PhineasC

5 minutes ago, timp said:

I do! Three years up here and have yet to see a significant late season storm. Let it snow and melt the next day sounds great. 

Well, you might get it, although these spring coastals seem to favor NH/Maine usually.

I will never root against snow. It's just not in my nature.

6 minutes ago, Torch Tiger said:

68.8 for the high at 4:05, 68.6 right now.

AC cranking?

1 hour ago, Typhoon Tip said:

Here's a classic blue bomb ...ho man - pleezy weezy with sugar on top.  Particularly because if you roll this series of GGEM charts thru, two days later there's a huge warm dome setting up

Not uncommon here in April per the Randolph records. Classic NNE stat-padder. Should at least let me finally put J. Spin in the rear-view mirror on the NE snowfall tracker page!  

21 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Air mass must be super dry.  Just had snowflakes flying at 3,500ft with a temp of 48F.  Tons of virga all around and high winds materialized out of no where.

You and your fake snow. It's spring time, dude. LOL

6 minutes ago, #NoPoles said:

Cheese and crackers, what the heck is this crap??? No thank you, please go away

I doubt anyone up there wants this. LOL

I use stone. I hate mulch.

4 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Ha dammit, it didn't snow a foot today.  Maybe you aren't the force we joke about .

It has been a fairly impressive stretch without true widespread plowable snowfall from 1,500ft and below.  Especially over there and into Maine where CAD and spring coastal storms are more likely.  Even here, zero synoptic snow in what has been weeks, even at higher inhabited elevations.  This winter has had some very long stretches without significant or even plowable snowfall.

Some years 1,500ft still has very a healthy snowpack in mid-April.

Someone showed me some pics from Randolph April 2019 and the pack was still deep. Hopefully one of those kinds of winters shows up soon. It was a lousy winter for snowfall and really not good for pack.

5 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

Would be great if the GFS Euro happens 2 footer blue bombs are impressive up there

That would be fun to watch play out. Hope it verifies. Gotta pad my stats.

1 minute ago, powderfreak said:

The real question is when do you go back to Maryland?  It will probably snow a foot the day after that.

Already back. Just opened the pool today. LOL

Mud, sticks, and 40s is all that is going on up north right now.

Pending the rest of April, I will end up about 22" below last season's total, which itself was about 25" below average, so it wasn't a good winter on that metric.

It was real winter pretty much just from mid-Jan through 10 Feb and that was it. Cutters galore after that.

Hopefully next winter is a good one.

4 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

Or a return to winter. What say you guys. Looks impressive 

We aren't holding our breath.

But a mid-April blue bomb is fairly common for my backyard so it wouldn't be a shocker.

I am in spring mode so I really couldn't care less at this point.

3 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Ah weren’t they open yesterday?  That guy was riding lifts.

Maybe they were, I didn't check then. But the lower part of the mountain is really melted out and spotty. So you get some nice powder for about 500 feet and then it turns to crap. That's just not really my cup of tea, I have shifted into summer mode. I know there are people here who hunt that kind of thing deep into May. Don't worry about me, just feeling grumpy. LOL

9 hours ago, powderfreak said:

I dunno man, the video I've seen from Wildcat seems to indicate fresh, snowy skiing.  You can ride a lift to this stuff.

They are closed, so no. Looks like they are reporting 5" new at the summit so I guess they got in some snow.

That's neat for sure, but if the lower half the mountain is still bare not sure what good it does most folks.

10 minutes ago, LaGrangewx said:

Like powderfreak said. Maybe at your elevation but I’ve been keeping tabs on MWN for a Tuckerman trip. They picked up 6-8” there as well last couple days  

The ski places around here haven't really benefited at all from any of this. Maybe the very upper reaches of the Whites have done OK. That doesn't do most of us around here any good unless we hike up there to find it.

Winter ended in NH a while ago but for a portion of the Greens it is continuing a little longer, it seems. None of what has been happening over there the last few weeks has made it over here, aside from some flurries.

2 hours ago, powderfreak said:

That list surprised me on an aside, ha.  Figured Subaru would be #1-5.  Reading into it there's still a lot of farm and manual labor, construction, in the rest of the state etc that overwhelms the Subaru numbers around Burlington.  And Subaru doesn't make a working truck.

I suspect that list would be the same just about everywhere in America. We buy a lot of trucks. 

2 minutes ago, backedgeapproaching said:

It definitely seems to be a combination of cost and "VT character".  The cost is probably the overwhelming factor though.

https://www.treehugger.com/why-one-vermont-town-tearing-asphalt-instead-repairing-potholes-4867361

Just the name of this website says it all .

I like this snippet from the article:

Back in 2008, the New York Times reported that a “citizens’ uprising” was borne in the town of Brookfield, just south of Montpelier, when officials announced plans to pave a half-mile stretch of dirt road. Mortified by the prospect of the road in question being desecrated with asphalt, town residents banded together and fought back. The road was never paved. At the time, Vermont boasted 6,000 miles of paved road — and 8,000 miles of unpaved roads.

