powderfreak

Some satellite image works that show foliage from space. Imagery is crazy in this day and age. Mansfield zoom. Stowe southeast of the crest, Smuggs northwest of the divide.

I’d imagine sun angle and mixing has at least something to do with it. In just two and a half months the sun angle starts rising. Right now, there’s residual summer warmth with cold season solar. It wedges.

The wedge that develops there (during the cold season under the surface inversion) is a fun phenomenon. SE of the mountains, just pocketed in those CAD areas.

BTV still 70F on the blowtorch southerly flow. It’s pretty impressive. 67F MVL.

Oh I hope it didn’t sound like I wasn’t enjoying it! Ha. Been outside till dusk every single day. The rain and cold afterwards will suck… won’t enjoy that as much for sure for being outside. I hope by mentioning the historical relevance that it didn’t come across as I am yearning for cold. This has been a great stretch of blow torch.

72F today and currently 66/61 at 8:45pm. Its like a summer evening with dews over 60F. Our normal low is now in the upper 30s (38F or 39F at MVL). This first week is going to be like +13 lol… hard to recover from fully for the month. This has been a torch for the ages.

Town of Stowe holds a massive arts/crafts fair during this long/holiday foliage weekend in the Topnotch Fields and it is often one of the biggest clusterf*cks of the year. Maybe the field will be a mud pit with hundreds of cars marooned axel deep? The traffic this weekend historically can be bumper to bumper from I-89 through Waterbury/Center and through Stowe lol. It’s been gridlocked past my place 4 miles away from the craft fair too. People love when leaves change color.

Yeah I think this looks primed to come down in the rain. If we get 2” and some breeze, it’ll be stick season real fast.

Ha yup, Nantucket in summer, Stowe in winter. And not to go down the economics rabbit hole but things are different than they were pre-COVID. Stuff just costs more. Labor costs have doubled, energy costs, replacement parts/maintenance costs, etc. Corporate greed hasn’t changed in decades, but operating margins have shifted. And places aren’t going to operate at a loss. The $10 pizza is now $24. The $20 Gondola ride is now $37. Could play this game with any number of goods and services. Back to weather… this sunrise is bonkers this morning. And it’s 55F outside. That’s a real mild night in October.

I get the sentiment but those things aren’t cheap either to build and maintain and insure. Killington is $30+ and $24+. Pretty standard rates in industry is $25-$40 for a senic lift ride. You hike up and it’s free to ride down at least, ha. I don’t know, it’s got a 20+ minute line to ride in the fall so at that price there’s a demand. I always go back to economic principles on this stuff; no one would look at what goes on in the fall and think, yeah this is priced too high. Like I said, you start to figure out there is an enormous amount of wealth in the northeastern US working in some of these resort towns.

It is. Full manual with DSLR. Getting the contrast and light to optimize color is key. You need to “stop down” to reduce the light entering. Time of day is absolutely critical too, even with just an iPhone camera or something. If foliage is getting blasted by harsh/high-sunlight, everything washes out. The natural eye notices it very easily. You see noon foliage on a warm sunny and it can be underwhelming… foliage in the early morning or late afternoon light just glows when in the warm low-angle lighting. Dark, rainy days can be the best foliage color to be honest. Wait till this weekend and it’s dark, damp… foliage will pop more noticeable to the eye.

I want to say $37. Kids are maybe 10 bucks cheaper? It’s not cheap, but offers a bit more novelty than Toll Road to me. But it adds up quick for a family of 4. Mild evening for Oct… 63F at 9:30pm. High of 83F. Evening walk as it got dark around 6:30pm. Free of charge, ha.

Ha I worked at the Sturbridge Host Hotel just down the road in that time frame.

And these are all tomato plants you see out of the right side windows…

Can charge triple if you add an old train doing laps to the mix too. Or even just a tractor pulling a trailer of hay for people to sit on.

It’s big business. They go Bar Harbor/Acadia to North Conway to Bretton Woods/MWN to Stowe to Lake Placid, NY then down to Lake George to Manchester, VT or the Berkshires (Williamstown or Stockbridge) and then back through Lakes Region of NH. Talk to a few dozen leaf peppers and half of them will hit a combination of those locations, without fail.

Yeah I’m with you. That’s why I hike the hill with my dog. No people and on my own in the quiet. I’m just saying there are clear economic principles at play in these things. Working and living in a resort town you realize the amount of wealth around the Northeast is staggering. The Notch Road is free (also a zoo)… Gondola would be a toss up but no matter what price point there’s 2K+ people looking to get on it a day in foliage.

Supply and demand. I’ve been getting notifications the thing is parked out and one up/one down within an hour of opening every day. Economics says that price will keep rising given crowd levels, ha.

83F MVL 84F BML 82F SLK 82F HIE Been a helluva few days for the NNE mountain valley sites. We seem to do spring and autumn torches best relative to normal.

79/61 yesterday at 12:10pm… 79/61 today at the same time.

It was hot inside yesterday evening after 87F and dews into the 60s. Temp was higher in many spots up north than they were in August. But if I was dealing with window units then they’d be out and I’d be fine. But flip the switch, cool and dry it out while eating dinner and the evening.

This is a high-end anomalous air mass, at least in NNE. Record warmth from Adirondacks/Whiteface to Greens/Mansfield to Whites/Washington. So it's obviously a torch at the H85 level. I'm a nerd and love seeing the elevational differences in different situations. The lower levels this time of year seem to be the hardest to mix out... surface inversion hard to mix out in some drainages/valleys? The spot that mixes the deepest aloft wins the surface temperature award? The elevated mountain valleys going the same temps as the larger low valleys. At full dry adiabatic rates, some of these temps would bring 90+ under 500ft. Some high-end heat in the Adirondacks. The fact that 2000ft in elevation was warmer than any day in August for a couple day stretch seems noteworthy.

Yeah we turned it on up here this evening. ASOS dews got up to 64-65F around NNE this afternoon. It was a summer day.

Actually, looking at the highs in NNE, interesting that most spots are clustered so close despite elevation differences. Shows that regional topography matters more than elevation? SLK is almost 1700ft and hit 86F… must be the high peaks region of the Adirondacks helping mix the atmosphere. Mountain slopes maximizing valley compressional warming? It seems like it doesn’t matter if you were at 300ft or 1700ft, the high temps would be about similar. 87F BML (1,160ft) 87F MVL (730ft) 86F SLK (1,660ft) 86F BTV (330ft) 85F MPV (1,160ft) 84F HIE (1,050ft)

Hoo Lee Fuk. MVL here locally hit 87F. Period of record is short but if 86F set BTV’s going back to 1882…. a degree warmer at MVL is mind boggling.