NNE slowly approaching winter

[MaineJayhawk]

Does anyone else have spacing issues on some of these pages with blue spaces between posts and overlapping post? they seem to corect eventually but are an issue if there are pictures with posts.

Nope, nothing like that here.

I'm gonna chalk up sun/mon event as "it's still early". yeah, we'll see how long that attitude lasts

in a way, if it's gonna rain, I don't care as much since there's only a 1/2" or so to wash away. I'd be more upset if I were in northern VT with all their snow, slowly seeing it dwindle in the monsoon.

That's the way I feel, more or less. No snowpack to lose means it doesn't hurt as much. I feel for the VT guys if it happens to be a rainstorm.

[J.Spin]

Event totals: 22.8” Snow/0.77” L.E.

Wednesday 12/8/2010 6:00 P.M. update: We picked up 0.7 inches of snow from today’s activity, with just flurries falling at 6:00 P.M., but the snowfall rate has picked up a bit now. I thought the settling of the snowpack was slowing down, but it’s certainly still going, as the 12.0 inches at the stake from this morning is down to 9.5 inches this evening. Checking the memory thermometer, our low from this morning was 15.8 F, which was our coldest of the season. That has already been bested this evening however, since we have already hit 15.2 F as of 8:30 P.M. Details from the 6:00 A.M. update are below:

New Snow: 0.7 inches

New Liquid: 0.03 inches

Snow/Water Ratio: 23.3

Snow Density: 4.3%

Temperature: 17.6 F

Sky: Flurries

Snow at the stake: 9.5 inches

[dendrite]

6 straight days of a T of snow here. Still no accum yet for the season.

Down to 16.2F here, but the Sanbornton RWIS is at 12.4F already.

[MaineJayhawk]

Looks like a couple of -10 departure days in the offing with windchills on the negative side of 0.

16.1F

[gpetrics]

Thanks to all of you for your helpful weather discussions!

Thought some of you might be interested in a LARGE set of pictures from the snow that you all forecast after it fell and AS IT WAS SKIED throughout the Green Mountains:

click the pic for more

Hope you enjoy!

Greg

[J.Spin]

I was out finishing up some snowblowing and shoveling, and the snow was coming down fairly steadily for a while. Our point forecast is actually calling for 2 to 4 inches of accumulation tonight:

Overnight: Occasional snow showers. Low around 9. West wind around 6 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. Total nighttime snow accumulation of 2 to 4 inches possible.

…although I’m not sure we’ll get to those levels unless we sit under one of those bands that are visible on the radar:

I suspect we were under one of those when the snow intensity really picked up this evening.

In the NWS discussion, they indicate that those may be lake-enhanced bands off Champlain:

.NEAR TERM /UNTIL 8 AM THURSDAY MORNING/...

AS OF 715 PM EST WEDNESDAY...QUICK EARLY UPDATE TO THIS EVENING`S PACKAGE...MAINLY TO REFLECT HIGHER COVERAGE OF SNOW SHOWER ACTIVITY AND RESULTANT MINOR ACCUMULATIONS ACROSS OUR NRN VT COUNTIES AND INTO THE ADIRONDACKS WHERE LOCALLY SLICK ROADS HAVE BEEN REPORTED. LATEST ANALYSIS SHOWING WEAK SHORTWAVE FEATURE APPROACHING FROM THE WEST...AND WHILE THIS IS WEAKER THAN SHORTWAVE THAT PASSED EARLIER TODAY...ENOUGH SYNOPTIC LIFT TO ALLOW BURST OF CURRENT SNOW SHOWER ACTIVITY ACROSS THE DACKS AND INTO THE ERN PORTIONS OF THE CHAMPLAIN VALLEY. BANDED NATURE OF ACTIVITY NEAR BURLINGTON SUPPORTS IDEA OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN ENHANCEMENT...WHICH WOULD MAKE SENSE GIVEN LAKE INDUCED CAPES OF 500-600 J/KG. AS A RESULT...HAVE INCREASED PCPN CHANCES FAIRLY MARKEDLY THROUGH THE OVERNIGHT HOURS IN THESE AREAS. GENERALLY EXPECTING A DUSTING TO 2 INCHES ACROSS THE NORTH (LESS SLV) WITH LITTLE IF ANY ACCUMS ACROSS SC VT. LOCALLY HIGHER AMOUNTS ALONG THE WESTERN SLOPES OF THE GREEN MTNS (2-4") WHERE OROGRAPHIC ENHANCEMENT ONGOING. SNOW WATER EQUVALENTS STILL RUNNING QUITE HIGH AND USING A 30/1 RATIO SHOULD ENSURE A CONTINUED HIGH FLUFF FACTOR.

[MaineJayhawk]

6.0F ... far and away the coldest this year.

