NNE Cold Season Thread 2023/2024

[borderwx]

Trying to adjust back to voices and life after 6 days in the woods


Still hunting is an underrated form of meditation




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[mreaves]

3 hours ago, borderwx said:

Trying to adjust back to voices and life after 6 days in the woods


Still hunting is an underrated form of meditation




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Where? Maine?  

[tamarack]

23 hours ago, borderwx said:

Trying to adjust back to voices and life after 6 days in the woods


Still hunting is an underrated form of meditation




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When I lived in northern Maine, most of my deer came through still hunting, would take an hour to go 250 yards.  About half those deer were looking at me, unsure of what I was, when the trigger was pulled.  Farther south where I now live, the deer are a bit spookier, the leaves more crackly (and so are my knees).

[J.Spin]

I received a text alert early this morning that we’ve been put under a Winter Weather Advisory for the next system coming into the area, and I believe this is our first advisory of the season.  Advisory and projected snowfall maps are added below.

The current system started to give some accumulation here at our site last night when the snow levels dropped, so these systems coming through with modest valley snows have made it feel like a typical early November thus far. The snowfall data speak to this as well; average seasonal snowfall through Nov 8 is 2.0”, and we’re within a couple tenths of that as of this morning’s observations.

[Boston Bulldog]

Great looking band heading into Southern VT and the Berkshires!

[powderfreak]

The cold front is moving through, maybe bringing a quick couple inches at the mountain.

This would bring this current WAA and then CAA event to 6” at 3,000ft over 48 hours.

[J.Spin]

20 hours ago, powderfreak said:

Mid-winter vibe up high today despite only 6” of cover.

Boy, those pictures really do have a midwinter vibe; thanks for sending them along. They give a great sense of how things have been going around here. October was on the slow side with respect to winter moving in, but this first third of November has been solid. Things started right up on the first of the month with that initial storm.  The snow depth at Mt. Mansfield Stake is only slightly above average, but the beginning of November can easily be volatile, so the slow and steady increase in snow depths instead of melting back speaks to some consistency.

The data from our site in the valley are in line with a strong start as well – even down at this elevation we’ve already had three accumulating storms, and six days with snow. That storm on the 9^th pushed the cumulative season snowfall to twice the average, and only two seasons in my records have had more snow up to that point. We’ve already had as much snow as we’d have on average by mid-month. This season’s cumulative snowfall plot for our site shows how things took off right at the start of the month, and we’ve really stayed at or above average since then.

I’ve only seen a few flakes in the valley this weekend, but any slopes above 2,000’ or so are white with the snow, so you get that winter feel with view in just about every direction out here in the mountains. Tomorrow’s system is looking decent for another round of accumulation in the mountains and maybe the valleys as well.

[bwt3650]

Man, that GFS run is loaded for NNE.  That would get winter started nicely. 

[J.Spin]

12 hours ago, bwt3650 said:

Man, that GFS run is loaded for NNE.  That would get winter started nicely. 

A good chunk of that GFS modeled snow was from that one potential event around Thanksgiving, but even without something specific like that, the modeled pattern looks decent. The most recent GFS run shows 4 to 6 additional systems over the course of the next couple of weeks – and they all bring snow. We can certainly have those relatively benign Novembers that bring near zero or just a couple inches of snow (I guess the weenies would call those the “boring” Novembers), but thus far this November hasn’t had that demeanor. We’ve already seen four accumulating storms and eight days with snow, and the first half of the month is naturally the more challenging portion for snowstorms and snow accumulation. We average 6 accumulating snowstorms during the month of November, so with 4 so far as we approach mid-month, that’s been a solid start. And relative to the first half of the month, the second half of the month really takes off with respect to average snowfall – that acceleration is quite apparent on the cumulative seasonal snowfall plot:

[powderfreak]

I’m not sure what MADIS says for a trend, but definitely noticing a warm trend all the sudden at MVL.

The MVL ASOS, out in the field, has never strayed far from the local PWS spots in the valley.  But recently it’s broken off from those PWS readings by up to several degrees at times.

