NNE Cold Season Thread 2021/2022

[PhineasC]

Yeah models look good for the ski areas right now for Sat. I am always worried about a fringe job though. We need a high qpf bomb here to really make a difference. Not some half inch liquid job that the greens turn into a foot of dust. 

[NW_of_GYX]

3 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

Yeah models look good for the ski areas right now for Sat. I am always worried about a fringe job though. We need a high qpf bomb here to really make a difference. Not some half inch liquid job that the greens turn into a foot of dust. 

Someone in Vermont is going to get just that. I like your area as well. This has Mahoosucs mauler look to it as well. Long range is pretty meh but with that trough sliding east there may be another window in in the 3/17 time period, but lots of potential to continue to get warm sectored as well. Quebec is just gonna keep getting nuked it looks like. What a winter for our north of the border friends. I was supposed to enjoy a week of what will undoubtedly be incredible high water paddling conditions on the Bonaventure River in Gaspe in June but it looks like COVID has disrupted the outfitter and our plans are canceled. At this rate I'm thinking a late April/early May St. John River trip might be a suitable alternative. 

[powderfreak]

18 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

Yeah models look good for the ski areas right now for Sat. I am always worried about a fringe job though. We need a high qpf bomb here to really make a difference. Not some half inch liquid job that the greens turn into a foot of dust. 

If that's worse case I'll take it ha.  Just want anything to cover up the defunct municipal skating rink look going on outside.

[PhineasC]

27 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

If that's worse case I'll take it ha.  Just want anything to cover up the defunct municipal skating rink look going on outside.

LOL yeah we will all take any snow we can get for sure. But to really make a difference on the slopes we need some good base snow. It’ll get even more treacherous on natural terrain to have this current “base” and then cover it with six inches of deceptive fluff. 

[powderfreak]

20 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

LOL yeah we will all take any snow we can get for sure. But to really make a difference on the slopes we need some good base snow. It’ll get even more treacherous on natural terrain to have this current “base” and then cover it with six inches of deceptive fluff. 

Yeah I’m sort of given up on this winter really getting it done, now it’s time to enjoy whatever snow falls.  12z euro was more progressive.  

[PhineasC]

BW crew tried their best I’m sure but man it was bad out there today. They will need to blow some more snow I think to even keep the groomers going in some spots. Most of the connectors between trails are closed or are just total ice rinks. Can’t imagine the horror show at Wildcat or Cannon today. 

[J.Spin]

I’ve been a bit too busy so far this week to write up my weekend ski/snow observations, but I’ve had a few moments now to put some comments and images together.  It was an absolute tale of two seasons out there this weekend, with midwinter conditions and powder available on Saturday, then beautiful warm weather and spring snow on Sunday.

My wife and I headed out for some turns on Saturday morning, thinking that was clearly going to be the better day for skiing over the weekend.  Temperatures were in the 20s F, so it was quite nice in that regard, but we were curious to see how the trail conditions were faring after the midweek clippers.  Despite all the new snow, trail conditions were fairly poor, even at a relatively low traffic resort like Bolton.  The powder that hadn’t been touched was actually skiing really well, but untracked areas were few and far between on the lift-served terrain after the completion of school vacation week and the extension of the break period into Monday and Tuesday that most local schools had.  I actually think some low to moderate angle backcountry might have even been the better call based on the sharp contrast in snow quality between the on piste vs. off piste conditions we found.

The clippers were nice, and were potent enough that they made for some great short term conditions while the snow had its loft, but there just wasn’t enough liquid equivalent in there to really set up for lasting improvement in the on piste snow surfaces.  Those systems, and even Winter Storm Oaklee before it, were fairy cold from start to finish.  That meant that there wasn’t any notable dense snow to bond to the underlying subsurface, and the light, dry snow eventually just gets pushed around, bringing you back to whatever hard base was there before.  My numbers show that these past four storms (there was also a smaller system with squalls between Oaklee and the two larger clippers) actually put down over an inch of liquid equivalent here in the valley.  But even with somewhat more than that in the mountains, it wasn’t going to be enough to hold up to lift-served levels of skier traffic.  Even more than usual on Saturday we found a huge difference between the quality of the manmade subsurfaces and the natural subsurfaces.  My wife commented on it during one of our runs because the difference was so extreme that it jumped right out to her.  Based on what we encountered, it seemed like the denser manmade base areas had an even harder time incorporating the new snow than the natural snow terrain.

