NNE Cold Season Thread 2024-2025

[dmcginvt]

On 3/3/2025 at 4:30 PM, powderfreak said:

It sometimes matters, blocked vs unblocked, but to me it matters more for the lower elevations around the mountains.  Regardless of blocking, the actual Spine above 2,000ft is going to get snow regardless.  Like a blocked flow that favors west side is still going to snow on the upper east slopes of like Stowe, Sugarbush and Jay.  Likewise, a more unblocked flow is going to still snow at Bolton and Smuggs upper elevations.

The blocking discussion and Froude can be used to highlight the jackpot areas, but above 2,000ft along the Spine is going to get at least some snow in all Froude numbers.

NWS BTV Froude study was more for how it impacts the inhabited elevations around the mountains… so like blocked flow, we aren’t getting more than light snow in Stowe Village or RT 100 corridor while Underhill and Jeffersonville or towns along west side are pounding.  Unblocked flow is going to put snow into the RT 100 corridor on east side while it’s going over the west slope communities.

Through it all, the mountains and Spine are getting snow in most of those situations.

Either way, Smuggs is a fine choice for CAA, W/NW flow squeezing out residual moisture after the rain.  If the flow is blocked, the snowfall should get more into the lower elevations on that west side, while it dries up or at least is more gusty wind-blown snow below 1500-2000ft on the east side.

damn best explanation ever/  It goes for that garfield area of hyde park too up by green river res.  Just a magical place for snow.  Everything that comes down the lamoille valley and has a little elevation just gets crushed because theres nothing else to stop it it is essentially the upslope between say whiteface (aka sterling but not the sterling at smuggs it's confusing) and idk belviedere as far as peaks go. I did not explain that well, but there's just enough rise coming out of the lamoille valley that this area gets so much snow

[borderwx]

Primo skate skiing on the fresh tilled. That March sun matters, in the shade very fast conditions, the sun was softening wherever it could land, despite the wind.

Backroads doing the same, ice packed to ruts and back again.

Nice view from Craftsbury…



.

[powderfreak]

@J.Spin in line for a good streamer.

[J.Spin]

5 hours ago, powderfreak said:

@J.Spin in line for a good streamer.

I was driving home from Burlington during that, and it was brutal. It wasn’t that the roads themselves were too bad in terms of traction, since there was only and inch or two of new snow on them; it was the visibility that was an issue. It was 1-2”/hr. snowfall with big flakes, and the plows weren’t really out clearing things off yet. So, it was just white on white on white with massive flakes pounding down so that you can only see about a car’s length in front of you. Forget about trying to tell where the edge of the road or the other lane was. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t received a squall alert on my phone with how difficult the driving was, but at least there were Special Weather Statements:

NEAR TERM /THROUGH SATURDAY NIGHT/...

As of 645 PM EST Friday...Main focus with the update this evening was to monitor the ongoing heavy, gusty showers stretched across the forecast area. Have issued Special Weather Statements over the past few hours to note this, however these showers are not quite reaching true snow squall criteria with visibilities floating around 1/4 to 1/2 but wind gusts barely cresting 30 mph at times. The concern comes in regards to folks still traveling for an evening commute. PoPs have been increased and weather type switched to heavy snow for the next several hours.

I was definitely in the target audience for that message though, and it was essentially heavy snow for my entire drive home. I’ve never appreciated every little road reflector and sign that the highway department has in place along Route 2. Thankfully we don’t have those massive open areas of terrain like they do in the plains, but you can clearly see why they sometimes close down the highways out there.

I was reading the BTV NWS forecast discussion, and it was only there that I learned that apparently more snow is on the way tonight:

Once the Sun sets, winds should begin to decrease and temperatures will gradually cool off into the teens to lower 20s again. That surface trough will produce additional snow showers overnight, which will be enhanced by an incoming upper vort and then push south by morning.

Sure enough, the radar shows more snow upstream just about to hit the area. Life in the Northern Greens.

