powderfreak

Some areas are more prone to it, like NW sides of mountains in New England can rip big wind. Here it’s the towns NW of Mansfield and the rest of the Spine. I bet you mix down big winds on SE flow. Phin always saw big winds on south flow.

GFS is pretty similar. The downslope area NW of the Greens out in the Champlain Valley and flats of southern Quebec are going to absolutely rip.

Man, those are some big numbers for 10-meter wind gusts on the NAM on Friday.

Yeah you guys know me, I'm not trying to start sh*t, ha. I just have this dream of comparing apples to apples for the science aspect of it. I've always appreciated the show and tell style to snow measuring, because if 22" did fall up there it would be more interesting to see the why it did. Meso-scale banding, upslope, etc. Occasionally a number falls out of line with the overall tenor of a storm distribution (take all other ski areas and they blend in with the larger storm total distribution map) of a south to north gradient. I know its a tired topic and difficult to discuss without trying to sound like some sour grapes or something stupid like that, ha ha. 15 years ago when I first started and was green it would've bothered me, now I just find it curious. BTW, Jay's new comms guy is a great dude. Big pickup for Jay Peak. I'll be working on him for a Snow Cam. There has to be a place they can stick one that just gets nuked.

I'm not going to completely discount the 22" at Jay but I do wish there was some indication that it was actually measured. I've heard even from Jay patrollers today that they wish there was a little more science to their observations. It's still rare in this day and time to see regular measurement images but most mountains have shown some attempt at a visual snow accumulation. The ones that haven't probably should start to. It garners a lot of respect and trust in snow reporting. Looking at CoCoRAHS and other observations, the snowfall with this storm did decrease from south to north. The north got less, it is what it is. The Bolton Valley, Stowe, Smuggs, Burke areas owned that lower snowfall that fell in the North. I won't lie, I think it happened at Jay Peak too. I hate to say it, but I do not think those staying at that area found 22" on the ground when the other N.VT areas saw 12-16". On an aside, we saw 2-3" today at both the Lookout and High Road snow plots at 3,000ft. There's always going to be more at 3600-4295ft... but at the upper mountain snow plots that are are 2/3rds of the way up the hill or more, these snow study plots can be a good measure for mountain snowfall.

Nothing beats Christmas Day 2002. 24” in the backyard SW of ALB. Last winter living there… got a Christmas Hail Mary. It can be a broken record claim within the Xmas discussion, but nothing will break that daily snowstorm IMO. Pure glory, pivot point. 18” on Christmas afternoon/evening. Sustained 3”/hr. Up to 5”/hr recorded as it tightened up. A couple feet in very short duration during the holiday.

Yeah need a natural snow storm to fix it usually. Grooming and some random snowmaking help but it’s not like everything can be resurfaced. It becomes tough with snowmaking too if expansion or resurfacing and how to allocate those resources. Sometimes holiday week is just making sure as much as possible is open instead of snowmaking again on already open terrain.

Yeah I just looked at a topo… Heath is almost all above 1200ft, a lot above 1600ft and some folks at 1800ft. Thats some solid elevation.

Just busting your balls.

I know you are sort of joking but that event was pretty damn widespread that just went through. Add in ME and down into NY/PA, it wasn’t just Mooseknuckle Creek snowfall.

Yeah I never know why this is much of a discussion. They are two separate things. One is the amount of snow that falls from the sky, the other is the amount of snow on the ground. It would be like measuring rainfall via run-off.

Into the upslope persistent snows now. Fluffy and wind blown.

Saw this from Wildcat. Those are some serious stacks on the chairlift. Feet.

I love my fluff but this was a rare blue bomb. Literally the snowbanks tinted light blue type of stuff. Plow piles retain their curved shape when the plow leaves it behind, ha.

13” depth of just blue snow. Trees already starting to shed. It feels warm out. Some of the heaviest 12”< snow I can remember here in the valley.

Yeah this will satisfy NNE for a bit. No complaints with 12+ of absolute cake. Turned into a true slow moving QPF bomb.

13.5” total. Looks to be tapering off.

Still snowing.

A lot of heavy wet snow. Eyeballing has to be near 10” now. Power flickering. Power went out at the mountain, back on but no network/internet. The evergreen branches are going straight down to the ground.

Not a huge event snowfall wise locally but it does get into Winter Storm Warning criteria here. We’ll see what the 12am-6am period brings. High QPF snows lead to a larger impact for sure than warning amount fluffy snow.

Up at Mansfield I can say that the snow plots recorded 5-6" of snowfall and I found 6" of wet, dense snow at home right after checking the 1,500ft plot. It skied much deeper but this sounds very similar to my experience at Stowe. With the wind and snowfall, one could make the case for a wide range of snowfall over the crusty base layer. But the plots showed 5-6". At home there actually was more accumulation for whatever reason, even given the lower elevation. It was very odd to be honest.

Tim’s awesome. Great vibe and energy. Someone you enjoy hanging out with because he “gets it” and loves skiing and snow equally.

All I can think about is strong NAO block maybe isn't as bad as suppression depression? All those years Will was laughing about -NAO and slow moving interior and NNE snowstorms while the rest of us worry about 2010 . We barely made it without rain in this one. In fact it's been ripping snow and while holding at 32-34F now since 12pm. Lower ratio. MVL has been above freezing for 9 hours now in this wet paste. Guess block doesn't equal cold suppression all the time?

Such a slow mover if models are still pinging these 6-hourlies from 3-10am tomorrow.