jculligan

Up to 63F here. Warmest day since November 12th.

High of 48F here yesterday - warmest day since Christmas. Starting out at 36F this morning but it looks like it's already 44F at 4000' on the Mount Washington Auto Road. Toasty couple of days ahead.

Skied the Gulf of Slides yesterday in legit spring conditions. The snowpack is definitely lean for mid March in the alpine, and there were even some ice bulges to negotiate which I can't say I've ever encountered in the GOS in March before. Two nights without a refreeze will take a bit of a toll, but then it looks like things lock up this weekend.

Euro and GFS both have some fun next week. Not much ensemble support at the moment, but at least there is something to watch for the first time in quite a while. At the very least, it looks like winter temperatures will be returning. Hopefully we can pick up some snow on top of it. 

4 hours ago, powderfreak said:

This is my attitude as well. Enjoy each winter for what it is.  Like you, my biggest event was 10” in one time way back on November 2-3 upslope event.  But for whatever reason it’s still be a very enjoyable winter for frequent snows and long access to winter recreation.

We see what next year brings and most of the enjoyment is seeing how Nature will roll out the next winter.  I’ve had far less enjoyable winters that have featured larger storms.

Detaching enjoyment of winter from a climo comparison also helps. When I first moved up I think I found it very hard to enjoy a winter if it was below the median.  Like a mental block, if snowfall and the Mansfield stake was below the average I couldn’t enjoy it.  Maybe it’s living in VT longer and that chill attitude of overall experience has penetrated deeper into me that enjoyment doesn’t need to be related to numbers, ha.  Either that or ‘15-16 just broke me and since then I’m very happy with more than 50”.

Just take what’s thrown at you and we see what the character of next winter brings.

I agree with this immensely. I am positive that my 61" seasonal total is way below average (my seasonal total should end up in the 100-120" range)...granted we still have a good five weeks to realistically add to this. But I have logged 67 days with at least one downhill ski descent, including three top-to-bottom descents from the summit of Mount Washington down to the Cog Railway station...so I've had a tremendous amount of winter fun, regardless of the sub-par snowpack. There's been enough snow and persistent cold to satisfy my needs for the most part.

There is still a chance for a late season rally, especially in the alpine. Last year on this date, there was a lean 63" snow depth at the Hermit Lake plot on Mount Washington. By May 1st, the snow depth had increased to 100" due to an absolute bombardment of elevation-driven storms in April and early May. I certainly don't expect a similar outcome this year, but I'm pretty confident I will be skiing the ravines and snowfields through May no matter how the rest of the winter and spring pans out.

Spent the weekend at Baxter State Park in Maine, and saw the meteor driving west on 302 near Fryeburg ME on the trip home last night. Can't imagine how bright that thing would have been in the middle of the night! I didn't hear any noise since I was in my car, but I don't know I've heard of any other eyewitness accounts from the state of Maine yet. I was basically a couple miles from the NH border. Pretty wild!

Baxter State Park was absolutely stunning, though very cold and windy. We made a push for the summit of Mount Katahdin on Saturday with the hope of skiing down Abol Slide, but it was just too cold and windy to venture far above treeline...and the snow was a little too slabby for my liking. Ended up skiing back down the hiking trail, which may have been more precarious than the slide...but sometimes that's how it goes in New England!

15 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

Damn. Not a branch out of place up here. 

Based on the outage map, it seems that my area was in a localized pocket of pretty significant damage. 71% of Jackson was still in the dark last I checked.

This turned into quite the event in my neighborhood. The power went out around 9am this morning, and I relocated to a friend's house in North Conway to work for the day. While I was gone, several trees came down on wires across my driveway and I currently cannot get back to my house. Power remains out, and the house has no heat or water. I'll be spending the night in North Conway and hopefully all is restored by morning.

We were without power for exactly 24 hours following Tropical Storm Isaias in August, so this is the second prolonged outage I have experienced in six months.

Managed to get out for a quick lap at Black Mountain around 7:30 this morning. I would call it "boilerplate" conditions. The upper portion of the mountain definitely had a heavy glazing yesterday, and any ski tracks that were made in the soft wet snow conditions lower on the mountain froze into hard, impenetrable ruts. No trail maintenance was done during the night. Between the sketchy snow conditions, plus all the crap that has blown down (sticks, twigs, pine needles, etc.)...I think it's safe to say it's some of the worst inbounds skiing I've ever experienced lol.

