powderfreak

It’s been a big winter everywhere out west it seems. On the whole, a deep western trough in the means for months on end, everything fits with the totals experienced out there. Every single storm is an atmospheric river. Many years they only see a few events like that. This year it’s seemed like every event since late November. 300-600+ inches is a lot of snow no matter how you measure it.

This was my afternoon update. Apologies if there are any grammatical errors, I write these every day quickly to record the day and look ahead. Try to thread the line between reality and hope. Past, present, future.

Cranking snow squalls this evening. Half inch in like 15 minutes.

Yes but it may reduce your outages because it’s never happening on your local lines. And I bet you get power back online a fraction faster when the electric company can focus on the main lines coming in, instead of the smaller lines in your neighborhood. Being locally underground doesn’t mean zero outages, but every possible reduction of a line that could get hit by a falling tree is better for everyone in the larger picture.

It got smoked up here. Much worse snow quality than anticipated. Didn’t rain much but doesn’t take much either. Just enough to get the snow wet then freeze it.

Yeah that is definitely bordering on uncomfortable claustrophobic snowfall. Forget any emergency services if god forbid a fire or heart attack happened.

That’s how glaciers start lol.

Kirkwood, CA… Sierra burial… before and after.

Got all the way up to 42F today, felt a bit like spring briefly. Then settled into a nice mid-30s light rain. It’s that time of year.

Yeah when I was a lifeguard in college down there Denehy and his kids would come to the Woodstock town beach.

Celebrity money too. Renee Zellweger was one hiding bodies out there.

Wrong about the geese though in the sense that it is a red flag. Nature doesn’t predict things, it reacts to them. Geese in late November is more because November was warm, not that the geese knew what was coming. Its like when people see flowers come up and assume nature knows it’s going to be warm after that… no it was warm before that and soil temp hits a certain level and the flower comes up. Could die tomorrow in a deep freeze, ha.

Yeah and that’s shown by it being so warm +7 to +10 just north of you in January but with above normal snow during that time. If that’s like +3 or +4 maybe that big CNE snow zone dips to the Pike instead of Lakes Region.

Steady light snow here too. Wintry vibe.

Your favorite hotel this evening with 3-4 feet on the ground in the courtyard.

No, the plot is about 700ft lower and to the north. The COOP stake is off the upper Toll Road. The High Road plot is over off the Gondola top. It’s generally more sheltered. They both though are in the zone that gets buried. There’s a whole upper East side bowl almost that stretches like 1+ mile across the top 1,000-1,500ft that just gets crushed to me. I’m seeing Smuggs reporting 34”, Bolton 32”, Max River Glen 32”… I don’t know how they measured or if they did, but I take pride in knowing we do Mansfield right with consistent data points. To be honest, the one thing I’ve always told people here is it isn’t even about the amount of snowfall in inches. It’s about measuring it in the same location all the time so you know what the value means. Like if the plot has 5”, people know how that skis around the mountain. If it has 17”, it’s holy shit good. But the trick to developing a meaningful snow value for skiing and riding is to be consistent with the location. Not skiing around and taking numbers from wherever trail you thought was deepest. The Summit stake is the same. Depths vary all over the place. But that is the same exact location all the time so we know what the value means. To me that’s how you tell a story, it has to be consistent.

Todays map… up and away. Nothing like going from 60” to 90” in one clean rise.

I ended up with 17”. I will say this afternoon the sun briefly came out and temp was 35F… felt DIT’s spring snow woes a bit. It gets sloppy in a hurry ha ha.

33” total at 3,000ft and 26” at 1500ft. Insane amount of snow added to the hill. The 12-foot Mansfield stake is now much shorter with a depth of 90”.

Still pounding snow. Energizer bunny storm for the mtns up here.

Still snowing as upslope cranks. 17”

Finally an above average snowpack reading on Mount Mansfield. A 15-inch gain today in the depth (62" to 77") and a 16-inch stack at the High Road Stake. This was a big day on the hill.

A friend in Waterbury with 13"... about the local total, but mileage may vary. Cannot imagine 40"+. This is like a passing snow shower compared to what happened in the southern Green Mountains.

I will say for a ski area, here at Stowe we always have a physical measurement to verify totals. There can be plenty of flaws but we control what we can. And that means reliable snowfall measurements. Consistency is key, if you always read the same number location, every time, you'll start to see what the highs and the lows are. This was a big stack for the location that is checked twice a day most times.

This was a big storm for the interior northeast. All mountain zones got smoked. Great storm.