NNE Cold Season Thread 2024-2025

[alex]

Snowing pretty well here, temp 31F. I was in Boston last night and got an inch or two there, I was surprised to come home to another 4-5”. Definitely helped cover up some of the skied up areas from the weekend in the glades. Stake at 15”

[#NoPoles]

Rain mixed in

[powderfreak]

Yeah it’s been like a white rain.

A half inch sloppy coating.

[#NoPoles]

White rain here. It was a rain snow mix around 630pm, now it's mostly snow but it's still above freezing.

[tunafish]

3 hours ago, powderfreak said:

You’re not the only one lol.  The Stowe Family is always arguing with me that there’s more snow.  

I think this is more common than we realize.  Meaning, the public's perception of total snowfall compared to that of the observer (or even weenie).  

This is my 4th winter doing obs for GYX. Friends around town will ask me how much we got, and each year, for almost every event, their response when I tell them the amount is the same:  "that's it?"

People perceive a 4" event to be 6", or 10.5" to be 13".  And that's in a place that, for the most part, see's less variability than your locale in term of amounts across a geographical area.

[backedgeapproaching]

25 minutes ago, tunafish said:

I think this is more common than we realize.  Meaning, the public's perception of total snowfall compared to that of the observer (or even weenie).  

This is my 4th winter doing obs for GYX. Friends around town will ask me how much we got, and each year, for almost every event, their response when I tell them the amount is the same:  "that's it?"

People perceive a 4" event to be 6", or 10.5" to be 13".  And that's in a place that, for the most part, see's less variability than your locale in term of amounts across a geographical area.

I mentioned the other week a coworker of mine on a zoom called said "at least a foot" near ORH when that event no one had more than 6-7".  Well, this morning on a another Monday morning zoom a different coworker who lives somewhere around Taunton Mass area said definitely 4-5". Who knew my team was loaded with slant stickers 

[backedgeapproaching]

Pretty decent rainfall going on down here. 

.30" and counting. Raining at all elevations looks like in SVT. Need some CAA to get here.

[dmconno]

Wow, @powderfreak you/Stowe finally got the Gondola webcam back up an running, good goin'! Solid snow amounts thus far showing 5" on the web cam stake. 

[DavisStraight]

22 minutes ago, backedgeapproaching said:

I mentioned the other week a coworker of mine on a zoom called said "at least a foot" near ORH when that event no one had more than 6-7".  Well, this morning on a another Monday morning zoom a different coworker who lives somewhere around Taunton Mass area said definitely 4-5". Who knew my team was loaded with slant stickers 

I get the opposite reaction, we can get a foot with all the channels hyping the storm and my brother-in-law will always say we got less and they over hyped, it wasn't that bad. He drives 2 miles to work and back home so it's not like he has a commute, drive on the pike with a foot of snow and you'll feel differently about 12 inches.

[powderfreak]

12 minutes ago, dmconno said:

Wow, @powderfreak you/Stowe finally got the Gondola webcam back up an running, good goin'! Solid snow amounts thus far showing 5" on the web cam stake. 

It’s a new cam with a live view.  That old one was static low-def. A nice base area observation point there at Midway base lodge.

[J.Spin]

I didn’t get a chance to post the BTV NWS maps earlier, but the storm train is rolling on and Winter Weather Advisories have been up in the Northern Greens. I’m seeing projected accumulations of 4-8” for the local mountains, and our point forecast down here in the valley has 2-4”.

[borderwx]

Cleared 5” new this AM, no mixing up this way

Down to 17F now

Winter wonderland


.

[J.Spin]

30 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Talk about going into the snow portal… holy sh*t at 1500ft.  The ski area is just stuffed with snow.  Its dumping near 1”/hr upslope after 7” of denser snow overnight.

There has to be 24-30” on the ground at 1500ft now.  Road snowbanks are taller than SUV’s.  Last night took this up another level with some good QPF rich snow.  This little pocket up here is buried.

I just checked that radar, and what a classic look of the spine getting lit up with that northwest flow:

[borderwx]

12. Still heavy snow. Off the charts good skiing today




.

[powderfreak]

1 minute ago, J.Spin said:

I just checked that radar, and what a classic look of the spine getting lit up with that northwest flow:

Flurries and light snow in town but once up Harlow Hill it’s pounding.  Classic Stowe side gradient.

Once you get to Binghams Falls and past there, it’s just full on buried.

[mreaves]

4 minutes ago, J.Spin said:

I just checked that radar, and what a classic look of the spine getting lit up with that northwest flow:

I'm at the office in Waterbury today and its been like a snowglobe all day.