I hadn’t planned to ski on Sunday, thinking it was just going to be a rainy day, but the sky cleared out in the afternoon to produce a beautiful, warm, early spring day.  Seeing that, my younger son and I popped up to the mountain for some runs.  In a classic reversal of Saturday, this was a situation where the terrain with manmade snow provided the superior skiing.  Manmade snow is dense enough that it generally transitions quickly to an appropriate spring snow surface, while the natural snow initially gets sticky with warm temperatures and requires some freeze/thaw cycles before it really primes up.  Trail pitch mattered as well, and low angle terrain was the toughest in terms of movement.  We talked to a couple of guys in the parking lot who said that the flat terrain was brutally slow.

We spent our whole session on Sunday at Timberline, and the resort had recently put down a bunch of manmade snow under the quad that provided great turns in the warm temperatures.  We did venture off to flatter terrain on one run per my son’s request, just to see what it was like.  After that, the difficulty in traveling on flat terrain was made abundantly clear, and we just spent the rest or the time lapping the good snow on the Showtime trail under the Timberline Quad.  The snow was great for railing carves and generally having a fun springtime ski session.  Also, there was hardly anyone at the resort, probably because they had assumed it was going to be a dreary day like we’d thought.  When we arrived in the early afternoon, there were three cars in the upper Timberline lot.

[J.Spin]

Event totals: 0.2” Snow/0.31” L.E.

 

All I saw from this morning’s new snow was an additional tenth of an inch here at our site, so the numbers above should be the final totals for this system.

 

Details from the 6:00 P.M. Waterbury observations:

New Snow: 0.1 inches

New Liquid: Trace

Temperature: 26.2 F

Sky: Clear

Snow at the stake: 8.0 inches

 

The next potential system to affect the area with snow appears to be later in the day tomorrow based on the modeling and the BTV NWS forecast discussion.

[tamarack]

20 hours ago, NW_of_GYX said:

Someone in Vermont is going to get just that. I like your area as well. This has Mahoosucs mauler look to it as well. Long range is pretty meh but with that trough sliding east there may be another window in in the 3/17 time period, but lots of potential to continue to get warm sectored as well. Quebec is just gonna keep getting nuked it looks like. What a winter for our north of the border friends. I was supposed to enjoy a week of what will undoubtedly be incredible high water paddling conditions on the Bonaventure River in Gaspe in June but it looks like COVID has disrupted the outfitter and our plans are canceled. At this rate I'm thinking a late April/early May St. John River trip might be a suitable alternative. 

For the St. John, keep an eye on the gauge at Dickey.  I've heard that if it drops below 3,000 cfs you may have to drag in some places, especially with a canoe full of camping gear.  It can go the other way at that time of year, and can change surprisingly quickly as the watershed has relatively small area in lakes.  On April 30, 2008 the river hit 183,000 cfs, breaking the existing peak flow of 151,000 on 4/30/1979 and causing serious flooding in Fort Kent. 
A mere 16-17 days after that 1979 peak, 6 of us from Seven Islands Land Company launched our canoes at the old Priestly Bridge site on T13R14, about a mile downriver from the current span.  We overnighted at the mouth of Big Black and at the Bishop farm, above Big Rapids, and we were scratching bottom in the wide spot just above the start of that 3-mile whitewater - Dickey must've been at/below 3k by then.  (Once the Allagash joins, there's almost always plenty of water - a fast run to our take-out at St. Francis.)  Then the last week of May 1979 had 3" rain and the river came up 6'+.  The most experienced of the mid-May canoeists tried to run Big Rapids right after the RA and not only swamped his canoe but had his outboard ripped off. 
The Allagash folks say "keep left" on the St. John rapids.  We ended up on the right for the lower half of Big Black rapids and survived, barely, but stayed left for Big Rapids.

[PhineasC]

Let's hope the Euro is locked in for the weekend.

Last three runs looked very close to each other and hit northern VT and NH really well.

We are riding the line on this one though.

GFS also looks pretty good.

[NW_of_GYX]

1 hour ago, tamarack said:

For the St. John, keep an eye on the gauge at Dickey.  I've heard that if it drops below 3,000 cfs you may have to drag in some places, especially with a canoe full of camping gear.  It can go the other way at that time of year, and can change surprisingly quickly as the watershed has relatively small area in lakes.  On April 30, 2008 the river hit 183,000 cfs, breaking the existing peak flow of 151,000 on 4/30/1979 and causing serious flooding in Fort Kent. 
A mere 16-17 days after that 1979 peak, 6 of us from Seven Islands Land Company launched our canoes at the old Priestly Bridge site on T13R14, about a mile downriver from the current span.  We overnighted at the mouth of Big Black and at the Bishop farm, above Big Rapids, and we were scratching bottom in the wide spot just above the start of that 3-mile whitewater - Dickey must've been at/below 3k by then.  (Once the Allagash joins, there's almost always plenty of water - a fast run to our take-out at St. Francis.)  Then the last week of May 1979 had 3" rain and the river came up 6'+.  The most experienced of the mid-May canoeists tried to run Big Rapids right after the RA and not only swamped his canoe but had his outboard ripped off. 
The Allagash folks say "keep left" on the St. John rapids.  We ended up on the right for the lower half of Big Black rapids and survived, barely, but stayed left for Big Rapids.