[J.Spin]

I really hadn’t planned on skiing today. Earlier in the week, Winter Storm Lola came through the area, and it was a warm enough system at all elevations that conditions were clearly going to firm up after it passed and temperatures cooled back down. While we did get some snow on the front and back ends of the system, it wasn’t going to be enough to get anywhere near the resurfacing that would be needed to soften up the ski surfaces. I was somewhat looking forward to an excuse to not head up to the mountain though; the snow conditions have been so good for more than two months straight that it’s been hard to pull away from the snow to catch up on everything else in life. Today I figured I’d take the opportunity to head on in to work and get some things done there.

Mother Nature seemed to have other plans for me though. While there weren’t any major winter storms in the area, this is Northern Vermont, and sometimes snow, heavy snow, just happens. As I was driving home from Burlington yesterday afternoon, I did so to the tune of some very heavy snowfall. It wasn’t that the roads themselves were too bad in terms of traction, since there was only an inch or two of new snow on them; it was the visibility that was an issue. It was 1-2”/hr. snowfall with big flakes, and the plows hadn’t been out clearing things off yet. So, it was just white on white on white with massive flakes pounding down so that you could only see about a car’s length in front of you. Forget about trying to tell where the edge of the road or the other lane was. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t received a squall alert on my phone with how difficult the driving was, but I did find out that at least there were Special Weather Statements posted:

NEAR TERM /THROUGH SATURDAY NIGHT/...

As of 645 PM EST Friday...Main focus with the update this evening was to monitor the ongoing heavy, gusty showers stretched across the forecast area. Have issued Special Weather Statements over the past few hours to note this, however these showers are not quite reaching true snow squall criteria with visibilities floating around 1/4 to 1/2 but wind gusts barely cresting 30 mph at times. The concern comes in regards to folks still traveling for an evening commute. PoPs have been increased and weather type switched to heavy snow for the next several hours.

I was definitely in the target audience for that message though, and it was essentially heavy snow for my entire drive home. I’ve never appreciated every little road reflector and sign that the highway department has in place along Route 2. Thankfully we don’t have those massive open areas of terrain like they do in the plains, but you can clearly see why they sometimes close down the highways out there.

Later in the evening I was reading the BTV NWS forecast discussion, to catch up on what had hit the area earlier, and I then learned that apparently more snow was on the way:

Once the Sun sets, winds should begin to decrease, and temperatures will gradually cool off into the teens to lower 20s again. That surface trough will produce additional snow showers overnight, which will be enhanced by an incoming upper vort and then push south by morning.

Sure enough, the radar showed more snow upstream just about to hit the area, and I couldn’t help but wonder what things were going to look like in the morning.

By early this morning, we’d picked up 3.2” of new snow down at our site in the valley, and Bolton Valley was reporting 3-5” new in their snow report. For better or worse, I knew that was going to be enough to get at least some of the lower angle terrain skiing quite well, so I packed my gear for a quick ski tour on my way into Burlington.

Based on the accumulations, I knew the Wilderness Uphill Route would be the place to go, and this was only reinforced by the fact that neither the Wilderness Double Chair nor the Vista Quad Chair were running because of the strong winds that were hitting the mountains. Indeed, when I reached the Bolton Valley Village, the winds were howling. I was amazed at the number of visitors that were at the resort without two main lifts in operation – cars were parking in the third and fourth tiers of the Village parking lots.

Temperatures were well up into the teens F though, and you can really feel that we’re not in January anymore. It was clear that the winds had been strong for a while, because even the very sheltered Lower Turnpike area had been hit. Between areas that had been groomed, and areas exposed to the winds, you really had to head off the edges of the trail to get into the powder. Once you got to that new snow though, it was there just like the snow report had said. Starting right from the 2,000’ elevation, I found about 4” of powder in protected areas off the trail, and I was able to find a general 3-6” of powder in the 2,000’ to 2,500’ elevation range where I toured. In areas with some drifting, I was finding up to 12” of new snow, but that was certainly not the norm.