 

 

Yep. 100% chance if you asked this lady who was almost killed by her muddy road if it should be paved, she'd still say no.

It's a thing over here too, and I can only imagine there is even more of that in VT since you guys tend to be the crunchier kind of granola.

Everyone here has a lifted truck or SUV though. I couldn't imagine dealing with this mud in a Subaru station wagon.

12 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Do you repave them annually though when the frost heaves buckle them?  We always discuss it on our small road but grading it a couple times a year is so much cheaper than having to pave it and then fix it all the time.  It always seems to be a cost discussion around these parts as it's very easy and cheap to fix a dirt/gravel road but when a paved road gets in unacceptable shape its very expensive.  Limited infrastructure budgets probably play a much greater role than environmental reasons.

There's a frost heave on RT 108 leading away from the ski resort here that's like a mini- asphalt halfpipe where everyone local knows to slow down to like 30 mph in a 50 mph zone.  Just formed the past couple months, who knows when the state will deal with it.  I'm sure some of the bad mud roads if paved would be a disaster in short order and then rarely get fixed... so you're left with this unacceptable paved road year round instead of a couple weeks of mud then grading.

So far Randolph Hill road hasn't had any issues. They paved it right before I moved up here in 2020.

I would be fine with the unpaved roads if they properly graded them and put down ledge pack or some other tightly binding stone. Instead they just dump fill dirt on it and pack it down. 

The plows definitely do a lot of damage to these unpaved roads. They push off the top layer.

42 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

This is one of the weirdest stories I’ve heard.  Driver became stuck in mud in Middlesex, VT… and I have no idea how it gets to this:

Mud season nightmare: A VPR host was stranded for 7 hours on a rural road. She barely survived.

Nearly three weeks after Linda Radtke’s mud season disaster, she was still finding mud in her ears.

She hung inverted out the driver’s side window. She was freezing, unconscious, her mouth in the mud.

When Matthew Collins, a driver for The Auto Clinic, arrived on the scene, he could not initially make sense of what he saw. Something was hanging out of the car window. 

It was Radtke. She was wrapped in a dirty sleeping bag. She had one leg stuck through the driver’s side window of her car, lodged beneath the steering wheel. Her face, buried in the mud, was obscured.

“You could hear gurgling,” Collins said. “She had a very, very faint, shallow heartbeat, just barely breathing. Her airways and all that, her nose, everything was full of mud.”

https://vtdigger.org/2022/04/07/mud-season-nightmare-a-vpr-host-was-stranded-for-seven-hours-on-a-rural-road-she-barely-survived/

Like most of these kids of articles, about 20% of it is vague descriptions of what actually happened with no clear conclusions and the rest of it is soft news human interest stuff about how grateful she is to have recovered...

I agree with the premise hinted at in the article that she got out to push her car up the road, slipped and fell all over the place, dropped her keys, and then tried to get back into the car through the window. She was freezing so she was wrapped in a sleeping bag. Knee deep mud is definitely enough to be an issue for an older person. Seems likely her muffler went under the mud and she couldn't keep the car running. Probably a small Subaru...

People always forget when they are in situations like this to simply stop and stay put if you know people are aware of your location.

Some of these really bad mud roads need to be paved, but if it's anything like over this way, it's these same older locals with a green conservation bent who block it time and again. That's what happens in Randolph, at least.

Light rain/snow mix. 

Screaming for Vengeance and British Steel. 

5 hours ago, CoastalWx said:

It's the Phin effect. 

It was beautiful today. Full sun and 60. Dry. Perfection. Working outside in a t-shirt and sweats. Being north of the Presidentials seems to yield more sunny days than other spots. 

You guys certainly lucked out over there. No meaningful snow here since the March 12th event. Hopefully it hits 70 soon.

4 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Yeah I’m a big fan of spring.  Still so much snow, the skiing today is phenomenal and it’s nice enough in town to walk the dog for an hour at like 6pm.

So much snow left… zero people. This is why ski areas close with lots of snow ha.

Little different look over here in NH right now. The snow you guys got over the last couple weeks was pretty localized and helped extend things. It's clearly the end of the line over here. Still some decent corn snow at BW but it's getting thin.

7 minutes ago, backedgeapproaching said:

I think I saw you mention in some other post about putting in AC.  Are you doing mini-splits or full duct work AC?

I'm maybe one more humid summer away from doing a full mini-split install.  Every summer is more dewy than the last it seems.  

Mini-splits. They are here putting them in now, actually. The layout of the house with the big windows all over facing south means a lot of heat builds up. I could shut the blinds and try to reduce the heat, but it's hard to escape the humidity, like you noted. It's nice in the dead of winter for sure. Not so much when it is 85 out.

There are 3 or so weeks a year where the AC is really needed. I plan to use them to heat as much as possible too. The oil heat here isn't efficient due to the radiator layout. Some rooms get really cold and there is not enough radiator surface area to properly get them to set temp so the boiler just runs forever. The heat pump will be able to assist, in the shoulder seasons at least.