[powderfreak]

Thanks to all of you for your helpful weather discussions!

Thought some of you might be interested in a LARGE set of pictures from the snow that you all forecast after it fell and AS IT WAS SKIED throughout the Green Mountains:

click the pic for more

Hope you enjoy!

Greg

Sweet jesus, Greg. Those are nuts. Worth looking through if anyone wants to know what skiing through 2-3 feet of pure fluff is like.

Also, I saw some guys snowmobiling near the X-C center yesterday and they were literally tunneling through the fresh snow. Its so light and fluffy it was just engulfing their sleds and billowing over head. Very fun to watch.

[powderfreak]

Nope, nothing like that here.

That's the way I feel, more or less. No snowpack to lose means it doesn't hurt as much. I feel for the VT guys if it happens to be a rainstorm.

I still think we may be able to pull out a net gain, even in a close to worst case scenario. Worst case scenario would be rain start to finish, but I highly doubt that. At the very least, we will get some upslope in the cyclonic flow after the storm and maybe some more retrograde upslope fun after that.

I'm also not seeing a "torch" as we will be closer to the cold air over NY state...the real H85 warmth seems to be further east towards the coast. East of the Greens we usually have a nice low level inversion that keeps the warmer air aloft out of here for the most part. 33-37F should be ok with a little front end snow and back-end upslope. I really hope you guys get a good snowfall soon... I don't want to be the only one posting snow pics and obs again next week.

[J.Spin]

Event totals: 23.2” Snow/0.78” L.E.

Thursday 12/9/2010 6:00 A.M. update: We didn’t have too much snowfall activity last night, but the combination of moderately-sized flakes that fell yesterday evening, plus what looked like some tiny flakes overnight, brought 0.4 inches of accumulation comprised of 0.01 inches of liquid. This was the 14^th snowfall entry into my spreadsheet for this long-duration event, and it looks like we are nearing the end. It is actually ending up somewhat similar to the retrograding storm from the New Year’s Period last year, in which 17 snowfall entries were made from January 1^st through January 8^th, 2010, and we received a total of 24.9 inches of snow. Details from the 6:00 A.M. update are below:

New Snow: 0.4 inches

New Liquid: 0.01 inches

Snow/Water Ratio: 40.0

Snow Density: 2.5%

Temperature: 12.7 F

Sky: Flurries

Snow at the stake: 9.0 inches

[MaineJayhawk]

I still think we may be able to pull out a net gain, even in a close to worst case scenario. Worst case scenario would be rain start to finish, but I highly doubt that. At the very least, we will get some upslope in the cyclonic flow after the storm and maybe some more retrograde upslope fun after that.

I'm also not seeing a "torch" as we will be closer to the cold air over NY state...the real H85 warmth seems to be further east towards the coast. East of the Greens we usually have a nice low level inversion that keeps the warmer air aloft out of here for the most part. 33-37F should be ok with a little front end snow and back-end upslope. I really hope you guys get a good snowfall soon... I don't want to be the only one posting snow pics and obs again next week.

lol ... well, I think we may be effed until nearly Christmas. Not looking good, but things can change on a whim.

[Lava Rock]

lol ... well, I think we may be effed until nearly Christmas. Not looking good, but things can change on a whim.

what else is new. seriously, winters just plain suck now. always look forward to each winter and all the snowmobiling and skiing we'll do, etc, then it gets squashed with either no snow, too much rain, no cold.... I need to move to siberia

[powderfreak]

Event totals: 23.2” Snow/0.78” L.E.

Jay... have you been up to Bolton recently? I bet they would've been ground zero for this event given the 28-32" accumulations that were reported in the West Bolton-Underhill-Cambridge corridor. All those reports were from elevations below 1,500ft, too. Given that Bolton Valley sits between 2,000-3,400ft in a bowl on the western slope of the Spine, I bet they picked up an honest 3-4 feet from this.

I'd be curious to see what it looks like up there at the base area and residential area up there in the 2,000-2,300ft elevation range on the west slope. That would be my pick for the jackpot for this last storm.

EDIT: Just checked their website... 44" in the last 72 hours. That sounds about right given their location. Wow that's an impressive snowfall event.

[Lava Rock]

Jay... have you been up to Bolton recently? I bet they would've been ground zero for this event given the 28-32" accumulations that were reported in the West Bolton-Underhill-Cambridge corridor. All those reports were from elevations below 1,500ft, too. Given that Bolton Valley sits between 2,000-3,400ft in a bowl on the western slope of the Spine, I bet they picked up an honest 3-4 feet from this.

I'd be curious to see what it looks like up there at the base area and residential area up there in the 2,000-2,300ft elevation range on the west slope. That would be my pick for the jackpot for this last storm.