Appreciate the advice. I’ve spent a lot of time in that country but never paddled the whole extent of the river from Baker down to the village. We’ve paddled the Allagash many times but the upper St. John country just has a different feel to it. 

[tamarack]

9 minutes ago, NW_of_GYX said:

Appreciate the advice. I’ve spent a lot of time in that country but never paddled the whole extent of the river from Baker down to the village. We’ve paddled the Allagash many times but the upper St. John country just has a different feel to it. 

It's probably the only Eastern river with an Arctic flow regime - huge ice-out and spring runoff followed by mostly very low flows during summer and early fall.  At those times it's a little river in a big channel.

[NW_of_GYX]

22 minutes ago, tamarack said:

It's probably the only Eastern river with an Arctic flow regime - huge ice-out and spring runoff followed by mostly very low flows during summer and early fall.  At those times it's a little river in a big channel.

It's one of the last freestone rivers too. Allagash would be the same way if not for the dams, although it's headwaters hold substantially more water than the St. John ponds. 

[bobbutts]

18 hours ago, J.Spin said:

I’ve been a bit too busy so far this week to write up my weekend ski/snow observations, but I’ve had a few moments now to put some comments and images together.  It was an absolute tale of two seasons out there this weekend, with midwinter conditions and powder available on Saturday, then beautiful warm weather and spring snow on Sunday.

My wife and I headed out for some turns on Saturday morning, thinking that was clearly going to be the better day for skiing over the weekend.  Temperatures were in the 20s F, so it was quite nice in that regard, but we were curious to see how the trail conditions were faring after the midweek clippers.  Despite all the new snow, trail conditions were fairly poor, even at a relatively low traffic resort like Bolton.  The powder that hadn’t been touched was actually skiing really well, but untracked areas were few and far between on the lift-served terrain after the completion of school vacation week and the extension of the break period into Monday and Tuesday that most local schools had.  I actually think some low to moderate angle backcountry might have even been the better call based on the sharp contrast in snow quality between the on piste vs. off piste conditions we found.

The clippers were nice, and were potent enough that they made for some great short term conditions while the snow had its loft, but there just wasn’t enough liquid equivalent in there to really set up for lasting improvement in the on piste snow surfaces.  Those systems, and even Winter Storm Oaklee before it, were fairy cold from start to finish.  That meant that there wasn’t any notable dense snow to bond to the underlying subsurface, and the light, dry snow eventually just gets pushed around, bringing you back to whatever hard base was there before.  My numbers show that these past four storms (there was also a smaller system with squalls between Oaklee and the two larger clippers) actually put down over an inch of liquid equivalent here in the valley.  But even with somewhat more than that in the mountains, it wasn’t going to be enough to hold up to lift-served levels of skier traffic.  Even more than usual on Saturday we found a huge difference between the quality of the manmade subsurfaces and the natural subsurfaces.  My wife commented on it during one of our runs because the difference was so extreme that it jumped right out to her.  Based on what we encountered, it seemed like the denser manmade base areas had an even harder time incorporating the new snow than the natural snow terrain.

 

I hadn’t planned to ski on Sunday, thinking it was just going to be a rainy day, but the sky cleared out in the afternoon to produce a beautiful, warm, early spring day.  Seeing that, my younger son and I popped up to the mountain for some runs.  In a classic reversal of Saturday, this was a situation where the terrain with manmade snow provided the superior skiing.  Manmade snow is dense enough that it generally transitions quickly to an appropriate spring snow surface, while the natural snow initially gets sticky with warm temperatures and requires some freeze/thaw cycles before it really primes up.  Trail pitch mattered as well, and low angle terrain was the toughest in terms of movement.  We talked to a couple of guys in the parking lot who said that the flat terrain was brutally slow.

