NNE Cold Season Thread 2024-2025

[#NoPoles]

30 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

One of the more impressive walks from staff parking to the Mtn Ops Center at 5am this morning.  I don't have to, but the morning walk in the elements really sets the tone of the day to me.

The snowbanks were getting sculpted with hard slab, which only happens in high, sustained winds.

Happy birthday! Enjoy the arctic tundra!

[alex]

Oooh happy birthday PF!

[DavisStraight]

24 minutes ago, alex said:

I don’t want to anger the SNE weenies but this pattern has been amazing. Wish we could just have this all season long lol. Not sure what’s changed but after the 3-4 days of wind and small flakes we now have giant flakes piling up fast. So nice. 
 

 

I wish we had even a few inches during these winds, I love when snows blowing around drifting. Back I think was the Boxing Day storm we didn't get much but the low stalled around NS and blew the snow around for days, we had 3-5 foot drifts, just looked and felt like winter. I guess I'll have to go up your way this winter to experience it.

[J.Spin]

I had time to head up to Bolton Valley for another ski tour yesterday morning, and the weather was very much like what we’d had in the mountains for the past few days: temperatures in the single digits F with a lot of wind. Thankfully, Wednesday appeared to be the coldest of the days this week, and yesterday morning was about 5 to 10 degrees F warmer.

On Wednesday I’d done a bit of lift-served skiing after my tour, but yesterday I decided to make my tour a bit longer instead of sitting on the lifts. On my ascent I topped out around 2,900’ on Wilderness, and I figured I’d gone high enough to get a good sampling of the snow at various elevations.

With a few more inches of snow each day, the conditions on the slopes have just continued to improve aside from those areas exposed to the wind where scouring has been incessant. Exposed areas just continued to be scoured, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those exposed spots had less snow than they did before this system began. Protected areas had simply fantastic snow though. Like Wednesday, I typically measured 20 inches or more of powder in protected areas yesterday, and the subsurface snow is a distant memory there. I also measured depths as great as 35 inches in some non-drifted spots, where it seemed like I was just pushing down into the older layers in the snowpack without even hitting any firm layer to differentiate the older snow from these recent couple of events. That’s a good sign about the overall quality of the snowpack though if you can’t even find a subsurface layer until you head down 35 inches into the snow.

With the end of this most recent long-duration system, it looks like we could be moving into a pattern featuring some Clipper systems. The first one is coming into the area tonight, with another expected for Monday into Tuesday.

[borderwx]

Hopefully everyone gets a chance to get out in the woods up high. It is other worldly right now




Starting out balmy, 14F. The slowest falling snow.


.

[J.Spin]

Our recent long-duration system finished up on Friday, and the next winter system moved into the area today, so Mother Nature continues to deliver snow and enhance the conditions on the slopes. My wife and I headed up to Bolton Valley this morning to check out the conditions with some lift-served skiing, and there’s no doubt that word is out about the conditions. It was midmorning when we arrived at the resort, and people were already parking at the third tier of Timberline and being shuttled up to the main base. The good news is that they resort has fired up the snow guns on Timberline, so they’ll probably be opening that area to lift-served skiing soon.

After the run of relatively cold, windy (and thankfully snowy) weather we’ve had for the first third of January, today was extremely comfortable with temperatures around 20 F, no wind, and light snow falling. So, everyone we saw at the resort seemed to be excited about that. The resort had received another few inches of snow as the previous system wrapped up, and conditions on the slopes were very similar to what I experienced on Wednesday and Thursday with a touch of improvement thanks to the additional snow and more grooming. The scoured areas were still thin on snow, but grooming had definitely help equalize and soften the conditions there a bit. Natural snow areas out of the wind continue to offer fantastic snow – and when that snow is groomed it skis beautifully – you’re not hitting anything under the packed powder. Off piste, there is a lot of powder as one would expect. We were finding depths of around 20 inches, which is similar to what I’ve been finding this week. In general, areas with that sort of deep powder are skiing fine, but it’s not outstanding powder skiing. The powder is of roughly medium-density, but its density is roughly equivalent throughout its depth, so you can sink in pretty far and get a bit bogged down on lower-angle terrain. It’s not upside-down powder, but it just doesn’t ski as well as it would with a really nice right-side-up arrangement. Some areas did offer a better powder experience though. They have finally opened up more of the Snowflake terrain, and we found about a foot of powder over places that had either been groomed or had more settled snow underneath, and those spots offered some very pleasant powder skiing today.

[alex]

Love ghost trees

[mreaves]

53 minutes ago, alex said:

Love ghost trees

What a difference a little elevation makes. I’m down in Littleton and there is maybe 1”-2” of snow.  This area gets snow holed so I guess it’s not really a surprise. 

[alex]

2 hours ago, mreaves said:

What a difference a little elevation makes. I’m down in Littleton and there is maybe 1”-2” of snow.  This area gets snow holed so I guess it’s not really a surprise. 

Littleton is a terrible place for snow. Funny thing,many people around here LOVE Littleton because of that. I tell them I live in Bretton Woods and they respond “eew, you guys have terrible weather.” And I love Littleton but wouldn’t want to live there because of their weather lol. 
 

