alex

Just now, radarman said:

Absolutely.  You take your chances with an active pattern up there in Jan every time.  If it were balls cold and looked great for coastal SNE you get the feeling he wouldn't cancel, and that could be potentially terrible up in NNE 

I've gotta add, many times I have been surprised by the conditions in a "bad stretch." Good grooming can turn an icy trail into a really fun skiing day. I'm actually looking forward to the warmup - nicely groomed trails with 30s and 40s daytime high can be a treat in January! 

Merry Christmas! Just started flurrying as we opened presents. How festive! :p

Definitely a net loss here but at least it's still white. 4" at the stake 

18 minutes ago, alex said:

Snowing

Never mind. Lasted 4 seconds 

Snowing

Flooded. Just moved everyone’s cars and made my way back through 2 feet of icy water. So fun… 

amazingly the renters all thought it was the coolest thing lol

I thought once the front came through we were going to plummet? Dropped 10 degrees in minutes but now it’s ever so slightly going up. Weeeeeeeird

Just went to check the river - it’s incredible to see. There is still 5” of snow in most spots but in between there are just 4-5” of slushy water. If that freezes before getting absorbed talk about a bullet proof base lol. Assume the cold front went through since this is my pws:

Down to 43 and sleet. Wtf

50 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

This is the reason our flood threat is pretty low. It's still snowing in the headwaters and whatever changeover comes will be brief and easily absorbed by the snow.

It’s interesting how localized my flood threat is. The Ammo starts just a few miles from my house (it comes out of Lakes of the Clouds), so what it does is really dependent on just the few miles between my house and the top of Mt Washington. So far so good, but keeping an eye on it. 44F, pack down to 7”. Would be nice to keep a few just for looks lol

Glad we got a new plow truck (Ram 2500). Tried with the F150 yet and 5” of water logged snow was just no match for it. Eeek. 

18 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

That's a pretty big downslope number for HIE. I have not seen that very often.

That’s a bit surprising. It’s windy here but doesn’t seem anything exceptional so far

3 minutes ago, HoarfrostHubb said:

Norton MA downtown 

 

Festive

Wind really picked up here, lights flickering. Generator kicked in for a minute but power came back quickly. For now. Temp up to 38 with a mix of rain/snow. Looks like rain flout when you see it on the windows you can sss there is frozen stuff mixed in. Hopefully that will help reduce the flooding risk. My anxiety over flooding is high!

Over the rain. A little over 4” of new snow overnight

Still snow here, and quite a bit of it

Snow has started, game on. For once, really hope for some severe downsloping that limits the flood thread. We’ll see what tomorrow brings 

Wind has picked up here. Some severe damage to the snow covering some the tallest trees, which I witnessed being shaken off. 

Gonna be a long 24 hours... 

29 minutes ago, wxeyeNH said:

Alex,  I'm guessing you will be fine as far as flooding is concerned.  It is a quick 12 hour warm sector then within an hour or two back into the deep freeze.  I think the snowpack at elevation can absorb the heavy rain before it gets down to the river.  With a flash freeze there is going to be a lot of ice around.  Ski areas are going to have to work fast making snow or the trails will be hard and fast for sure.

Yes I hope you’re right. I looked at 2 years ago, when we had a close call, and we had much more snowpack to begin with, 2 full days above freezing with several hours at about 60F, and about 2” of rain. Either way, it’s good to be prepared!

in the meantime, amazing skiing today. The ungroomed natural terrain is just amazing right now. The resorts will suffer but with the cold temperatures they’ll get back quickly. Groom those suckers a couple of times, make some snow and voila, everyone is happy. 
 

speaking of which - yesterday some of the newer guns were set on this very fine mist - almost like vapor. It didn’t seem like they were doing anything but the trail underneath them was like fresh soft powder. I was pretty amazed. 
 

back to skiing (typing from the gondola lol)

1 hour ago, tamarack said:

The evergreens, starting with balsam fir, are much more vulnerable during the leaf-off season.  That said, the NW gales generated by the 1962 New Year's Eve Bangor blizzard tipped a lot of NNJ trees from all-hardwood forests, including some large white oaks, a species with a tap root and thus usually more windfirm.  No actual measurements to offer, but IMO there were gusts reaching 70 from late on 12/30 thru most of 12/31.  Only the Nov 1950 Apps Gale compares with that event in my personal experience.  12/31/62 had temp 5/-8 at our place, chilly for NNJ, but we had not heard of quantifiable wind chill back then.

Interesting - thanks for sharing. Most of our evergreens (balsam fir and red spruce) up here are pretty short so maybe less prone to damage, plus our location gets some pretty nasty winds pretty regularly but will be interesting to see. More worried about the potential for flooding than wind damage, but that’s very IMBY

16 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Some areas are more prone to it, like NW sides of mountains in New England can rip big wind.  Here it’s the towns NW of Mansfield and the rest of the Spine.  I bet you mix down big winds on SE flow.  Phin always saw big winds on south flow.

Yes we do! 

Are 60-70 mph gusts that big of a deal with bare trees? I feel like we get that a few times every year without much consequences - but I could be completely wrong (and the fact that so many are focusing on winds probably tell me that I AM wrong)

55 minutes ago, Damage In Tolland said:

No upslope with this to help bring them back online . Just icy trails 

That’s where good resorts like Bretton Woods shine. Give them 2 rounds of grooming and that ice will be turned to a fast packed powder that’s really fun to ski on. 

29 minutes ago, STILL N OF PIKE said:

Looks like euro gives several inches to some NNE Resorts friday am and the mild up lasts about 12 hours . This doesn’t really seem like a big disaster to me 

I'd like to think that, but the AFD was pretty gruesome. My biggest concern of course is flooding... but would also like to salvage some snowpack if we can. I don't even particularly care much for me - we see plenty of snow (it's STILL snowing today, after all) and even my kids don't care that much since they're so used to it, but it's so sad for people who come up for Xmas break and it's their one ski trip a year. Also, I'm in a really bad spot for retention in cutters. I think the only way we don't downslope is on West or North winds; we are otherwise surrounded by 5000 ft+ peaks. The mountains giveth, the mountains taketh

Pretty nasty snow squall coming through