We spent our whole session on Sunday at Timberline, and the resort had recently put down a bunch of manmade snow under the quad that provided great turns in the warm temperatures.  We did venture off to flatter terrain on one run per my son’s request, just to see what it was like.  After that, the difficulty in traveling on flat terrain was made abundantly clear, and we just spent the rest or the time lapping the good snow on the Showtime trail under the Timberline Quad.  The snow was great for railing carves and generally having a fun springtime ski session.  Also, there was hardly anyone at the resort, probably because they had assumed it was going to be a dreary day like we’d thought.  When we arrived in the early afternoon, there were three cars in the upper Timberline lot.

If you haven't tried it check out Zardoz not wax.  Works really well on that sticky snow.  Like a total game changer on sticky snow.

[J.Spin]

5 hours ago, bobbutts said:

If you haven't tried it check out Zardoz not wax.  Works really well on that sticky snow.  Like a total game changer on sticky snow.

Thanks for the heads up.  I have used fluoro wax before, but not Zardoz specifically as far as I recall.  I’ll definitely get some to add to my supplies – they say it’s especially good for warm snow. 

I’d put some standard Swix rub on wax on our skis as I usually do, and it helped, but fluoro is sort of the king when it comes to ski wax.  Thankfully, we didn’t actually find that conditions on the flats as bad as the guys we’d talked to in the parking lot, and I’ve definitely seen it worse.  I was on Teles, which can be brutal with respect to the effort required to keep fore-aft balance and prevent yourself from going over the handlebars all the time on really sticky snow, but I found that Sunday was at least reasonable compared to some days we’ve been out in the past.

[mreaves]

Winter Storm Watch up.  

[J.Spin]

Event totals: 0.8” Snow/0.02” L.E.

 

The snow from yesterday’s storm system had finished up by midnight, and the totals above should be the final numbers for that event.

 

Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations:

New Snow: 0.8 inches

New Liquid: 0.02 inches

Snow/Water Ratio: 40.0

Snow Density: 2.5% H2O

Temperature: 29.5 F

Sky: Partly Cloudy

Snow at the stake: 8.5 inches

[J.Spin]

1 hour ago, mreaves said:

Winter Storm Watch up.  

I received a text around 3:00 A.M. with a notification about the Winter Storm Watch, and I guess it shouldn't be too surprising since the BTV NWS was already mentioning that alerts would likely be coming soon in their discussion yesterday.  The current alerts map does show the watches all the way down into SVT, but not quite wall to wall farther south.  The point forecast here has 8-12” through Saturday, but doesn’t include the evening yet, so the 12-18” shading around here seems like it fits at this point.

 

[jculligan]

I'll be watching this one from afar, sadly. Helping my girlfriend move into a new house in Salem NH on Saturday, and I'll be spending the weekend there. This looks really good from the Notches north, from my perspective - probably not so much in the Jackson area, though I anticipate my cabin at 1500' will probably end up with a quick 6" thump after a little bit of rain at the onset. I think the Mount Washington Valley is likely cooked, as has happened so often these last two winters.

6" of snow at the cabin would bring me up to 80" on the season, which is definitely below normal for that area but would be a respectable number in other places I've lived. Still another 4-5 weeks of realistic snow opportunities, so maybe a 100" season isn't quite out of reach yet.

[Redmorninglight]

Headed up to the camp in the Adirondacks. Was up there last weekend with a couple pals and rode Gore Saturday.  Really nice day and good sized crowds but the place handled it. Going to ride Gore again this Saturday and hoping for a solid snow day up there. Point n click says 10-14” so getting excited. 

[J.Spin]

I’ve got the latest maps from the BTV NWS afternoon updates.  The Winter Storm Watches have expanded substantially, except to the southeast.  As on the previous Storm Total Forecast Map, they’ve got that 12-18” shading along the spine, with a bit of the 18-24” shading to cover the usual highest elevation spots in the Northern Greens.  Our current point forecast here in the valley suggests accumulations in the 9-15” range.  We’ll see what they do with the overnight updates when the next couple of model runs are considered.

[powderfreak]

51 minutes ago, Redmorninglight said:

Headed up to the camp in the Adirondacks. Was up there last weekend with a couple pals and rode Gore Saturday.  Really nice day and good sized crowds but the place handled it. Going to ride Gore again this Saturday and hoping for a solid snow day up there. Point n click says 10-14” so getting excited. 

Grew up at Gore, it'll always be a special nostalgia type place to me.  Hope they get slammed hard.