That said, right now there’s a pretty big difference between Bretton Woods and most surrounding areas, including Conway. Most of the snow since the holiday grinch has been upslope, and that’s quite localized. Many days this week I’ve driven the kids to school in Whitefield and seen it go from several inches of fresh powder at home to a dusting or an inch at school. Just the quirks of mountain weather

[DavisStraight]

1 hour ago, alex said:

Littleton is a terrible place for snow. Funny thing,many people around here LOVE Littleton because of that. I tell them I live in Bretton Woods and they respond “eew, you guys have terrible weather.” And I love Littleton but wouldn’t want to live there because of their weather lol. 
 

That said, right now there’s a pretty big difference between Bretton Woods and most surrounding areas, including Conway. Most of the snow since the holiday grinch has been upslope, and that’s quite localized. Many days this week I’ve driven the kids to school in Whitefield and seen it go from several inches of fresh powder at home to a dusting or an inch at school. Just the quirks of mountain weather

There are some weird people around that hate snow and cold.

[alex]

2 hours ago, DavisStraight said:

There are some weird people around that hate snow and cold.

Haha. Preposterous 

[mreaves]

3 hours ago, alex said:

Littleton is a terrible place for snow. Funny thing,many people around here LOVE Littleton because of that. I tell them I live in Bretton Woods and they respond “eew, you guys have terrible weather.” And I love Littleton but wouldn’t want to live there because of their weather lol. 
 

That said, right now there’s a pretty big difference between Bretton Woods and most surrounding areas, including Conway. Most of the snow since the holiday grinch has been upslope, and that’s quite localized. Many days this week I’ve driven the kids to school in Whitefield and seen it go from several inches of fresh powder at home to a dusting or an inch at school. Just the quirks of mountain weather

Whitfield isn’t great for snow either. I like Littleton for some of the shops and restaurants. We were shopping for our upcoming post-Christmas, Christmas celebration we are having with friends at the end of the month. After shopping it was lunch at the Littleton Freehouse. 

[powderfreak]

26 minutes ago, alex said:

Haha. Preposterous 

It’s funny how folks like us moved up here for the snow and then you find some of the folks born up north absolutely hate winter weather.  If you don’t ski (downhill or XC), snowboard, snowmobile, etc… I can understand it.  Just a long cold dark season if you don’t enjoy the activities.

Unfortunately most of the winter sports have a higher economic barrier to entry.

[alex]

19 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

It’s funny how folks like us moved up here for the snow and then you find some of the folks born up north absolutely hate winter weather.  If you don’t ski (downhill or XC), snowboard, snowmobile, etc… I can understand it.  Just a long cold dark season if you don’t enjoy the activities.

Unfortunately most of the winter sports have a higher economic barrier to entry.

Agree. I can’t imagine spending a winter up here not liking the cold. But yes winter sports are not cheap - especially downhill. My kids are in the race team and it’s a constant spend on this pay for that

[powderfreak]

We did have a good little fluffer last night on Mountain Road.  Almost 3” materialized after the mid-level lift moved out… surprising after barely an inch in the synoptic portion.

The fluff stuck to this SUV’s wipers show the snow growth that made the most of the meager moisture on NW flow.

[J.Spin]

Yesterday’s weather and ski conditions were excellent, but today kicked that up yet another notch. Today’s temperatures were well up into the 20s F with brilliant winter sunshine and no wind. And after our spell of cold, snowy weather, you could really feel the difference today. Whether you were riding on the slopes, sitting the lifts, or just hanging out at the base area, it was all very comfortable. Also, with brilliant sun, we had great light for action photography; Near base ISO I was able to shoot 1/4000 sec at f/2.8 even in the trees.

I was up at Bolton Valley this afternoon skiing with my older son, and one notable, and surprising improvement was in the powder. As I mentioned in yesterday’s report, the powder skiing was decent, but not outstanding because the snow density was so homogeneous throughout its depth. I guess Mother Nature just needed a bit of time with that new snow because as of today it had settled beautifully into a more right-side-up powder stack that skied much better. My son and I dug into the snowpack and checked on what had changed, and the first roughly half foot of powder had dried out, and the snow below that had settled into a smooth density gradient, presumably due to compression from the snow above. At ~2,400’ elevation on Wilderness we found roughly 18 inches of powder before you hit what I’d say was a layer resembling a subsurface.

With the weather and snow conditions, it was once again fairly busy at the resort with parking needed down at Timberline. Since we went up in the early afternoon though, we were able to get a parking spot up in the Village because people who were leaving, but it still wasn’t easy – others were arriving to get in afternoon turns as well. Based on the current forecast, the next system is expected to move into the area tomorrow, with a couple more over the course of the week, so hopefully we’ll have a few rounds of snow to keep the great conditions in place.

[tamarack]

12 hours ago, powderfreak said:

It’s funny how folks like us moved up here for the snow and then you find some of the folks born up north absolutely hate winter weather.  If you don’t ski (downhill or XC), snowboard, snowmobile, etc… I can understand it.  Just a long cold dark season if you don’t enjoy the activities.

Unfortunately most of the winter sports have a higher economic barrier to entry.

That's why I like ice fishing, though the price of live bait keeps climbing - up around $10 for a good day on the hard water.  

[borderwx]

Wasn’t expecting to wake up to any, but 3” new over night. Super fluff.

Tropical 22F


.

[powderfreak]

At least 3” overnight.  Mountain got hit good.  Reporting 5” from elevated snow plot (likely wind stripped a bit) but skinners and grooming think it could be as much as 8”.  Lots of wind again.