powderfreak

Hit 73F today. Three straight days of double digit positive departures… back in the saddle of +10s or more after 5 days of around average temps. Cold shots are -1F and mild is +12F lol.

Leaf out update… it’s making its way towards 2k feet up here. 1500ft is now turning pretty green but still some scattered sticks. 2,000ft is now seeing buds starting to open (maybe 50-50). Valley bottom at the low elevation of only 750ft is full young green/growth. Ridgeline height gets to 3,600ft for reference on the east side of town in the Worcester Range.

These comparisons have become some of the funniest posts haha. No subjective interpretation, just a quick factual status check nug drop by Dendy .

I guess “warm” is a bit subjective… just thinking mainly from a heating to cooling stand point, the page is flipping. Though I guess one could argue 58/56 rains hasn’t changed much since winter too. But the days of like 43F rains seem gone… now when it rains the dews are up near 55F.

I find myself looking at it as the warm season and cold season. We are now solidly in the warm season. Summer or spring is a semantics argument. It’s moving away from looking for ways to heat the living space, to windows open or A/C. Cold or warm season… it’s a gradual transition but feels like it’s been made. Natural snow is melting off the highest elevations to patchy cover in the spruce groves, and the valley dew points are seeing more elevated lengths of time. Evenings are mild at times. And the crisp frosts are becoming rare even up here in the NNE radiational spots. Flipped to warm season. Evening dews are elevated. People notice/feel it.

We had a min of 57F last night with occasional thunder… all jokes aside, that’s some summer night stuff up this way. Has to be close to a +20 night, ha.

Convective evening… just constant thunder over the past 45 minutes. Not seeing the lightning strikes on maps, but dog has been stressed and it’s been consistent booms every few minutes.

Was thinking you’d enjoy the feel out there… rain cooled 64F but the storms also raised the dews up near 60F. Feels a bit muggy, windows and sliders open. Decent light left to the day at 7pm even with clouds and convection.

Summer vibe. Max 77F. Currently 73F with rolling thunder for the past hour or so from the storms on the west side and Champlain Valley. Slowly crossing the spine and approaching from the SW of Mount Mansfield.

It seems reasonable though, no? ALB is 81-82F too. I guess it’s not egregious. BDL has stalled at 81-82F past two hours. Maybe just mixed out faster? Seems to have gotten there quicker but the others are catching up. In the 5-min data, BAF is now 82F to BDL 81F. AQW is 81F at 650ft.

Actually just had a brief shower but first time of the year it felt like a warm rain if that makes any sense. Big drops, no super chilly wet-bulb drop.

Might have hit 70F up here today.

Ah I didn’t realize SNH sites were so normal in April. Yeah that’s two months of about spot on normal then there. We were more +1 to +3 in the next zone inland from the Atlantic.

Snowpack slightly below normal at elevation thanks to the positive departures. 23” on an average 30”. Photo from Spruce Peak, across the Notch and 2 miles from the recorded Mansfield Stake. It takes a lot of thermal energy to melt the QPF rich snowpack above 3,000ft… even in a mild spring.

Yeah you Logan folks haven’t had the best month. Crazy you guys are -1.5 there near the water while ORH to BDL is like +2 to +4.

Yeah especially this time of year. Feel like autumn it’s more likely NW, more likely SE in spring. Follows the ocean thermals?

Yeah colder 850s down S/E.

Today maxed at 64F and min of 39F. Spot on exactly normal for May 11th at MVL (64/39) and this area. +3.7 on the month.

Yeah wasn’t necessarily talking about you, just quoted it. Just how out of whack the general public is theses days with regards to “normal”… especially considering it’s the “new” 30-year normals too the past couple years.

lol we are running just shy of +4 up here at all three BTV/MVL/MPV and people are like “it’s been a cool May”… If we get a legit -3 type month (any month of the year) people will think the world is ending. Its comical how far people’s tolerances or impressions of normal temperatures have strayed.

I was thinking about that… it seems like just the same air mass at 850mb as we had all winter, ha. Even out through tomorrow… +2 to -2C at 850mb was basically winter this year, but just with the May sun angle now as you said.

Another February morning.

Friend’s cell phone shots from Waterbury, VT.

Not even close up here. We can’t get a month even near normal. It’s worth noting that the past 6 months of ridiculous temperature departures are based off the most recent normals, which were stepwise warmer than the old normals. So these departures would be solidly higher than they have been if compared against the past 30-year dataset we knew in the 2010s. This first 30% of May… BTV… +5.1 MVL… +5.0 MPV… +4.9 Yet another month in progress that will be a torch. Champlain Valley to interior sites east of the Spine. Radiator or not. Doesn’t matter. It’s +5 through the first third of May. Not even close to normal or below. +8 to +10 over winter months has mellowed to +5. A true below normal pattern would make folks think an ice age is coming.

Shut ‘em down, ha. This evening at 5pm I found myself on Spruce Peak with the dog. Looking over at the fabled Nosedive. Nosedive is holding in there for 1,300 vertical feel, but the lower 700 feet (out of view) becomes a problem. Especially the lower 400 feet. It’s crazy that snow is only made on this trail for like a 4-day period during the winter. Just a single snowmaking run during a midweek period to build the base. I’ve always wondered how this trail would be with the Superstar treatment. It would last a long time. You think the natural snowpack is getting to 7-8 feet, add in multiple weeks of snowmaking and this top 1,300 verts would make it to June every year.