[powderfreak]

I truly am not sure what to think.  The models have been jumping around quite a bit.  It's going to snow, that's for sure as rain is now off the table.  I do question if we get the QPF amounts shown on some of these progs to reach those higher BTV forecast amounts.  The mid-levels don't close off and it's a positively titled trough.  Great frontogenesis from the strong thermal gradient but still not a set-up that screams high-end snowfall with the open waves aloft and progressive nature.  We'll see.  I like a widespread 6-12" for most of us posters, with best chance of 12"+ being the Spine depending on how the backside upslope goes.

[J.Spin]

37 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

I truly am not sure what to think.  The models have been jumping around quite a bit.  It's going to snow, that's for sure as rain is now off the table.  I do question if we get the QPF amounts shown on some of these progs to reach those higher BTV forecast amounts.  The mid-levels don't close off and it's a positively titled trough.  Great frontogenesis from the strong thermal gradient but still not a set-up that screams high-end snowfall with the open waves aloft and progressive nature.  We'll see.  I like a widespread 6-12" for most of us posters, with best chance of 12"+ being the Spine depending on how the backside upslope goes.

I really don’t feel that your thinking is far off from that latest BTV NWS Storm Total Forecast Map – the vast majority of the state is shown in that 8-12” shading, and the areas of 12-18” shading are generally along the spine of the Northern/Central Greens.  If the modeled projections are trending one way or another, you know they’ll adjust as needed in the overnight update.

[powderfreak]

You can really start to feel the strength and warmth of the sun this time of year. Sometimes it's easy to personally dismiss SAD/seasonal affective disorder effects but then I realize that bright sunny afternoons this time of year are almost euphoric. Hard to beat that spring sun to be honest.

[PhineasC]

I went to Wildcat today. Curiosity, I guess. They have very limited terrain open. Lynx was closed which was nuts to me. That's a core manmade groomer that already had bare spots... super bad sign.

Basically only two paths down from the summit and that's it.

Mixed bag on what was open, some spots had softened and were OK (not exactly packed powder, but skiable) and other areas were unworkable sheet ice. Spent a lot of time carving decent soft snow and then sliding 20 feet and then carving again. Rinse and repeat all the way down the mountain.

The biggest shocker to me was how melted out it is at 4,000 feet. Bare everywhere. Looks like my front yard. Feels much more like 10 April than 10 March.

No one is gonna be skiing Wildcat's legendary soft bumps in April this season. They will be shutting down soon if they don't get a bunch more snow or we get another warm cutter. The manmade trails are already thin.

[Redmorninglight]

2 hours ago, powderfreak said:

You can really start to feel the strength and warmth of the sun this time of year. Sometimes it's easy to personally dismiss SAD/seasonal affective disorder effects but then I realize that bright sunny afternoons this time of year are almost euphoric. Hard to beat that spring sun to be honest.

February 2010 was pretty severe here in the mid Atlantic and by the end of the month I took a class outside on a mild day and recall feeling that euphoria just sitting in the sun. As much as I like cold and snow, I seem to react to the lack of light more each rear. 

[alex]

10 hours ago, PhineasC said:

I went to Wildcat today. Curiosity, I guess. They have very limited terrain open. Lynx was closed which was nuts to me. That's a core manmade groomer that already had bare spots... super bad sign.

Basically only two paths down from the summit and that's it.

Mixed bag on what was open, some spots had softened and were OK (not exactly packed powder, but skiable) and other areas were unworkable sheet ice. Spent a lot of time carving decent soft snow and then sliding 20 feet and then carving again. Rinse and repeat all the way down the mountain.

The biggest shocker to me was how melted out it is at 4,000 feet. Bare everywhere. Looks like my front yard. Feels much more like 10 April than 10 March.

No one is gonna be skiing Wildcat's legendary soft bumps in April this season. They will be shutting down soon if they don't get a bunch more snow or we get another warm cutter. The manmade trails are already thin.

Funny. I skied BW and it was pretty awesome. Fast snow, great consistency. A few ice patches but easy to avoid. 

[J.Spin]

Early this morning the text came out that the BTV NWS has progressed our area into a Winter Storm Warning, and much of the area west of the Connecticut River Valley appears to be in that boat at this stage.  The Event Total Snowfall map through 1:00 A.M. Sunday looks fairly similar to the previous version, with 8-12” shading covering much of the state, and 12-18” shading near the spine of the Northern/Central Greens.  The forecast discussion indicates that there was a minor general increase in the projected snowfall across the region of about an inch since the previous forecast.  Our point forecast through the period appears to come in just shy of 12-18” through Sunday, which generally fits with the map.

[tamarack]

A forecasting nightmare for my general area - within 30 miles east or west of here.  The potential for bust, in either direction, is immense.