The skiing was excellent, as long as you knew where to go. The lower angle trees were definitely the ticket this morning – the powder in there had not been hit by the winds, and they probably collected the extra snow that had blow from the exposed areas on the trails. It was medium-weight powder, so certainly not enough to be bottomless, but on mid-fat skis it was enough to generally keep you out of contact with the subsurface for nice, quiet turns. The Lower Wilderness Woods area was very good in this regard, and it was made better by that fact that the snow was pristine. Yes, the summit lifts were down, but very few people were even out touring, and nobody had been in there.

The turns were nice enough that I contemplated going for another run, and I definitely would have if I didn’t have anything else on my schedule for the day. It was especially tough to pull away from the mountain at that point because another round of heavy snowfall had moved in as I was finishing up my tour. It was quickly accumulating over everyone’s cars, and you knew it was going to beef up the powder another notch to further improve the skiing.

[J.Spin]

Since Winter Storm Lola last week, we’ve had sort of a miniature Northern Greens bread-and-butter pattern of storms. We’ve had five winter systems affect the area in the past five days, bringing a foot of snow to our site in the valley, and substantially more to the local mountains. The two most recent weather events affected the area within hours of each other, with an area of upper-level vorticity affecting the area during the midday period yesterday, and quick moving Alberta Clipper system hitting the area during the overnight period. When I looked outside last night around midnight and saw heavy snow falling with flakes up to 20 mm in diameter, it was a sign that I should get the ski gear ready.

As of this morning we’d picked up 4.8 inches of new snow at the house, and the Bolton Valley snow report was indicating 6 to 8 inches of snow in the past 24 hours, so a trip up to the hill was definitely in order. My time was somewhat limited in the early morning, but with the potential for temperatures to rise above freezing later in the day, I still wanted to get in a quick ski tour in the fresh snow.

I toured via the Wilderness Uphill Route on the lower half of the main mountain in the 2,000’ to 2,300’ elevation range and found powder depths of 7 to 10 inches over the subsurface. It was medium weight powder and easily set up bottomless turns on lower and mid-angle slopes. Temperatures were in the mid-20s F, which was comfortable yet cool enough to keep the powder in excellent shape.

[J.Spin]

With yesterday’s new snow, my plan had always been to head up to the mountain for some turns as soon as I’d taken care of a scheduled meeting in the morning. Unsure of how the temperatures were going to affect the powder later in the day though, I’d gone out for an early morning ski tour via the Wilderness Uphill Route. A colleague of mine is in town for a couple of weeks working on a project, and he was eager to get up to the mountain for some Nordic skiing when he heard about all the new snow, so the two of us headed back to Bolton Valley for a midday session.

For the afternoon session, I was thinking of either going for another tour, or doing some lift-served skiing, but I first wanted to see how the quality of the powder was faring as we approached midday. While swinging through the Village Circle to let my colleague pick up his Nordic pass, the temperature was just below freezing at the 2,000’ elevation, so I figured riding the lifts was the safer bet in case the snow started to get wet.

We parked right along the Broadway Trail in the backcountry lot, and it provided perfect access for my colleague to jump onto the trail network for his Nordic session, while I headed up to the Vista Quad. Though the temperature may have been approaching the freezing mark at 2,000’, it was well down into the 20s F once you got up around 3,000’. I’d wondered if there was going to be some warmer air at elevation, but that question had been quickly answered.

The powder I found was just as good as what I’d experienced in the morning, and there had obviously been some lift-served skier traffic, but being a midweek day, there was still plenty of untracked snow to ski. I started off on Spillway Lane, and the typically snow areas off to the left were providing excellent powder turns. When I dropped into Hard Luck though, I quickly realized that it was too steep for the available snow – it was tracked up enough that I was hitting the subsurface constantly, and that subsurface is fairly firm. As soon as I discovered this, I cut to the right into some trees and made my way onto Vermont 200. What I found was that at those black diamond pitches, you really needed first tracks to get soft, bottomless turns. Once a few tracks were in place, you started to hit the subsurface. Thankfully, the bottom sections of Vermont 200 where the terrain spreads out provided plenty of untouched snow for excellent turns.