EDIT: Just checked their website... 44" in the last 72 hours. That sounds about right given their location. Wow that's an impressive snowfall event.

Drool...

[MaineJayhawk]

what else is new. seriously, winters just plain suck now. always look forward to each winter and all the snowmobiling and skiing we'll do, etc, then it gets squashed with either no snow, too much rain, no cold.... I need to move to siberia

Only since last mid-January has it been terrible, IMO. And I do mean TERRIBLE.

[Allenson]

Cold morning--bottomed out at 6F.

A whopping 2" at the stake.

I won't let myelf think about Sunday/Monday too much just yet.....

[tamarack]

6.0F ... far and away the coldest this year.

Same as IZG. Coldest I saw for NNE was BML with -5. I had 14 at 9 last night with the stars out and was anticipating near zero, but it clouded over and the wind picked up, and it was about 15 at 7 this morn. Did not look at the max-min, but I suspect the 12 on 11/30 remains the season's low, (until tonight.)

[powderfreak]

12F with -SN

It started snowing again very lightly about 2 hours ago and there's a diamond dusting on my car. Flakes are very small and fine, which shows the very dry air this snow is fighting but it seems orographically driven.

If it keeps up maybe I can measure a couple tenths or so. Then we should get at least some measurable snowfall (1/4"-1" probably) tomorrow with the clipper. It would be cool to have a full 7 straight days of measurable snowfall to start December off.

[J.Spin]

Jay... have you been up to Bolton recently? I bet they would've been ground zero for this event given the 28-32" accumulations that were reported in the West Bolton-Underhill-Cambridge corridor. All those reports were from elevations below 1,500ft, too. Given that Bolton Valley sits between 2,000-3,400ft in a bowl on the western slope of the Spine, I bet they picked up an honest 3-4 feet from this.

I'd be curious to see what it looks like up there at the base area and residential area up there in the 2,000-2,300ft elevation range on the west slope. That would be my pick for the jackpot for this last storm.

EDIT: Just checked their website... 44" in the last 72 hours. That sounds about right given their location. Wow that's an impressive snowfall event.

I haven't been up, but I checked their website yesterday and saw that they had done well, so I grabbed a screen shot (pasted below).

Here's a bit of what I posted over at the First Tracks forum:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I haven’t provided an update on the ski area snowfall totals that we’ve seen with this event, so I’ve listed some of the totals I’ve seen below. Bolton Valley is topping the list with around 4 feet of new snow, which is not too surprising the way the upslope snow has been focused on the western slopes of the Greens:

Jay Peak: 34”

Stowe: 36”

Bolton Valley: 47”

Mad River Glen: 26”

Sugarbush: 24”

Killington: 21”

Totals fell off a bit south if the I-89/Route 2/Winooski corridor as sometimes happens with these events. South of Killington, I saw that Okemo had 4 to 6 inches in the past 72 hours, but the snow totals really seemed to fall off south of there, consistent with BTV’s map.

I haven’t been out on the slopes since Sunday, but Greg Petrics has a good 9 pages full of the usual over the head photos of Vermont powder skiing in “VTah Part V — The Most Accurately Predicted Over-the-Top Snow on Earth!”. Those images give a nice view of where things went around here since the weekend.

Bolton Valley is opening up tomorrow, and it will be interesting to see how much they decide to open with the four feet of snow. It’s that very fluffy Champlain Powder™ stuff of course, so it’s not the best for base building, but four feet is still fairly substantial no matter how you stack it. I don’t know the exact number for their total liquid equivalent obtained from the event so far, but down at the house we’ve picked up 0.78 inches of liquid, and Mt. Mansfield has picked up 1.97 inches of liquid since Friday, so I would say Bolton is in that range, or even higher with the way the snow hit the western slopes. I’ve added a grab from Bolton’s snow report from yesterday talking about the new snow:

I see that they updated the numbers in today's report, so I added that in below:

I'll see what my schedule is like tomorrow, but it would be nice to go up for little of opening day and check out how everything is going up there with the snow. I'd really like to see if they plan on opening some of the terrain on natural snow - based on the calculations I mentioned above for Mt. Mansfield, I have to think that Bolton Valley got at least 2 inches of liquid out of the event. That should certainly be enough to open some trails like Lower Turnpike, but I'm sure it depends on what the wind did, how staffing is looking tomorrow, etc. They've been really good about opening stuff up in the past though, and with the early December openings that they have been doing the past few seasons, when the snow has been good they've been able to get natural trails going right from the start. It looks like we were skiing Glades on Dec 12 of last year right from our first day, skiing Wilderness on December 6th, in 2008, and even stuff like Vermont 200 on December 4th, 2007. My preference is to start skiing the natural snow terrain right from the get go anyway, and it looks like 3 out of the past 4 seasons that has worked out well up at Bolton. Places like Stowe and Sugarbush are open with manmade snow anyway if someone really needs to get a fix in November, so I think Bolton going with the later opening in the beginning of December has worked out well.