Normally I skin in a base layer and very light shell but today I went full arctic gear with puffy, balaclava, helmet and goggles on the uphill. One lap was good enough.

Back at home, we're up to 5F and my sheltered anemometer has registered a peak gust of 39 mph so far. It's cranking out there.

Looks like Hermit Lake picked up 3" in squalls overnight, but with a current air temp of -16F I'm all set with touring up there this morning ha. Between yesterday's rain and today's arctic blast, this will be my first time missing back-to-back mornings since before Christmas! -3F here at 1500' right now, which is a tie for my low for the winter.

We've had two separate rounds of brief squalls here; the first a little after 5pm, and the second rolled through between 9:30-10:00pm. The cumulative total has been 0.4" so definitely nothing to write home about at this point. As expected, the bigger story has been the temperature drop so far; from around 40F at 4pm to 15F now. Back to deep winter for the time being.

High wind warning issued for my area. Wind gusts to 65 mph tomorrow. I'm not sure I have ever experienced such severity of wind combined with the projected low temperatures. Pretty extreme event shaping up.

One of the things I have noticed in my location, however, is that sometimes we effectively get "blocked" from northwesterly winds...presumably due to a mesoscale effect produced by the Presidential barrier which is immediately upstream. I'm sure this localized "bubble" can be more/less pronounced due to the exact direction/speed of the wind, as well as the presence (or lack thereof) of temperature inversions...but since I've moved up here, I've noticed the local wind minimum regularly presents itself on guidance, often times near the Fryeburg area in particular. So...we will see how this manifests itself with tonight/tomorrow's event.

Ended up being a pretty balmy day here with a high of 40F. Although I generally despise deep arctic air, this seems like it's going to be a fun frontal passage, and I'm looking forward to seeing how quickly the temperatures take a nosedive this evening. We should end up with something like a 40-degree drop in about 12 hours, which is rather impressive.

In other news, I'm heading up to Baxter State Park in Maine at the end of this week for what was supposed to be a long weekend of cabin-based ski touring. The big objective was a descent off the summit of Katahdin via the Abol Slide, but projected temperatures may keep us below treeline unless things trend differently as we get closer. There are a couple of smaller objectives that appear to be within striking distance of our cabin, but with limited knowledge of the snowpack history and no formal avalanche forecasting in the park...we'll be keeping things as conservative as possible for that area. Either way, it'll be nice to get out into true wilderness for a few days...and leave the familiarity of the White Mountains behind for a bit.

Just drove up from the village and noticed all the trees about 200-300' above my cabin are glazed. Looks like a pretty good freezing rain event higher up on Doublehead this morning. The top of Black Mountain appears to be glazed as well. Hopefully those elevations get a spike in temp this afternoon before the wind arrives.

36F with a steady rain falling here at 1500 feet. 0.17" in the bucket so far today. Hopefully we can catch a squall or two this evening to freshen things up again.

Little bit of a bust here this morning. I expected 2-3" of wet snow overnight, but we ended up getting a little bit of sleet and a light glazing of freezing rain instead. Currently 33F and misting.

Balmy start to the day. After we spiked to 40F last evening, it eventually dropped back down to 30F overnight but it's already back up to 36F as of 7am. The snow developed a crust layer with the overnight re-freeze, but should go through a true "corn cycle" (in skier terms) once the sun hits it for a couple hours this morning. As I mentioned last night, I think the overnight re-freeze was critical for good spring ski conditions today. I'm planning to lap the Cog to get some alpine views in low risk terrain today.

Tonight's event looks good for a quick 2-3" in my area, but I think areas below 1500' will struggle with the warm boundary layer. The models have a pocket of >0C 850 temps north of the Whites, so I have a feeling Phin's poor luck with downsloping recently will continue. 

Tomorrow evening's arctic front looks fun. There's a good signal for squalls, though the RGEM is focusing more on southern NH. We've had a dearth of WINDEX events this winter, but this could be a good one. The combination of wind and cold to follow looks to be among the worst we've seen all season, but thankfully this is a quick in-and-out. 