After that first run though, I spent the rest of my session focused on more moderate angle terrain, and that provided consistently great turns. With time, the snow started to get a bit denser down toward the Village, and the powder was still skiing well, but you could tell the freezing level was rising. When I’d finished my session and was waiting at the car for my colleague to finish up, I was able to soak up some sun really appreciate the weather that we were getting. After what’s been a long, consistently cold winter season, it was finally starting to feel like March!

[#NoPoles]

We lost a lot of snow today. 55 degrees felt amazing! I want more

[powderfreak]

BTV’s snow map for meteorological winter… Dec-Feb. Oct/Nov or Mar+ not included.

Westfield and @J.Spin with the highest totals under 1,200ft.  Both spots are on the immediate east slope.  166” vs 165.6”.

Up on the mountain… 296” cumulative total at the Mansfield High Road plot at 3,014ft. Every measurement documented with a photo.

[DavisStraight]

1 hour ago, powderfreak said:

BTV’s snow map for meteorological winter… Dec-Feb. Oct/Nov or Mar+ not included.

Westfield and @J.Spin with the highest totals.  Both spots are on the immediate east slope.  166” vs 165.6”.

Up on the mountain… 296” cumulative total at the Mansfield High Road plot at 3,014ft. Every measurement documented with a photo.

Is that a 409.5 in southern Vermont?

[powderfreak]

2 minutes ago, DavisStraight said:

Is that a 409.5 in southern Vermont?

You sure it’s not 109”?

[DavisStraight]

Just now, powderfreak said:

Has to be a typo.

I thought maybe they added a number but 40.5 and 49.5 seems too low.

[mreaves]

26 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

You sure it’s not 109”?

 

25 minutes ago, DavisStraight said:

I thought maybe they added a number but 40.5 and 49.5 seems too low.

Looks like a 109 over a spot of white. 

[DavisStraight]

Good eye, that's what it is.

[J.Spin]

Spring was in full effect today, with temperatures up into the 50s F even at elevation. My wife figured it would be a great day to head up to the mountain for some spring skiing, so the two of us hit the mountain around noontime. We’d hoped to park at Timberline, but the first day of the Blauvelt’s Banks competition was taking place there, and there wasn’t a spot to be found. So, we continued on up to the main base and parking was getting maxed out there as well. Fortunately, they were allowing people to park right on the Bolton Valley Access Road, and we had some lucky timing that got us a spot right by the Village Circle for incredibly easy access to the lifts. Also taking place today was “A Day for Jake” to celebrate the legacy of Jake Burton, and Bolton Valley was one of the participating resorts, with various activities throughout the day. With so much going on, and a simply spectacular warm spring day offering full sunshine, it wasn’t a surprise that the parking was filling up.

Despite the large number of visitors to the resort, the only chair with any sort of lift queue was the Vista Quad, and that was just a few minutes. The other lifts were simply walk-on, and we found that curious at first, but after our first run on Wilderness, we discovered why. With the warm temperatures, the terrain offerings from Vista were far and away the best ski options. Steep, natural snow terrain faces just below the summit ridge level that have been plagued by the strong westerly winds this season have never had much snow on them, and they’ve already begun to melt out. This meant that Peggy Dow’s was really the only main route off the Wilderness Summit. On top of that, natural snow terrain without high-angle pitches was getting slow in the afternoon sun – you had to stick to the shady sides of the trials to get the best glide. Steep terrain with manmade snow was the very best place to be for turns today, and Vista certainly has that. People had clearly figured that out, and it’s why everyone flocked to the Vista Quad. Turns were excellent on the steep slopes of Spillway and Hard Luck, which can often be overly firm with their hard, manmade surfaces. That certainly wasn’t the case today though; that firm manmade snow was setting up very nicely with the warm afternoon sun to make some excellent spring snow surfaces.

