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NNE Cold Season Thread 2021/2022


PhineasC
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10 hours ago, OceanStWx said:

You're looking at the velocity aziumuth display (VAD) from KCXX. It's an attempt by the radar to estimate horizontal wind over time at different heights above the radar. You look back in time to the left and height increases as you go up. 

 

So seeing wind at those higher altitudes would indicate it’s unblocked and getting over the peaks?

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28 minutes ago, bwt3650 said:

So seeing wind at those higher altitudes would indicate it’s unblocked and getting over the peaks?

It's not the height of the wind that matters, it's the direction of it, speed, and veering or changes with height.  There's always some wind flow in all levels of the atmosphere.  I'll try to write something a bit longer when I get a few minutes.

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This is crazy... a couple places in Cornwall, VT picked up 8-10" in like 3-4 hours.

This is in the middle of the Champlain Valley last night.  Addison County.

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Even this morning it had settled but still 7.5" at a friend's.

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He said there's like no snow just a few miles away.  Like that hill in the distance behind the red barn looks largely bare or just coated.

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18 hours ago, eekuasepinniW said:

I don't keep the best records, but I can't think of any other year when my backyard was virtually snow free by March 25th.

Kind of wild to compare now to this time in 2008.

My locale, especially the dooryard and surrounding woods, holds snow longer than most places in town, but 3/25 has had zero pack in 2006, 2010, 2012 and 2016.  All four of those years saw the continuous cover end prior to the equinox, earliest being 3/14 in 2006.  Latest loss of cover came on 4/24/01, one day later than in 2008.

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6 hours ago, bwt3650 said:

So seeing wind at those higher altitudes would indicate it’s unblocked and getting over the peaks?

 

5 hours ago, powderfreak said:

It's not the height of the wind that matters, it's the direction of it, speed, and veering or changes with height.  There's always some wind flow in all levels of the atmosphere.  I'll try to write something a bit longer when I get a few minutes.

Yeah, all the radar is "seeing" is targets with a velocity which could be clouds as well as precip. So as long as the radar "sees" something it can estimate a wind speed.

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54 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

 

There's actually been research about both velocity and QPE coverage by radars, and the bigger hole locally is around EEN. 

The Charlotte area really needs a radar or radars.  Folks have been looking into it for a long time, but it just hasn't happened.

Durant, OK just announced they were getting a C band in the last few weeks, and the SE Texas gap is at least partially mitigated by TAMU's mostly operational S band (though not sure about its QPE performance) and the NBC affiliate in Dallas has a pretty nice S band located to the SE of the metroplex that can do some gap filling out there.  Far SE Oklahoma coverage is still pretty terrible and an extra dangerous spot for a tornado.

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3 hours ago, powderfreak said:

This is crazy... a couple places in Cornwall, VT picked up 8-10" in like 3-4 hours.

This is in the middle of the Champlain Valley last night.  Addison County.

 

Even this morning it had settled but still 7.5" at a friend's.

 

He said there's like no snow just a few miles away.  Like that hill in the distance behind the red barn looks largely bare or just coated.

 

There was a prominent stream of moisture sitting there visible on the radar with some of those yellow 30+ db echoes.  It was right down there in Addison County and upstream of Sugarbush/MRG, so I was wondering if they were getting hit, but the valley certainly got in on it based on those numbers.

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With the way it was pounding heavy snow when I left Bolton yesterday, and their morning report indicating a foot of snow for the storm total at that point, I figured another ski session was in order.

Snow levels had dropped all the way to the valleys yesterday, but they really didn’t start picking up much accumulation until the evening.  Even the valleys were coated in white this morning, so accumulations started there, and I’ve updated yesterday’s accumulations profile with the numbers I saw this morning:

340’:  0” --> 1-2”

1,000’: T --> 2”

1,200’:  1” --> 2-3”

1,500’:  2” --> 3”

2,000’:  4” --> 5”

2,500’:  5” --> 6”

3,000’:  6”

3,300’:  6”+

Today’s tour only brought me up to ~2,700’, so I can’t update those numbers from the higher elevations, but the trend between the additional snowfall and settling seemed to be to tack on another inch or two to what was present yesterday afternoon.