36F when the valley is 32-35F.

[J.Spin]

The cloud ceiling seemed to be around 1,500’ to 2,000’ this morning, so I really couldn’t get a good view of the snow coverage up at Bolton Valley via their Main Base Webcam.  What I could see on the cam was that everything was white… extremely white. The snow coverage looked great, but the clouds were just too thick to get a good sense for what the snow depths were like beyond the areas where they’ve made a bunch of snow. This latest system did just drop another round of accumulation though, even down to the lower valleys, and the natural snow from all the storms we’ve had in the first half of the month has not been melting back in the higher elevations.

Even without a real-time view, it felt like the snow from this latest storm should have pushed the snowpack to the point where it was ready for some touring on low-angle slopes, so I decided to pop up to the mountain this morning on my way to Burlington. With this latest storm, the snow never really seemed to accumulate much to the west of our area in the lower elevations, so there were only a few traces of snow in Bolton Flats and at the base of the Bolton Valley Access Road. Accumulations gradually increased as I headed up in elevation though, and here’s a rough summary of the snow depth profile I encountered this morning:

340’: T

1,000’: T-1”

1,200’: T-2”

1,500’: 1-2”

2,000’: 2-3”

2,250’: 3-5”

2,500’: 4-6”

As the summary shows, the depths increased slowly at first, and it wasn’t until somewhere in the 1,200’ to 1,500’ elevation range where snow coverage became continuous. Assessing the depths in the Village parking lots at around 2,000’, I wasn’t initially sure if I was going to end up ski touring of just going for a hike, but I threw my skis on my pack because it looked like touring would be good to go as long as the base snow was substantial enough. Snow depths increased notably above 2,000’ mark, and a few minutes into my ascent, it was obvious that I was going to be able to ski on the descent. I had my climbing skins in my pack, but never put them on my skis because the hiking was easy enough, certainly easy enough that I didn’t want to add the extra transition time that putting on the skins would throw into the tour. If one does want to skin on the ascent though, there’s plenty of base to do it.

Indeed it’s the sufficient base snow that sealed the deal in terms of the skiing. Below these recent couple of inches, there’s a good amount of consolidated snow at varying degrees of depth. I only had time to tour up to about 2,500’, but the depths did look like they were continuing to improve above that point. It’s best to seek out low-angle, nicely maintained, grassy terrain at this point, but with that, you’re good to go for some very nice powder turns. I saw a couple of older ski tracks on my tour, but nothing from this morning, and that was helpful – untouched snow provided the very best powder turns, so staying away from any footprints or other snow traffic is the best bet. In the untouched snow, turns were bottomless, and I was only on 86 mm skis. The top half of my tour definitely offered the deepest snow and most ability to play around in the powder, but it was still decent all the way back down to the main base around 2,000’. In the lower couple hundred feet of vertical though, you just had to be more selective in sticking to the untouched snow for the smoothest turns. Rock skis or regular skis are both options if you know the terrain you’re going to be on. I didn’t have rock skis, but only made a hard touch or two to objects below the subsurface. Touching below the subsurface is pretty inconsequential on grassy, low-angle terrain, and thankfully, Bolton’s Wilderness area has plenty of those types of slopes.

[bwt3650]

7 hours ago, J.Spin said:

The cloud ceiling seemed to be around 1,500’ to 2,000’ this morning, so I really couldn’t get a good view of the snow coverage up at Bolton Valley via their Main Base Webcam.  What I could see on the cam was that everything was white… extremely white. The snow coverage looked great, but the clouds were just too thick to get a good sense for what the snow depths were like beyond the areas where they’ve made a bunch of snow. This latest system did just drop another round of accumulation though, even down to the lower valleys, and the natural snow from all the storms we’ve had in the first half of the month has not been melting back in the higher elevations.