[powderfreak]

1pm trail pow thanks to the upslope pulse.  Whole mountain was refreshed during the day after the morning powder rush.  Good local rush at opening to the overnight snowfall, then folks dispersed or went to work/school.  As the morning rush was ending, it started dumping and was dropping 1"/hr there for a time.  The afternoon turns were fantastic.

It was snowing heavily at times.  7" at High Road as of 9am and it just kept going from there, with another 4" after that.

 

[bwt3650]

Can’t use the pf garbage can trick if you can’t see it..getting deep again



Should have the deck disappear after the next couple rounds…




.

[Froude]

Perfect right side up snow today. Made it up to Jay and can confirm the 8-10" plus a few more during the day today. It's stuffed up there for sure.

Quite a run we're on with a couple more systems on the way.

[J.Spin]

I headed up for some touring at Bolton Valley yesterday morning to check out the overnight snows, and after being somewhat unimpressed with the way the powder skied on Saturday with those fresh accumulations, I was eager to see how this event affected the skiing. I’m happy to say that Sunday night’s snow led to fantastic powder skiing right from the start. The resort was indicating 4 to 6 inches of fresh snow, and that seems right in line with what I found for new accumulations on terrain that had been groomed before the storm. Liquid analyses from down at our house in the valley indicated that the overnight snow was in the 6 to 7% H2O range, so while it wasn’t super dry, it seemed dry enough to sit atop the existing snowpack and blend well with the powder to create a right-side-up gradient. Just as important in the quality of the powder skiing may have been the temperatures – unlike the single digits from Saturday or even the teens from Sunday, temperatures were in the 20s F. It had been a while since I skied in temperatures that warm, and you could definitely feel the effects of the faster, warmer snow. My skis had plenty of glide, and the powder turns immediately gave that “floating-on-a-cloud” feeling while descending in the Snow Hole area. Another enjoyable aspect of the temperatures were simply the relative warmth. I guess it’s really only been a couple of weeks, but after a lot of cold days, I’d forgotten how enjoyable temperatures in the 20s F can be – you can ski, hang out, and do whatever, and it’s all so comfortable.

I toured via the Wilderness Uphill Route, and what made the session especially good was that there was so much more untracked powder than I’d expected. The Wilderness Chair still wasn’t running, so I assume it has to be down for mechanical reasons while they repair it, and having just the minimal midweek ski touring traffic on all those acres is certainly going to leave a lot of untouched snow to spare. They were getting pounded with upslope snow today on top of the denser snow that fell overnight, so hopefully that’s a recipe to set up more days of quality powder skiing.

[dmconno]

Any chance Northern Vermont avoids the freezing drizzle tomorrow tonight? 

[MRVexpat]

3 hours ago, dmconno said:

Any chance Northern Vermont avoids the freezing drizzle tomorrow tonight? 

Ripping and reading the models shows a vast majority going thump to dry slot to upslope in northern VT with any zr staying Killington or south and temps in the mid to high 20s. Most forecasts however show at least a short period of zr all the way up to Jay. I'm no met so would love to understand what I'm missing here. 

[dmcginvt]

On 2/3/2025 at 10:32 PM, powderfreak said:

It’s a new cam with a live view.  That old one was static low-def. A nice base area observation point there at Midway base lodge.

but what happened to the snow board cam, first it died, now its off the page altogether!

[powderfreak]

22 hours ago, bwt3650 said:

Can’t use the pf garbage can trick if you can’t see it..getting deep again



Should have the deck disappear after the next couple rounds…




.

Ha that’s awesome.  There’s so much snow at elevation.

[powderfreak]

1 hour ago, dmcginvt said:

but what happened to the snow board cam, first it died, now its off the page altogether!

There was a power issue at the top of the Lookout Double that took the cam off-line. Friends in Lift Maintenance were nice enough to troubleshoot this morning and the cam came back online… only to discover it broke a weld while rotating into the massive drift that formed underneath it last night.  So the board rotates at 6am and there’s one on the bottom and one on the top, and they just flip 180 degrees each day.

A drift formed underneath the elevated platform and, well, broke it (not the first time it’s happened and not the last).  So it was removed from the website while it’s getting fixed… but it’s never truly removed, it’s just hidden.  The live image is still there at the source… which you can find this address if you look at the HTML code for the web cam page when the camera is active.  

https://player.brownrice.com/embed/stowesnowstake

Lift Maintenance brought it down to the shop and was working on it this afternoon… we hope to have the platform back up tomorrow or Friday.  Then it’ll be unhidden again from the resort page.