When I first got up to the mountain this morning, I encountered blizzard like conditions due to the snowfall and wind, and the wind was certainly stronger than I saw at any point yesterday.  Like yesterday, the snow would often come in pulses – you’d have light to moderate snowfall with a brightening of the sky, and then visibility would drop and you’d encounter heavy snow.  At one point on today’s tour, intense snow came on so fast that visibility dropped to ~100 feet in just seconds.  I was in the middle of taking some photos, and will end up having to use some of the initial exposures because part of what I was shooting about 200 feet away literally became invisible behind the snowfall, and I just had to move on.

I’ll put together some images and a bit about the ski conditions as soon as I get a chance.

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I’ve added the north to south listing of available snowfall totals from the Vermont ski areas for the current event.  The lack of notable snow at Burke would suggest that resorts off the spine have not seen much accumulation this far, but the resorts of the Northern Greens had fairly consistent reports of accumulations approaching the 1-foot mark.  With Sugarbush reporting 6”, and MRG clearly not getting enough to consider opening for midweek service, it looked like a typical trend of snowfall dropping off south of the Northern Greens, but the Killington/Pico area clearly bucked that trend, so perhaps they were under a streamer or something along those lines.

Jay Peak: 10”

Burke: T”

Smuggler’s Notch: 10”

Stowe: 11”

Bolton Valley: 12”

Sugarbush: 6”

Middlebury: T”

Pico: 12”

Killington: 12”

Okemo: 2”

Bromley: 4”

Stratton: 2”

Mount Snow: 1”

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2 hours ago, J.Spin said:

There was a prominent stream of moisture sitting there visible on the radar with some of those yellow 30+ db echoes.  It was right down there in Addison County and upstream of Sugarbush/MRG, so I was wondering if they were getting hit, but the valley certainly got in on it based on those numbers.

I still can't get over this, ha.  This is bonkers.  Cornwall, VT last night... middle of the Champlain Valley.  Just an isolated 8-10" over like one town out in the valley with a dusting only a few miles away.  No topography at all.

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Skiing right now is some of the best of the season on the top 1,000 vertical feet.  We are at 15" in the past 4 days at the High Road Plot.  11" since Saturday evening.

There's absolutely no one skiing this afternoon either... prime lines sitting untouched hours after the Gondola opened at Noon (morning wind hold).

2:30 PM and just full on powder party.  Patrol dropped the ropes on the Upper Starr, Upper Goat, Upper Liftline, etc... stuff that when it's open you know the skiing is good.  Mid-winter powder day again.

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3 hours ago, Angus said:

that is just crazy  @powderfreak amazing what a good foot of snow will do... 

 

The density has been perfect.  Above mid-mountain it started really wet and dense with 4" over 24 hours (likely 0.50+ water) that covered the underlying wet snow/ice base.  The earliest snow fell on top of the wet snowpack, not an icy sheen, which led to a great interface between the layers.  Then we got the QPF rich but colder, dense snow on Sunday morning... probably adding another 3/4ths of an inch of water.  The last part was arctic cold, wind packed snow. 

No fake fluff here... the 15" in the past 4 days was likely a good 1.50" QPF of frozen precip at the snow plots.  Dense stuff.  Very localized.  That's a game changing amount of frozen water for skiers.  A while back the models were definitely showing a solid period of frozen QPF... I doubted it to be honest, but it pulled through for the hill.

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1" past 12 hours at the mountain, just a persistent flurry.  But it continues this evening.  Long duration upslope flow.... wringing out the absolute last bit of moisture as small flakes in this artic airmass over the Spine.  Can see the diminishing feed but still blocked enough to keep the -SN going.

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1 hour ago, mreaves said:

I'd say about a total of 2" over the last couple of days of on and off snow showers.  Useless and annoying.  Coats the ground, stops, sun comes out briefly and melts it all.  Rinse and repeat. 

Yeah that’s the experience this time of year outside the mountain elevations.  My yard has been covered white I think 3 times last few mornings and then it disappears during the day.  Wake up and dusted white again, repeat.  The difference between here and 1500ft is stark… plow piles and stuff.

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