Even without a real-time view, it felt like the snow from this latest storm should have pushed the snowpack to the point where it was ready for some touring on low-angle slopes, so I decided to pop up to the mountain this morning on my way to Burlington. With this latest storm, the snow never really seemed to accumulate much to the west of our area in the lower elevations, so there were only a few traces of snow in Bolton Flats and at the base of the Bolton Valley Access Road. Accumulations gradually increased as I headed up in elevation though, and here’s a rough summary of the snow depth profile I encountered this morning:

340’: T

1,000’: T-1”

1,200’: T-2”

1,500’: 1-2”

2,000’: 2-3”

2,250’: 3-5”

2,500’: 4-6”

As the summary shows, the depths increased slowly at first, and it wasn’t until somewhere in the 1,200’ to 1,500’ elevation range where snow coverage became continuous. Assessing the depths in the Village parking lots at around 2,000’, I wasn’t initially sure if I was going to end up ski touring of just going for a hike, but I threw my skis on my pack because it looked like touring would be good to go as long as the base snow was substantial enough. Snow depths increased notably above 2,000’ mark, and a few minutes into my ascent, it was obvious that I was going to be able to ski on the descent. I had my climbing skins in my pack, but never put them on my skis because the hiking was easy enough, certainly easy enough that I didn’t want to add the extra transition time that putting on the skins would throw into the tour. If one does want to skin on the ascent though, there’s plenty of base to do it.

Indeed it’s the sufficient base snow that sealed the deal in terms of the skiing. Below these recent couple of inches, there’s a good amount of consolidated snow at varying degrees of depth. I only had time to tour up to about 2,500’, but the depths did look like they were continuing to improve above that point. It’s best to seek out low-angle, nicely maintained, grassy terrain at this point, but with that, you’re good to go for some very nice powder turns. I saw a couple of older ski tracks on my tour, but nothing from this morning, and that was helpful – untouched snow provided the very best powder turns, so staying away from any footprints or other snow traffic is the best bet. In the untouched snow, turns were bottomless, and I was only on 86 mm skis. The top half of my tour definitely offered the deepest snow and most ability to play around in the powder, but it was still decent all the way back down to the main base around 2,000’. In the lower couple hundred feet of vertical though, you just had to be more selective in sticking to the untouched snow for the smoothest turns. Rock skis or regular skis are both options if you know the terrain you’re going to be on. I didn’t have rock skis, but only made a hard touch or two to objects below the subsurface. Touching below the subsurface is pretty inconsequential on grassy, low-angle terrain, and thankfully, Bolton’s Wilderness area has plenty of those types of slopes.

Nice winter vibe there.

[J.Spin]

12 hours ago, J.Spin said:

 

4 hours ago, bwt3650 said:

Nice winter vibe there.

Nice winter vibe indeed – and while we haven’t had any huge storms yet, these typical November rounds of snow have been building up to the point that people are definitely getting out to enjoy it. That second image in my report with the person in it was someone I saw just as I was finishing up my ski tour – they were out for a Nordic ski around the Village, and I bet it was someone who lives right up there. I saw them passing above me while they skied the access road, and I quickly fired off a bunch of shots before they disappeared into the clouds. PF’s winter vibe Stowe pictures from Saturday definitely played a role in getting me out for yesterday’s ski tour. Since I couldn’t quite get a solid visual from the Bolton Valley Webcam to know how the snowpack was looking, I was just about the head down to the basement for another pre-season leg workout… but thinking about how the higher elevations looked in PF’s pics helped tip the balance. If that was what it looked like before this most recent storm, there had to be enough out there at this point for some low-angle turns. And there certainly was.

With the clearer skies today, you can now see that Mansfield is lit up with the white of the recent snows from about 3,000’ on up, so that’s definitely helping with the winter vibe as well.

From what I note in the GFS modeling and BTV NWS forecast discussion, it looks like the next snow chances are coming right up in a couple of days as we head into the pre-holiday weekend, with a cold front coming through Friday into Saturday, and a northern stream shortwave Saturday into Sunday. As the BTV NWS explains, getting more than just a few snow showers from the cold front would require a more GFS-style solution vs. an ECMWF one, but both models do show the shortwave.