After my wife and I were done with our ski session, she headed home and I was able to hook up with my colleagues Mark and Dustin, who were out for some snowshoeing on the Bolton’s Nordic and Backcountry Network. They spent some time touring on World Cup, then when I joined them we took a trip up to Bryant Cabin and back via the Bryant Trail. We were able to chat, talk some shop, and really just enjoy more of a great spring day in the mountains. Mark and Dustin were very impressed with the depth of the snowpack. You really couldn’t tell how deep the snow was when you were walking on it, but occasionally at a stream crossing you’d get a view of where water had cut into the snowpack, and you could get a serious perspective on the depth. The snowpack at the Mt. Mansfield Stake is currently in the range of 7 to 8 feet, so there’s definitely a lot of base in place as we head farther into the spring skiing season.

[J.Spin]

On 3/14/2025 at 9:57 PM, powderfreak said:

BTV’s snow map for meteorological winter… Dec-Feb. Oct/Nov or Mar+ not included.

Westfield and @J.Spin with the highest totals under 1,200ft.  Both spots are on the immediate east slope.  166” vs 165.6”.

Up on the mountain… 296” cumulative total at the Mansfield High Road plot at 3,014ft. Every measurement documented with a photo.

Thanks for the update PF. That lavender blue coloring demarcation for 120”+ really makes the Northern Greens stand out and reveals how snowy some of the lower elevation sites are around here.

Since snowfall routinely starts up in October/November in our area, I don’t generally think about the “meteorological winter” block of time in isolation, but your post prompted me to check my data. It looks like this season actually had the highest snowfall for that period on my records. As I mentioned earlier, December, January, and February all ran above average on snowfall, and that doesn’t happen too often. The current season isn’t in first place on overall snowfall at the moment because of the relatively slow November for the lower elevations, but if we’d had even a roughly average November, we’d be around 200” of snowfall already and it would certainly be in the lead. It’s just not easy to pull off month after month after month after month of above average snowfall, which is of course why the overall averages are what they are.

In any event, it’s mid-month and a good time to check in on the season’s snowfall progression, so the updated plot has been added below. For some reason, people hadn’t mentioned the 2010-2011 winter season in the discussion yet (I guess it was a little behind the others back in February), but it’s clearly in the same range as these other seasons that are part of the conversation, so I’ve added it to the snowfall progression plot as a light blue trace.

As far as this season’s snowfall progress is concerned, we haven’t had any new snow since Monday’s storm, so one can see the current plateau shown in pink in the plot. This stretch over the past several days has actually been a relatively long period to go without any new snow – a quick look at the plot shows that the last time we’d had a stretch like this was back at the end of December. But as we get toward March and temperatures begin to rise, that’s not too surprising.

I know you’ve mentioned that the season has been “decent” and “respectable”, and based on snowfall, I’d probably go with something a bit stronger like “solid” or something along those lines. The current snowfall progression plot clearly speaks to the fact that the season isn’t off the charts special or anything like that though. Even in my 18 years of data there were three seasons with similar snowfall at this point, and now this makes a fourth one of these types of seasons in less that 20 years. So, being at this amount of season snowfall in mid-March isn’t uncommon, and my records suggest that we’re typically in this position every 4 to 5 seasons. I guess another way to put it would be that based on what we’ve seen up to this point, it would put 2024-2025 in the top 20-25% of seasons for this area based on snowfall.

A feather in the cap of this season that should be noted was the many weeks through January and February in which we didn’t have a single major thaw, and that obviously helped with snow quality and snowpack building, but it’s not as if we haven’t had similar stretches like that before. An argument for a knock against this season that could be made was the lack of large storms – we didn’t have any of those 40 to 60-inch storm cycles that sometimes hit the local mountains. Those events often arise from having a large system pass along the coast and then park itself up near the Maritimes, but there just weren’t any huge coastal systems to easily set that up this season. Those storms can be nice, but the amplified patterns that often promote them can be more trouble than they’re worth. If you have an amplified pattern creating huge storms, and even one of those passes to the west of the area, the warmth it brings can be quite detrimental to the snowpack and snow conditions. A more zonal “bread and butter” type of flow is a much steadier, safer approach toward snow quality and good skiing, and as this season has shown, the Northern Greens can clearly succeed with decent snowfall and snowpack in a season like that. If climate change really is reducing amplification and promoting more zonal flow like some say, then maybe snowfall averages around here will start climbing like people have suggested. It’s hard to imagine that the Great Lakes would be spending more time cold/frozen if temperatures continue to rise, so that moisture source is going to be more readily available, and the local mountains/orographics aren’t going anywhere as far as we know. If the type of winter we’ve been having this season is what the local resorts up here in the Northern Greens have to deal with more frequently going forward, I don’t think many of them will complain about the potential lack of a few of those upper echelon storm cycles. Those really big events certainly do provide a fun jolt to the excitement level in the local ski scene, and they can provide some off the hook powder conditions in the short term, so that’s a downside of missing out on them.