39 now. When we mix out, it can happen fast. We had a 9-degree spike in about 30 minutes ha.

Wind kicked up and we've spiked to 35. Couldn't hang on to our cold pocket forever.

After creeping up to 32F we have cleared out and slipped back down to 30F. I expected to edge above freezing this evening with a period of dripping, but perhaps not. 

*Edit: I see the models have a spike around 9-10pm after FROPA, so maybe it's still coming. I actually want a melt/refreeze tonight, otherwise the snow is going to be super sticky tomorrow. A little crust in the morning will mean we could actually have a corn cycle tomorrow, which will make for good skiing by late morning/midday.

Really wild observations today! Seems that I fared quite well, all things considered. Ended up with 2.7" of snow and sleet. This stuff has some serious density, as has been the case with almost every event this winter. But we never had any rain or freezing rain here.

Currently up to 32F which is the warmest it has been all day. A very dense fog has rolled in during the last 10-15 minutes...almost instantaneously as the temperature hit freezing. I suspect we may drip for a few hours this evening before temps slip back down overnight.

Doublehead skied amazingly well today.

Measured 1.5" here at 1pm and it continues to snow steadily. We've had some pretty heavy bursts at times, but short-lived. Temp has crept up to 29F.

35 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

Models all have about .5" liquid here as snow for Saturday.

Fingers crossed for my first snowfall over 2" since the beginning of Feb.

4-6" of snow would be perfect to rebuild things and set up March.

I didn't realize you had gone so long without a 2" snowfall! I guess this month has been better for the synoptic areas versus the upslope areas (though not by much). I measured 2.3" on February 16th and 3.4" this past Monday into Tuesday.

Skied a lap on the Sherburne Trail out of Pinkham Notch this morning. I would estimate there was 1-2" of new snow in the Pinkham parking lot, and closer to 3" up at Hermit Lake (3800'). I noted a similar consistency here as powderfreak noted in Vermont - it skied way more dense than a usual 1-3" snowfall. There's a pretty scratchy surface underneath thanks to the thaw/freeze cycle these last two days.

Looking forward to a complete re-set on Saturday, but hoping we can avoid a change to sleet/fzra in the late stages of the event.

Just about 3" on the nose here. Currently 24F with calm wind and mood flakes still flying. I'll have to get out in the yard and take some actual depth measurements tomorrow, but I'm estimating our snowpack is around 22-23" on the level now. While that may be below average for late February in these parts, it's a beefy pack with a lot of water locked in it...so this is going to have some staying power. Almost every event since 12/17 has been high density this winter.

8 minutes ago, alex said:

Snow has lightened up significantly. 1.7"

That's what we are at as well. 1.7" on the day and 49.3" on the season over here. Not sure where I sit in terms of snowpack since there has likely been some settling since Tuesday, but I would imagine we are hovering around 20" OTG. Deep winter.

Picked up 1" in the last hour. 1.4" total so far. Still snowing at a decent clip, though the flakes have gotten smaller. Holding at 25F.

51 minutes ago, Angus said:

I skied a pair of 110-115 at a demo day maybe 5 years ago, spring conditions. It was a strange sensation, almost like surfing! But could definitely see how they would be fun. Haven't been out there in probably 7-8 years but always laughed when I walked into a Tahoe ski shop, there wasn't a ski in there less than 100 under foot.

They definitely have a very "surfy" feel to them! They are a blast in powder - no chance of going over the handlebars in those things!! This is my 9th season with them since they get such limited use, but I have brought them onto Crescent Ridge both times I have gone so far.

I do more touring than I do riding the chairlift, so the Salomon MTN 95 Explore is what I ride on probably 90% of days. It's 95 underfoot with good tip rocker and a stiff tail. Kind of a jack-of-all-trades for ski mountaineering. It skis surprisingly well in powder due to the tip rocker, but it's nice and stiff for the more technical terrain we have in the ravines around here. 

Back to the weather...I measured a half inch at 11am so hopefully the observations of ~2" totals upstream eventually translate up here. Snowing nicely now, and down a degree to 25F.