[adk]

12F with -SN

It started snowing again very lightly about 2 hours ago and there's a diamond dusting on my car. Flakes are very small and fine, which shows the very dry air this snow is fighting but it seems orographically driven.

If it keeps up maybe I can measure a couple tenths or so. Then we should get at least some measurable snowfall (1/4"-1" probably) tomorrow with the clipper. It would be cool to have a full 7 straight days of measurable snowfall to start December off.

I think you get a touch more with that clipper PF. Mainly because I'll be in the area finally and the Ms. has the snow kavorka. But in all seriousness I think you squeeze 2" out.

As for Bolton...WTF- hot dang!.

[gravitywave]

I think you get a touch more with that clipper PF. Mainly because I'll be in the area finally and the Ms. has the snow kavorka. But in all seriousness I think you squeeze 2" out.

As for Bolton...WTF- hot dang!.

too bad there isn't enough slope there for them to do anything with it

[gravitywave]

high of 12 progged here for Tuesday, f- me that's cold.

[free_man]

23.4 here on the dreaded coastal plain.

Hopefully the upcoming pattern stays active.   I'm thinking the arctic assault will get involved maybe the last week of Dec,  but more likely a week or two in January.

[dendrite]

Down to 19.9F following a high of 22F. Looks like the first single digits of the season overnight.

[TalcottWx]

20 F at 2pm... looking to go negative tonight

[SJonesWX]

Down to 19.9F following a high of 22F. Looks like the first single digits of the season overnight.

wow you are not too far from me, I got down to 7.9 last night, am just north of CON

[wxeyeNH]

3:15pm and 18.4F high was 20.2F low was 12.5F. Northern slopes and woods are holding on to a very thin 1/2" snow cover but fields are totally snow free. If we had a couple of inchesof snow on the ground tonights low would be lower. By the way the earliest sunset of the year is tomorrow. Sunrises keep getting later till the begining of Jan so the shortest day is the first day of winter but at least the afternoon light will start increasing abit very slowly.

Weekend storm track is now looking solidly west but I would think that front end (and perhaps backend) snow will leave us with a snowcover after all is said and done. Still 4 days out so we will see. My pond has a nice even coat of ice, perfect for skating this weekends storm will mess that all up.

Gene

[Allenson]

My pond has a nice even coat of ice, perfect for skating this weekends storm will mess that all up.

Aye, all the ponds around here are frozen right over and I hear from a friend here at work that lives in Piermont, NH that Lake Tarleton is already iced over. Tarelton is a pretty good sized--2 miles long by a mile wide or so. Clearly it's not safe but the speed at which things are freezing over is notable.

Hell, the Connecticut River has a fair bit of ice along the edges and per this morning, is even starting to skim over across the broads. The set-backs are all frozen over too.

Last winter I got into the nordic skating a bit--Lake Morey and on the Connecticut. If we don't get any real snow in here soon to ski on, I'll be lacing up the skates again.

We had a stretch of real good ice last February. Here's Lake Morey last Feb. with about 16-18" of ice and no snow:

[MaineJayhawk]

Reminds me of about 30 years ago at my grandparents' place in Minnesota. There was about 3" of ice on the lake and no snow had fallen yet. The ice was crystal clear and you could walk on it and see fish swimming below. Sadly, that night freezing drizzle fell and frosted the ice. It was cool while it lasted, though.

[tamarack]

We had a year like that in NNJ back when I was in grade school, probably 12/1955 judging by NYC/NNJ data. The 55-acre "lake" near our home had briefly frozen, then all but the small cove nearest to us was lost in a thaw. The week before Christmans we had a flat calm near zero night that put 2"+ black ice on the whole lake; the HS-age neighbor was out skating that next morning. Then we had about 6 weeks of cold with little precip, such that we had 12-14" of clear ice, similar to Allenson's great pic but even blacker. It was so dry that the sand pile next to our driveway didn't freeze, despite the cold. What finally messed up the blackness was bubbles of bottom gas (mostly methane, I'd guess) getting frozen into the deepening ice.

Had a brief time of that one late Dec (1999, IIRC) on the beaver pond behind my current home, with 3" of clear ice such that the weeds on the bottom were clearly visible. Two weeks of moderate cold with some snow and mix later, I walked too close to the beaver house and found the water to be about halfway from waist to chest deep - the 3" of black ice had become about 1" of milky ice due to stream currents between the beaver house and their food pile. Never even heard a crack before the bottom dropped out - glad the mud wasn't deep.