In any event, there’s still 2 to 3 months of potential snowfall to go for this season, and it looks like snow chances are going to pick back up this week based on the modeling and forecasts:

Area Forecast Discussion

National Weather Service Burlington VT

139 PM EDT Sun Mar 16 2025

LONG TERM /TUESDAY NIGHT THROUGH SUNDAY/...

Temperatures drop to seasonable levels behind this system and this colder pattern looks to remain into the start of next week.

So, we’ll see where the numbers go from here.

[powderfreak]

4 hours ago, J.Spin said:

Thanks for the update PF. That lavender blue coloring demarcation for 120”+ really makes the Northern Greens stand out and reveals how snowy some of the lower elevation sites are around here.

I know you’ve mentioned that the season has been “decent” and “respectable”, and based on snowfall, I’d probably go with something a bit stronger like “solid” or something along those lines. The current snowfall progression plot clearly speaks to the fact that the season isn’t off the charts special or anything like that though. Even in my 18 years of data there were three seasons with similar snowfall at this point, and now this makes a fourth one of these types of seasons in less that 20 years. So, being at this amount of season snowfall in mid-March isn’t uncommon, and my records suggest that we’re typically in this position every 4 to 5 seasons. I guess another way to put it would be that based on what we’ve seen up to this point, it would put 2024-2025 in the top 20-25% of seasons for this area based on snowfall.

Good data points, J.  I think "solid" is a fine way to describe it, ha.  Tough to find the right adjective but your data fits what my overall gut opinion was feeling.  It's nothing near historic or all-time and maybe my verbiage is just pushing back on some of those claims you hear on social media or at the mountains.  It was a very good, solid (I think you hit the nail on the head with that word) winter. 

The snowfall seems like something we should see at least 2, maybe 3 times per decade IMO.  We've just had some poor winters since 2018-19 that may be skewing opinions.

The lack of rain in the heart of winter WAS the memorable part though.  Just added up snow on snow on snow without a thaw event.  We will need to see where it goes from here because if this winter sort of slowly dies from here on out, opinions may change a bit.  The truly high-end winters for the mountains all have good Marchs where they typically end the month with higher upper elevation snowpack than they entered the month with.

[powderfreak]

4 hours ago, J.Spin said:

Thanks for the update PF.

 

Also, what did you have for 2017-18 for total snowfall?

[mreaves]

28 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Good data points, J.  I think "solid" is a fine way to describe it, ha.  Tough to find the right adjective but your data fits what my overall gut opinion was feeling.  It's nothing near historic or all-time and maybe my verbiage is just pushing back on some of those claims you hear on social media or at the mountains.  It was a very good, solid (I think you hit the nail on the head with that word) winter. 

The snowfall seems like something we should see at least 2, maybe 3 times per decade IMO.  We've just had some poor winters since 2018-19 that may be skewing opinions.

The lack of rain in the heart of winter WAS the memorable part though.  Just added up snow on snow on snow without a thaw event.  We will need to see where it goes from here because if this winter sort of slowly dies from here on out, opinions may change a bit.  The truly high-end winters for the mountains all have good Marchs where they typically end the month with higher upper elevation snowpack than they entered the month with.