[powderfreak]

5 hours ago, MRVexpat said:

Ripping and reading the models shows a vast majority going thump to dry slot to upslope in northern VT with any zr staying Killington or south and temps in the mid to high 20s. Most forecasts however show at least a short period of zr all the way up to Jay. I'm no met so would love to understand what I'm missing here. 

Lack of ice crystals and nuclei in the dry slot.  So what often happens is we’ll get the deeper mid-level WAA lift being a several hour period of steady snow… but then the mid-level dry slot punches through.  Snow growth temperatures are so high up because of the warm air advection (but not above freezing)… we end up with supercooled water droplets and low level orographics enhancing moisture slightly in the mountains.

Enter freezing drizzle and freezing mist.  The type of stuff that coats your goggles and jackets but sometimes just seems suspended in the air, maybe not even weighing enough to fall to the ground.  And if it is heavy enough to fall, it’s small droplet (drizzle) and low QPF.

We see this quite a bit in these set ups… as soon as the mid-level lift exits northeast, it goes freezing drizzle or snizzle.  QPF may not even be measurable but it can candy coat the snow, lifts, trees.

And then if you do get a stronger shower or better lift it’ll go back to snow as the lift is usually higher up in that case.  Those are the times when you get freezing drizzle and mist, then burst of snow then back to very light mist/drizzle… all at like 22F up on the mountains.

[Froude]

9 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Lack of ice crystals and nuclei in the dry slot…

Interesting stuff. I also remember a few colder storms that went from 20:1 fluff and finished off with frz drizzle at the end. Just enough zipper crust to ruin the pow.

Heres a couple from up high yesterday. Feels like another planet up there.

[powderfreak]

39 minutes ago, Froude said:

Interesting stuff. I also remember a few colder storms that went from 20:1 fluff and finished off with frz drizzle at the end. Just enough zipper crust to ruin the pow.

Heres a couple from up high yesterday. Feels like another planet up there.

This photo is awesome and shows the Whoville caked vibe up high in the mountains. 

I think its fascinating to see the stepwise increases... like we've had good snowcover down here in the valley but it's been holding between like 10-15" lately on both the west and east sides in that 500-1,000ft elevation range.  Once you get to 1,500ft+ it's a stepwise doubling of snowpack.  Then it does it again at like 3,000ft+ and the 4,000ft elevations are absolutely buried after 5 weeks of orographic snow and rime and very little time (if any) above freezing.

[MRVexpat]

46 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Lack of ice crystals and nuclei in the dry slot.  So what often happens is we’ll get the deeper mix-level WAA lift being a several hour period of steady snow… but then the mid-level dry slot punches through.  Snow growth temperatures are so high up because of the warm air advection (but not above freezing)… we end up with supercooled water droplets and low level orographics enhancing moisture slightly in the mountains.

Enter freezing drizzle and freezing mist.  The type of stuff that coats your goggles and jackets but sometimes just seems suspended in the air, maybe not even weighing enough to fall to the ground.  And if it is heavy enough to fall, it’s small droplet (drizzle) and low QPF.

We see this quite a bit in these set ups… as soon as the mid-level lift exits northeast, it goes freezing drizzle or snizzle.  QPF may not even be measurable but it can candy coat the snow, lifts, trees.

And then if you do get a stronger shower or better lift it’ll go back to snow as the lift is usually higher up in that case.  Those are the times when you get freezing drizzle and mist, then burst of snow then back to very light mist/drizzle… all at like 22F.

Super interesting and thnx for the explanation!

[dmcginvt]

2 hours ago, powderfreak said:

There was a power issue at the top of the Lookout Double that took the cam off-line. Friends in Lift Maintenance were nice enough to troubleshoot this morning and the cam came back online… only to discover it broke a weld while rotating into the massive drift that formed underneath it last night.  So the board rotates at 6am and there’s one on the bottom and one on the top, and they just flip 180 degrees each day.

A drift formed underneath the elevated platform and, well, broke it (not the first time it’s happened and not the last).  So it was removed from the website while it’s getting fixed… but it’s never truly removed, it’s just hidden.  The live image is still there at the source… which you can find this address if you look at the HTML code for the web cam page when the camera is active.  

https://player.brownrice.com/embed/stowesnowstake

Lift Maintenance brought it down to the shop and was working on it this afternoon… we hope to have the platform back up tomorrow or Friday.  Then it’ll be unhidden again from the resort page.

I wish this had like reddit upvotes.  Most amazing answer ever!