powderfreak

Oh, thought it was spurred by yesterdays comment. Season pass holders usually don’t know real reasons but they know rumors, ha.

14F this morning, now up to 19F. Some potential for upper 30s later though. Should feel nice.

Might have been wind and not mechanical? We had our Quad running at like 600 feet a min instead of 1000 fpm due to strong wind at the summit terminal on Friday I think it was. Yesterday Gondola started on wind hold. But remember, slower than normal speeds are usually wind related over mechanical. Mechanical is usually closed lift, there isn’t a whole lot of mechanical reasons a lift would run slow over fast. There’s an evac motor that runs very slow but that’s a one-time thing to get people off. My guess would be on wind. Lift Ops turns the speeds down. You can basically lower the lift speed until it’s at the point of what the “slow” button does and then it goes on hold.

We’ve heard Will/ORH say it before, ha. Why root against it? To get another 38-degree rainstorm over a 32F paste job? Can see rooting against it if the options are 65F and sunny vs a sloppy 3”… but often rooting against snow just leads to a cold rain in a system.

Ha hopefully they are skiing in bikinis… that’s also a great time. Warm skiing is a helluva lot of fun, just turns into beach on snow if it’s 60F.

Right, no control over it so going wildly one way or another seems like an effort in futility (pun?). Whatever helps folks make peace with it though for sure. There will be a 150 page thread if even 3-6” shows up.

Lol another stage of the grief is going after the ski areas and snowmobilers . I picked up where you guys left Dryslot off. Its all fun and games. We’ll be skiing into May like we do every year I bet.

Yeah it’s just a melt and coping by each who melts at different times. I still think it’ll snow again so being over it doesn’t really do anything lol.

For each person it’s the time they started getting anxious about the lack of snow. It started a lot earlier for some than others.

Ha that was my first thought. All objectiveness is out the window. Dude could snowblow in early May at that elevation there.

Winter. The latitude matters…northern Maine is a different area.

Yeah it could be quite a while before any real gains again. I probably read too much into the post based on the tenor of the forum today, ha. Its just March and April are still 8 weeks of possible healthy snows and gains at that elevation. The mean max temperature at the Stake is 33.8F on April 10th… so two months from now the average high is barely above freezing. It looks like, say, Hartford CT only has one calendar day in the entire year (January 16 at 33.5F)) where the mean max temp is lower than Mansfield on April 10th. So the hill has until early/mid April before it hits mid-January in CT climate. Just for perspective on climo timelines. With that said, this winter has shown that taking the under on winter potential is the way to go… the persistence pattern. Sometimes that’s hard to shake and can stick with a whole season. Weighing the probabilities continues to offer some optimism but not expecting it… reasonable viewpoint at this time.

I still think most of you are ending things way too early but understand how you guys get there. It’s like saying there won’t be another 4 inches in SNE in early Feb. Could be right but it’s hard to wager that unless in full despair. The mountain can get like 100” in April. I’ve seen enough big late spikes to know calling it at 42” at beginning of Feb seems ill advised. But purely from statistics. Depth dropped 2” in the 40s and rain last night. Even the mild valley days it can be 50F in town and 35F with little snowpack change on the mountain. Hard to go steadily downhill from this point without ever rebounding. We’ll see… forecast is for 3-7” tonight. Tonight Snow showers. Low around 11. Wind chill values as low as -5. Windy, with a northwest wind 26 to 31 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New snow accumulation of 3 to 7 inches possible.

Yeah there’s a Front sagging south with some energy riding in and where that front intersects the terrain should do the best. I like 2-4”. I don’t think ratios will be anything to write home about but it’s not snowfall that matters but frozen QPF on top of the newly forming crust. Whether 0.30” brings 2” or 6”, it’s that heft or water that’ll keep us off the surface layer.

Figure out when we mixed out in the village lol. It was 32F when I woke up this morning and seemed like the inversion was trying to hold. Then it got windy and went up 10 degrees in minutes.

Figure out when we mixed out in the village lol. It was 32F when I woke up this morning and seemed like the inversion was trying to hold. Then it got windy and went up 10 degrees in minutes.

Had 2” at 1500ft, an inch or so left when I got home… now rain.

Great Snow just smashed his Compaq Presario desktop.

Over to 32F and rain now after 2.25” of absolute slushy paste. Sad trombone, but shouldn’t lose any pack with this event now. Probably 0.30” water in this couple inches.

2” in 2 hours and dumping snow.

You know it’s a biggie when 10-20” is shafted. I don’t know but my guess is it occluded and bombed out too early… and it had some sort of inverted trough mixed in there as well. But mostly it looks like it occluded and just hammered the area SW of Maine. Similar to the biggies in the Mid-Atlantic that still hit New England but the main conveyor belts are gone. LBSW I think is the technical term for it .

That was the deepest skiing of my life. I’ll still never forget the end of the day run down off the ridge. This photo went far and wide after that storm. My track is on the side of my buddy here… but standing still the snow was up to your stomach. You did not want to fall because it was like quick sand, you’d just drown with no firm bottom. Good memory because that event was 40-50” when all was said and done. Nice trip down memory lane, ha.

Been 38-41F in town all afternoon and walked the dog in a hoodie. Feels like spring at 39F right now.

Taft Lodge on Mansfield on social earlier today. It was a top 10 weather day to be honest.

Nice. That looks solid.