hatch, being outside turns I to a nightmare

[powderfreak]

3 hours ago, bch2014 said:

Skiing at Stowe last weekend it seemed that the trails off the triple had plenty of snow.. Have you ever closed with just the triple open?

Nope, but we’d go to the Lookout Double first if the Quad top can’t hang on.  In the past we just closed but they seem to want to hit the 18th.  I mean I don’t have a problem with the triple either, 1,100 vertical feet almost identical to the Jet triple that Jay retreats to at some point.

Its just insane how warm this stretch is.  Transported right into summer.  Last year it was in May when we transported immediately to mid-summer and 90-95F. We keep getting these record breaking early heater patterns, ha.

[backedgeapproaching]

3 hours ago, PhineasC said:

Yeah, that was a line from a recent report on CoCoRaHS from my neighbor, I wasn't even tracking that he was 80+ years old. LOL

The guy I have spoken to up there must have been his grandson or something... TBH I'm kind of confused now. It may have been a typo.

https://www.cocorahs.org/ViewData/ViewDailyPrecipReport.aspx?DailyPrecipReportID=dd25acd7-f6ed-4e59-84a4-54e2ddf445a1

It's just a datapoint, hard to know more without context, and as you pointed out the formal record only goes back 10 years or so, so who knows what really happened in the prior 70 years.

Either way, this season was on the earlier side for melt-out no matter how you slice it. It may have been a more noticeably poor season here given the climo of my site being 1,000' higher than your spot and probably better for retention overall. We would tend to always melt out later than your spot, assuming roughy normal snowfall.

I also noticed the peaks of Adams and Madison are rapidly melting out. That's probably pretty anomalous too.

Interesting that the guy is 80. Dont want to disparage the elderly, but could explain some of the discrepancies in reporting. The Woodford observer down here in SVT has had some questionable obs, but found out she was like 88 yrs old or something, so kind of makes sense.

[PhineasC]

11 minutes ago, backedgeapproaching said:

Interesting that the guy is 80. Dont want to disparage the elderly, but could explain some of the discrepancies in reporting. The Woodford observer down here in SVT has had some questionable obs, but found out she was like 88 yrs old or something, so kind of makes sense.

I am kinda perplexed that the guy is 80. They have a compound up there and the dude I interacted with who I thought was doing the obs was definitely not 80 unless he is like Aragorn from Lord of the Rings or something. I suspect it’s a typo. 

[powderfreak]

3 hours ago, PhineasC said:

I am kinda perplexed that the guy is 80. They have a compound up there and the dude I interacted with who I thought was doing the obs was definitely not 80 unless he is like Aragorn from Lord of the Rings or something. I suspect it’s a typo. 

Yeah it would imply he's older than that as it's hard to say he's been paying attention to snow melt out as a child.  Was there a NWS site there or was it the same guy that has taken all obs in Randolph?

[powderfreak]

I'm usually pretty even keeled but this is pretty high end warmth for this time of year.  Punctuating a snow season that shut off hard after March 1st and turned mild, staying mild.

Three straight days of record temperatures in some cases.  Yesterday spots like Montpelier and Massena sites shattered their records by 4-6 degrees.  The summits have had no shortage of record highs between the March and April torches.  It didn't help that it never really snowed aside from April 1 event.

But for whatever reason this is about as pleasant as you could make a record melt out... so much better to melt out with sunny warm beach days on the snow rather than a week of torrential rain or something.  I guess Mother Nature is throwing us a bone by at least making it enjoyable.

Near record low snow depth since 1954.  This is an unbiased observation site with a long period of record.  Always noteworthy to be on the edges of the graph, whether low or high.  The depth could be 140+ right now on the high end.

[bwt3650]

9 hours ago, powderfreak said:

Daily Operations Meeting today had like a war room battle field type vibe.  We will not lose the summit!  Never surrender.  Drawing up plans to move snow back to the wind-swept top of the Quad using anchor cats and the winches, while other snowcats feed the winches to yank it back up to the unload.  The top of the lift sits on a knob and just never builds depths due to wind stripping, that's actually the weakest spot on the hill right now.  But this is when we start to get creative and it's some of the most fun parts of operations... when everyone starts talking like kids in a sandbox. Just adults talking about playing in the snow with a fleet of quarter million dollar machines.

It’s got to be fun trying to figure out how to make it work.  Mt. Snow lost the war and closed the main and North face.  I’ll give you guys credit for trying to pull off another week since economically, it has to make more sense to throw in the towel.  I’d guess no one is buying a day ticket and this year there’s probably not much food/bev either.  I understand everyone wants to maintain the latter closing dates in the archives for future late season reservations, but it has to be at a loss at this point. 

[bwt3650]

36 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

I'm usually pretty even keeled but this is pretty high end warmth for this time of year.  Punctuating a snow season that shut off hard after March 1st and turned mild, staying mild.

Three straight days of record temperatures in some cases.  Yesterday spots like Montpelier and Massena sites shattered their records by 4-6 degrees.  The summits have had no shortage of record highs between the March and April torches.  It didn't help that it never really snowed aside from April 1 event.

But for whatever reason this is about as pleasant as you could make a record melt out... so much better to melt out with sunny warm beach days on the snow rather than a week of torrential rain or something.  I guess Mother Nature is throwing us a bone by at least making it enjoyable.

Near record low snow depth since 1954.  This is an unbiased observation site with a long period of record.  Always noteworthy to be on the edges of the graph, whether low or high.  The depth could be 140+ right now on the high end.

That’s just ugly...besides April 1st, it literally stopped snowing at the end of March and has been a non-stop melt..including above freezing nights.

[mreaves]

1 hour ago, powderfreak said:

I'm usually pretty even keeled but this is pretty high end warmth for this time of year.  Punctuating a snow season that shut off hard after March 1st and turned mild, staying mild.

Three straight days of record temperatures in some cases.  Yesterday spots like Montpelier and Massena sites shattered their records by 4-6 degrees.  The summits have had no shortage of record highs between the March and April torches.  It didn't help that it never really snowed aside from April 1 event.

But for whatever reason this is about as pleasant as you could make a record melt out... so much better to melt out with sunny warm beach days on the snow rather than a week of torrential rain or something.  I guess Mother Nature is throwing us a bone by at least making it enjoyable.

Near record low snow depth since 1954.  This is an unbiased observation site with a long period of record.  Always noteworthy to be on the edges of the graph, whether low or high.  The depth could be 140+ right now on the high end.

This is generally how I would design the end of winter though I would have had it end on March 15th instead of March 1st. 
 

Edit: Holy crap! Ice out on Joe’s Pond today. I don’t know if it’s ever been this early.