.LONG TERM /SATURDAY THROUGH TUESDAY/...

As of 327 AM EST Wednesday...Heading into Saturday, reinforcing northern stream shortwave energy will likely result in scattered terrain-focused snow showers as snow levels fall to below 1500 ft. The cold air advection will also steepen the low-level lapse rates, allowing for breezy 15-20 mph northwest winds. With temperatures in the 30s to low 40s, it will feel more like the teens and 20s. A wild card to consider is the evolution of the upper level pattern with regards to the coastal low that undergoes explosive cyclogenesis as it tracks close to the 70W/40N benchmark and into downeast Maine/New Brunswick on Saturday. The 00z GFS indicates a faster transition into a negatively tilted trough as downstream ridging builds over Newfoundland by Saturday afternoon. In contrast, the 00z ECMWF is more amplified with the H5 trough, resulting in the transition from neutral to negative tilt not occurring until Saturday night. If the GFS solution materializes, then the colder air will catch up with the exiting precipitation shield, resulting in the formation of an anafrontal wave east of the Champlain Valley and rain changing over to accumulating snow. Whereas if the ECMWF is right, then only scattered snow showers are expected. There is still time for model guidance to come into better consensus so be sure to monitor the latest forecast.

Whatever happens though, these rounds and rounds of modest snows are often how the Northern Greens do it, and before you know it, you’re skiing on it.

[wxeyeNH]

Looks like I could be in for a sneaky snow event on Tuesday night.  Over 1" liquid but the question is how fast or even will it switch over to rain.

[J.Spin]

I received a text alert earlier this afternoon that we’d been put under a Winter Weather Advisory.  The associated BTV NWS maps have been added below.

[timp]

Down to 15° now. Snowed on and off all day yesterday and it’s still a little white out there. Winter vibes for sure. 

[powderfreak]

25 minutes ago, timp said:

Down to 15° now. Snowed on and off all day yesterday and it’s still a little white out there. Winter vibes for sure. 

Yeah 15F now here too, off a high of 30F.  The shaded coating of snow survived here too.  Looks like one expects November too.

[J.Spin]

I see that the BTV NWS made a bit of a bump around here in the numbers on their Event Total Snowfall map, and that change is represented in our corresponding point forecast as well. Based on the forecast discussion, it sounds like it was due to some increases in the projected liquid equivalent from the storm.

Area Forecast Discussion

National Weather Service Burlington VT

657 AM EST Tue Nov 21 2023

.NEAR TERM /THROUGH WEDNESDAY/...

As of 650 AM EST Tuesday...

…There were also some increases in liquid equivalent amounts which favor slightly higher localized snowfall amounts for the Adirondacks and Green Mountains.

Snow...General amounts haven`t changed much; still expected 2-4 inches for the Adirondacks and southern/southeastern Vermont. However, the increase in QPF has nudged the potential slightly higher for a few very localized spots to see 6 inches; can`t completely rule out these amounts.

Updated maps for this event are below:

[#NoPoles]

We've had some good overnight temps for snow making. Bretton Woods is celebrating 50 years this weekend. We had about 1-2inches of snow this past overnight Sunday into Monday morning. Not a bad November so far to get ski season started. I remember Alex posting November 2018 before I lived up here. Skiing glades in November. Clearly that is an outlier and not average. I moved up here Nov 2019 and this November has been the most favorable for getting things started in November since I moved up here.

First synoptic storm with accumulating snow coming tomorrow. 

[borderwx]

8F this morning. Coldest of the month.




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[bwt3650]

Latest 3k nam has a decent burst of upslope for the northern greens early Friday morning. Would go a long way toward adding a little dust on crust after this cement out there locks up tight.




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[J.Spin]

The mountain snowpack that had been building up over the first half of the month melted back somewhat in the middle elevations at the end of last week, but this latest winter storm seemed to have the potential to replenish it. As of this morning, we’d picked up roughly 4 inches of new snow composed of 0.6 inches of liquid at the house, so the local mountains should have added enough new snow to set the table for more low-angle touring in the powder. Bolton Valley was reporting 3 to 4 inches of new snow overnight, and 5 inches in the past 48 hours. Assuming a similar density of snow to what fell at our house, plus whatever snow was in place before, it definitely felt like it was worth a visit.

