powderfreak

Saw some moderate snow obs out of SLK… along with the persistent 1.5-3.0sm vis -SN… that’s a nice snowy winter day out of nowhere.

At least when you go out to a ski town like Aspen there’s still a fun mountain town vibe to enjoy regardless of conditions.

We are getting like an inch every 10 hours at 3,000ft in this persistent flurry, ha.

Finished December with a -5 departure and snow cover throughout here in the valley with frequent snows. Currently a frigid -6F this evening after last night’s refresher and these well-below normal arctic shots continue with frequency. Normal is 28/9. Today is 23/-6 because of a midnight high last night. Daytime hours never got above 16F.

Ended up with a 7.5” measured total in 24 hours at 1500ft. Gondola was on wind hold so never got to the High Road plot. Skiing was fluff on top of pond ice or slick hardpack. Steeper stuff was very sporty.

Yeah, picked up another 1.5" after that for a total of 7.5". Total fluff on top of like tilted pond ice on the Front Four lol. Looks great in photos. Skis like you want to hold on for dear life.

Saw 6" overnight at Barnes Camp and that 1,500ft elevation saw snowpack go from 23" to 29".

6” overnight at the base of the ski area. 29” depth, up from 23” yesterday.

Have fun or not .

Yes it was a typo. 59”.

The good vibe that a multiple snowstorm stretch brings is hard to beat by one big one. A 10-inch event, 5-inch event, and 10-inch event in an every 3rd day succession is a 7-10 day binge of winter. Getting a big 20” event then nothing pales in terms of the overall mood/outlook.

The Fata Morgana effect is awesome in this photo. Looking through the inversion and distortion of the horizon. Looks like the Grand Mesa on the right side of the photo.

Yeah a chair barn helps a lot. Still need to de-ice sheave wheels, rope and towers… but it’s a lot easier than de-icing 100 detachable grips. Chair storage is a big deal. We have it for the FourRunner Quad, but not Sensation Quad and that’s the photo I posted of the grips all iced up. Lift maintenance has to bang the ice off each and every one of those. Which by the way, hats off to all lift maintenance teams today. They were the ones up on towers, in the elements, all day long banging ice… it’s hard physical work, cold and wet… tethered in way off the ground. They are the real heroes.

I’ll have to look that up. Curious how.

Heavy icing… chairlifts don’t enjoy it.

Getting mangled snowflakes to start. 27/17

Latent heat release is real. SLK with a quick 0.07” at temps in the 20s. Gotta be slick out there. The ice maps are just QPF at temps 32F or lower… but a tenth of an inch as ZR gets slippery in a hurry on roads, driveways, parking lots, etc.

A mesoscale winter. Lake effect, upslope, the moist cold air advection spots. And a few random synoptic events. Suppressed at times.

Yeah, we tend to max out cold at 1500-3000ft around here. Though I’m not sure I remember one as shallow as this. 3,000ft can be the coldest on east slope but in this it’s much lower around 750-1,000ft.

3,600ft… 36F 2,600… 28F 1,500ft… 26F 750ft… 19/14 (MVL ASOS) Fake ice incoming.

Only 19F at MVL in sun. Its 37-39F at our two sensors top of FourRunner Quad and Gondola. 20 degree difference is impressive during sunshine.

Yeah if you are getting 0.10”/hr or more QPF, even at 28F, that’s going to try very hard to quickly get to 32F through latent heat release. I think we see a lot of 0.1-0.25” type ice with driving on cold pavement, cold dirt roads and side roads as the bigger issue.

1/-2

Woodbury Center, CT at 6.5” so far. That’s like two hours of snow.