Solid for some but only ok for others. I’m at about 80” and average 90”-100”.  We could get something late to push me towards average but given the complete melt out I just experienced, that would just be an annoying stat padder. 

[#NoPoles]

Mud season in full force here...the dog is muddy and wet. I had to pull a dukes of hazard maneuver to get into my driveway. Perfect ice fishing weather. Some ding ding thought they were going to drive their pick-up onto the ice to pull out their Bob house. Front tires went right through the ice. He was lucky he was able to reverse out of his dumb idea. Got my first sunburn of the season yesterday out on the ice. Bonus- got to watch a pair of bald eagles making a nest. Caught a few rainbows. Now I have the the window open in my bedroom. Super windy, though. Scattered power outages with branches and a few trees down

[J.Spin]

12 hours ago, powderfreak said:

Also, what did you have for 2017-18 for total snowfall?

Total snowfall for 2017-2018 was 167.2”, so just a bit above average. I added it to the plot as the red trace below, and you can see that at this point in the season it was not up in the cluster of these seasons on the higher end of totals.

[borderwx]

Happy Spring NNE. What a terrific winter for sliding around these hills, one of the best. I was gone all last week to Banff. Amazing to come home to grass and running the dog in shorts.

No complaints, the seasons must turn.

Last night’s ski with a beautiful sunset to end the winter season




.

[powderfreak]

I think the Lookout Snow Plot was low by like a factor of 3 last night.

Healthy boot deep pow day out there.

[NW_of_GYX]

7 hours ago, powderfreak said:

I think the Lookout Snow Plot was low by like a factor of 3 last night.

Healthy boot deep pow day out there.

 

What’s it look like tonight for the northern greens?

[powderfreak]

14 minutes ago, NW_of_GYX said:

What’s it look like tonight for the northern greens?

Upslope pulse but has been weakening on models since last night.  Jay looks favored?

Thinking 1-3” Mansfield and 2-4” Jay?

We are up to 12-13” since yesterday morning at 3,000ft.  Wild.

1” through 1:40pm yesterday.

Then 9” from 1:40pm to 10am this morning.  The numbering is whack, it’s the value under the line.

 

Then 2.5” from 10am until 4pm.

[NW_of_GYX]

8 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Thinking 1-3” Mansfield and 2-4” Jay?

We are up to 12-13” since yesterday morning at 3,000ft.  Wild.

Jay was great today but probably more like 7-8” over that same period. Sticking around for tomorrow before heading back to Maine 

[powderfreak]

1 hour ago, NW_of_GYX said:

Jay was great today but probably more like 7-8” over that same period. Sticking around for tomorrow before heading back to Maine 

That’s a good choice.  I think if someone were to get a surprise tonight it would be Jay.

[powderfreak]

Interesting the COOP depth only increased 5” from 85” to 90” (the Mansfield Stake) after today’s snow.   The COOP depth is at 3,900ft.

The High Road data point is at 3,014ft…. so almost 1K lower.  This is where 12” has been recorded and depth has increased by 10”…. from 57” to 66-67”.

5” depth increase at the COOP on the upper Toll Road, vs an increase of 10” on the Gondola side, at a lower elevation. Interesting… Light winds, so drifting wasn’t an issue.

57” after the first inch yesterday.

Then 67” after the next 11 inches of snowfall, including some settling over the 24-hour period.

 

[J.Spin]

Similar to both December and January this season, March has had an interesting mid-month lull in snowfall. The first 10 days of the month saw six systems come through the area under what I’d describe as a March-style bread and butter pattern here in the Northern Greens. That stretch produced more than a foot of snow down at our site in the Winooski Valley. Then, the middle 10 days of the month brought some warm spring-like temperatures to set up great corn snow skiing. But like clockwork, as soon as we hit the 20^th and got into the last third of the month, Mother Nature decided it was time to get back to winter and it started to snow again. We’ve been gradually working our way back into another bread-and-butter pattern of systems, with 3 storms passing through the area so far, and the potential for another 3 to 4 systems shown in the modeling through the end of the month.