In the Winooski Valley at the base of the Bolton Valley Access Road, we found 1 to 2 inches of new snow from this most recent storm, and up in the Village, total depths were 4 to 5 inches. Temperatures this morning were around the freezing mark, with a mix of wintry precipitation types as we set out on our tour. We found that snow depths increased a bit with elevation, hitting 5 to 6 inches around 2,500’ and 6 to 7 inches where we topped out around 2,700’.

The powder skiing was decent, with snow that was relatively dense but not sloppy or soggy on the upper half of our tour. The density did increase a bit more as we descended back toward the base around 2,000’, but the snow still hadn’t progressed to that spring-style sticky snow. I had freshly waxed up my skis in the morning, and that did appear to help give me an slightly easier time than my son who hadn’t.

While today’s powder was decent, the snow I found while out ski touring last week was definitely superior. I think that last week there was a touch more base, the snow overall was a bit deeper, and most importantly, the snow was notably drier. All those factors came together to set that skiing above the quality of what we found out there today. This dense snow that we just received does have the water content to set up a more substantial base though, and it’s really going to be great with some additional rounds of snow on top. The models do suggest that there are some events in the pipeline over the next week, so we’ll see what the mountains get from those.

[J.Spin]

About a half hour ago I received a text alert that we’d been put under a Winter Weather Advisory – this seemed to come on pretty quickly, just as the snow was starting up here, so I assume the BTV NWS has seen something in the latest modeling that had them go with the advisory. We are getting a bit of slushy accumulation when the snowfall intensity is high enough, but with the marginal temperatures, it seems like heavier snowfall is what it would take to get any sort of substantial accumulation down here in the valley.

[powderfreak]

I-89 in Waterbury and then the RT 108 near the Stowe base area.

[Boston Bulldog]

3 hours ago, J.Spin said:

About a half hour ago I received a text alert that we’d been put under a Winter Weather Advisory – this seemed to come on pretty quickly, just as the snow was starting up here, so I assume the BTV NWS has seen something in the latest modeling that had them go with the advisory. We are getting a bit of slushy accumulation when the snowfall intensity is high enough, but with the marginal temperatures, it seems like heavier snowfall is what it would take to get any sort of substantial accumulation down here in the valley.

I really like how this map from BTV shows the intersection of synoptic and mesoscale dynamics at play in Central VT. If there was ever going to be a Killington bullseye with QPF distributed relatively evenly across the VT, this would be it. Ample forcing for orographic ascent is delivered to the region by SE flow curling around the vortmax that is both traveling across far southern VT and is tilted SE to NW with height. Simultaneously, the flow which "originates" from the CRV is relatively unimpeded until reaching the peaks just south of the Killington area. Add in a more little elevation near Killington to help take care of the marginal airmass and... bullseye!

Meanwhile, orographic dynamics are not maximized farther north given the amount of terrain upstream

[mreaves]

6” here and my internet connection is down. A real birch-bender.  

[bwt3650]

Kinda surprising over performer at 1850’. Wonder what the summits at 3500’ look like?


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[powderfreak]

48 minutes ago, bwt3650 said:

Kinda surprising over performer at 1850’. Wonder what the summits at 3500’ look like?


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I’m hearing 10-12” Mansfield.  Only ski on the top 4” of it though.  Given QPF of 1.00-1.20” if you get into the 10:1 ratio zone it’s probably a foot.

Did not expect 6-7” down at 750ft.

[tamarack]

1.03" here, and if there was any frozen at the start, it was long gone by when I looked out at 6 AM.  Franklin County Roads FB site noted messy roads about 3 towns to the north and northwest, including a loaded log truck jackknifed and blocking a road west of Rangeley.

[borderwx]

6” here and my internet connection is down. A real birch-bender.  

Indeed!

7” of cement here.


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