ORH_wxman

I think Pinkham doesn’t quite get the upslope that the north side of the presidentials get....they probably need really unblocked flow....but I don’t think they are shadowed much by wildcat in synoptic events since they are so close to it and the flow doesn’t get as blocked in low levels for synoptic events as it does in upslope events. I’d think they are easily a net winner on orographics in most synoptic events. Maybe at the tail end on NW/NNW winds they could struggle as you mention...that’s typically when the moisture is more low level and the flow could start getting blocked some by MWN/Adams/Madison. That April 2011 measurement looks just plain bad.

Yeah your 120 number is pretty close, if just a bit low....if you are 1700 feet, I'd prob put you 130"ish though based on the old West Wardsboro coop. They were 117" and at 1400 feet plus had the 1980s as like 1/3rd of their period of record and didn't "take advantage" of the 2010s as they stopped reporting at the beginning of the decade. I don't think there is anywhere at 1000 feet up near Lancaster, NH that gets what you get at 1700 feet. My guess is he prob gets like 100"....maybe a little more. He's a little bit outside the death triangle but still not a great orographic spot.

Pinkham Notch used to be pristine but they have degraded just a tad over time. They started missing some big storms in the 1990s and 2000s IIRC...I haven't looked super recently, but perhaps they are missing some storms still. They are still a good coop, but if you miss even one moderate storm, that's a black mark. Their mean snowfall from the 1930s to like 1980 was 167"....but it's been about 125-130" since then which kind of doesn't jibe with the rest of the region. They shouldn't have declined like 40" per year when much of the region has actually gone up or is at least comparable. It tells me they had a change in reporting. It could be something as innocuous as going to strictly once per day reporting which will deflate snowfall totals...plus if they are missing the occasional snowstorm like they did on 2/1/08 or 12/30/00 (they missed both of these I remember), then that is going to deflate annual averages further.

I think he's about 1500 feet.

Final daily minimum NSIDC extent has likely been reached....and it was 3.71 million sq km on 9/13. This is the second lowest minimum behind 2012's 3.34 million sq km. Minimum area may or may not have been reached. Current minimum is 2.59 million sq km on 9/15. This is the 3rd lowest behind 2012 (2.23) and 2016 (2.46). I will update if we slip any further, though we're unlikely to change the ranking as it's very late in the season for large moves. The predictions this year based on SIA at the end of June proved to be very accurate and both were off by less than 100k.

Yeah...I just actually looked, and it seems you can get pretty good hydraulic plows for even between 1-2k new....cheaper if used. I might splurge on a heavy duty version though if I was up there, lol.

If I was spending almost every day up there in the winter, I'd just find a heavy duty hydraulic plow for 3k or something and slap it onto the front of a truck....I might even buy an old used pickup just for the plow stuff. Guess he can see how the first winter goes....then decide, lol.

A lot of guys will plow for a seasonal rate and not "by the storm" and that might be cheaper too....I've had a lot of clients over the years that were plow guys/companies. They will often charge a seasonal rate but then might charge extra over a certain amount of snow. That's when I often had to do forensic reporting for them....someone would claim to the plow guy they got 75" of snow instead of 110" and the contract stated anything over 80" would have extra charges....so they'd try and claim they didn't go over 80", LOL.

Yeah that's tough if you leave it be too....you end up with a slab of ice like 3-6 inches thick if you just let is pack down. Turns into a glacier. If you start spending full winters there in the future, you might as well invest in getting a plow yourself....you can probably get a good one for a snowy climate like that put on your truck/SUV for about 3k. Prob would pay for itself within 2 winters, lol.

That's a good price for a driveway that long....whats the threshold for plowing though? If it's like 2 inches, then you might have a lot of plow bills.....lol.

I forget where you are....pretty close to Mt. Snow or Stratton, right? Snowfall is pretty variable around there so I'd need to know which town and which side of that town. Like the western side of Wardsboro above 1300-1400 feet is probably 120-130 while eastern side lower down is maybe 90-100. Similar results in Jamaica and Dover. The West Wardsboro coop averaged 117" when they were in commission from 1978-2011 and they were at 1400 feet. A lot of dogshit years in the 1980s too, so their longterm average is probably a bit higher in the 125-130 range would be my guess.

Skiing is a hobby for Phin, so no need to rush spring up there. Some of the best skiing is during March and early April with the mountains draped in an entire winter's worth of snow pack.......and also when you don't have to bundle up like you are Shackleton on an Antarctica expedition. March and (in many years) early April is what Ginxy and I have long called "the best open secret in New England" for skiing.

Yeah it would probably drive you nuts if you didn’t spend all that time up there, but in your situation it’s like two residences.

Yeah that whole valley floor probably radiates like the moon...esp with fresh snow cover. Probably some -35 to -40ish temps in the coldest winters. Maybe even colder in the local Maple Hollows of the area.