With the current pattern, the rounds of snow that have been hitting the area delivered accumulations in relatively modest doses that hadn’t had a chance to resurface the temperature-cycled spring snowpack, but this latest system decided to kick it up a notch. When I saw Powderfreak’s report yesterday evening of 4 to 5 inches of new snow on Mt. Mansfield, it piqued my interest. Later that night when we started to get huge flakes all the way to the valley bottoms bringing moderate to heavy snowfall, I knew it was time to prep the skis for some morning turns. Powderfreak’s report from this morning confirmed that Stowe had indeed received a healthy shot of powder, and as of this afternoon, Mt. Mansfield’s snow total since yesterday morning was over a foot.

Bolton Valley seemed a bit slow updating some versions of their snow report this morning, but it looked like they’d picked up 4 to 5 inches of new snow overnight. In our area of the valley, we’d also picked up a couple inches of new snow from this latest system, so those numbers made sense for the elevations. There seemed to be substantial elevation dependence with respect to the snowfall though, and indeed, the lower elevations of the Bolton Valley Access Road didn’t even have a trace of snow as I began the ascent this morning. It wasn’t until I hit about 1,000’ that I saw any of the new snow at all.

With that in mind, I cruised right past Timberline and headed up to Bolton’s main base to use the Wilderness Uphill Route for today’s ski tour. Powder depths at 2,000’ were 4 to 5 inches, and 6 to 7 inches where I topped out around 2,700’ The snow seemed fluffy on my ascent, so I was wondering if it the new accumulations were going to be substantial enough to keep me off the spring base, but the snow ended up being way more buoyant than I’d thought it would be. On mid-fat skis, I was able to get roughly 95% bottomless turns on low to moderate-angle terrain, so the powder skiing ended up being great. Getting out in the morning was definitely the play in terms of hitting the powder though, because I could tell that the temperatures were starting to rise above freezing as I was finishing my tour.

Here’s the elevation profile for new snow depths above the old base from today’s observations in the Bolton Valley area:

340’: 0”

500’: 0”

1,000’: 0-1”

1,200’: 1”

1,500’: 2”

2,000’: 4-5”

2,500’: 5-6”

2,700’: 6-7”

Overall, it’s felt like a busy season at the resort. I’m sure one factor in the number of people coming up to the mountain has been the consistently good conditions we’ve had thanks to the lack of any large, warm systems during the heart of winter. You can tell we’re into March now though, at least with respect to the number of cars that were in the Village parking lots this morning in the first hour or so of lift operations. Even though it was a decent powder day, tiers 1 and 2 of the Village lots were only about half filled. Indeed, it’s a weekday, but that’s definitely far less than what I was seeing on equivalent days just a few weeks back.

As noted, the weather modeling suggests there are a number of wintry systems in the pipeline in the near future, and that potential keeps going well into April. But as is typical this time of year, the temperatures may be marginal with some of the events, so elevation will be helpful. With the mid-month warm stretch we had, the snowpack at the Mt. Mansfield stake dropped down a bit from where it peaked at over 100 inches, but it’s at 90 inches today after these recent snows, so there’s a lot of liquid equivalent in there to support plenty of turns in the coming weeks.

[J.Spin]

This afternoon I received an alert that we’d been put under a Winter Weather Advisory for the storm expected to affect the area tomorrow night into the weekend. The BTV NWS forecast discussion indicates that the highest totals look to be across parts of Northern Vermont, where 3 to 7 inches and locally higher totals are expected, but the frontal boundary is sharp, and snow totals are highly dependent on where that front sets up. In any event, the Storm Total Snowfall Forecast Map has areas of 4-6” and 6-8” shading around the Northern Greens, which seems to line up fairly well with the discussion. At our site in the Winooski Valley, our NWS point forecast suggests snow accumulations in the 2-4” or 3-5” range. Most of the weather modeling suggests total liquid equivalent from the system in the range of 1 to 2 inches, so it could represent a solid resurfacing for the slopes where the precipitation stays mostly snow, or even sleet. The latest BTV NWS maps are below.