Yeah even Littleton itself is noticeably better though still a bit snow-holish...and SW Littleton is actually pretty good and down toward Franconia. I’m sure you’ve noticed driving around...it obviously keeps increasing rapidly as you head down toward Franconia Notch and Cannon Mountain. I think the lack of precip is as much to blame or even more so than not holding CAD. Downslope drying in between snowstorms probably helps sublimate the light snows they get more than other areas too...esp on a south or southwest wind. It’s like 2 or 3 factors all conspiring to make them a local minimum. I don’t want to make it sound like they are the Mid-Atlantic....it’s just a very acute local minimum. They still get plenty of light snows from clippers, windex events, and probably even some favorable blocked upslope setups...and even do fine on southwest flow event moderate synoptic snows, but they really struggle on bigger setups and have trouble holding their temps on unfavorable setups compared to other areas nears them.

I was really worried when you mentioned that location...but you’re right, for 99.9% of the population it would be a beautiful paradise, but there’s no way I could in good conscience keep silent seeing a fellow snow weenie consider it. I felt like all the kids in “The Sandlot” movie when Smalls says, “hey what’s the big deal, I’ll get the ball” while he starts climbing the wall....and they all shout “NOOOOOO!!!!.....” and start sprinting after him. LOL

I’d be utterly shocked if that spot got 120”. I could maybe be convinced of 90-100” on the ridge there with mediocre retention. The extra elevation would definitely help some...but it’s still smack in the death triangle between Littleton-Lancaster-Whitefield.

Yeah I don’t know the exact number up there. The Lancaster coop averages like 70”. Sometimes coops are too low if they truly only measure once per day at the same exact time. Not sure if Lancaster does or not. I haven’t scrutinized the coop data there very closely. But based off of snow cover maps and having driven up there frequently, it’s not a whole lot more than that even if it’s wrong. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen bare ground or nearly bare ground there when every other direction was deep snow pack.

It’s def a snow hole there. It’s a ridge but it’s totally stuck right in the valley there between Lancaster and Whitefield. That’s an awful spot. I’m sure they get like an extra 10” per year or something up there compared to the valley floor but I doubt they avoid the big downsloping in the synoptic sense. Id be surprised if they got more than 80-85” per year there. The valley floor there probably barely averages more than ORH with worse retention. It does increase really rapidly toward Jefferson but I feel like that ridge sits in the worst spot. It’s kind of amazing how fast the snow increases once you head east on Rt 2. By the time you get to where Phineas is at the same elevation, it’s probably literally double the annual snowfall with wayyyy better retention. But yeah...in an absolute sense, it’s going to be winter paradise for some person from the south coast. 80”+ of snow is still 80”+ of snow....you just might be driven mad though when you see the snow hole over you or you melt out pretty fast in a cutter and just a few miles away is completely buried.

The bolded is really obvious when you visit there if you are at all informed about geology and meteorology together....it's pretty amazing seeing all these structures, but also seemingly very fragile as you put it...or "exposed fragility" to be more precise. I remember reading a paper, say, 14-15 years ago on the climate of CA going back centuries and the unmistakable conclusion from it was that the 20th century was the wettest century on record there since at least maybe 1000-1100...pre-Little Ice Age. I was thinking, "wow, and people go all crazy over droughts like '76-77.....that will look like Shangri La when one of these 10 or 20 year droughts hits"...at the time, we hadn't had the 2014-2015 drought yet there, but same sentiment....the rhetoric was desperate-sounding, but in a historical climate context, the 2014-2015 drought is a fly compared to so many previous periods. The inevitability of a life-changing drought there rang true when reading that paper...and that's not even accounting for any enhancement climate warming might impose on top of such a drought. And I didn't even talk about the geological inevitability there, but you hinted at it.... I'd pass.

High desert is amazing....I'd consider living anywhere there or in the mountains near there in NM, AZ, S CO/S UT....basically the four corners states outside of places like S AZ and Albuquerque or Las Cruces. As for CA, I had a lot of family out there over the years living in different parts of the state.........I love the Tahoe region of CA and some of far N CA like Mt Shasta and up near Oregon (it's very secluded up there, you might as well be in Idaho), but otherwise I don't have much desire to be in that state. The Mojave desert is pretty cool to visit, but I definitely wouldn't live there. The rest of SoCal is basically a dump to me...San Diego was pretty fun visiting years ago but it's become a lot more crowded in the past couple decades. Still not as bad as the LA Basin.

I was thinking this....

Update as we get close to the minimums.... Current NSIDC area is 2.74 million sq km and current extent is 3.94 million sq km. These should decline a bit further to the min (prob sometime in a week to 10 days historically....perhaps slightly sooner for area). Pretty happy with the predictions so far....we'll see if there are any late season surprises.

We pay even more than that for 2 boys (4 years old and 1 year old)....it's ridiculous how expensive a high-quality daycare is. But our kids just started going back to daycare after a 6 month hiatus, so at least we saved up money, lol.

Tribal instincts eventually infect everything. It's gotten worse over the past couple decades with the advent of biased cable news channels and internet forums/social media where everyone can retreat to their own echo chambers. It's becoming like that in where people choose to live as well. The less contact we have with people who are not exactly like us, the more we dehumanize those other people in our minds....and that's the fastest way to rationalize atrocious behavior toward other people....you view them as an evil non-human enemy....tribalism is strong.