powderfreak

At 7 feet of depth, does the mountain add another 8-12” to this by Monday? Regardless of totals, a solid 1” QPF shot of snow/sleet to the snowpack will compact things a bit. My thinking is 6-10” total SN and IP. 1.00-1.25” QPF.

Dude... this is going to be bananas. The entire state of Vermont gets inundated during President's Weekend/Week, but it will be acute this season given the snowpack, region wide like 100% open, well-advertised snowstorm, etc. Exit 10 is the epicenter, go north to Stowe, or south to the Mad River Valley/MRG/Sugarbush. Locally, the whole Stowe area is going to be bonkers... the the village in the evening after skiing, the Mountain Road during the morning and afternoon rush hours, the mountain in the powder portal, high winds possible Sunday and Monday. Even so, I'm always happy the vacationers get to experience a snowy/wintry trip. The weather and conditions go to shit for so many holiday vacation periods, the vibe is so much more upbeat when conditions are great and folks are into that winter storm excitement... despite the gong show occurring . The high visitation plus the roads being rough will lead to some super frustrating driving, traffic, even temporary road closures by PD if vehicles can't navigate Harlow Hill... I try to go into it with an open mind and enjoy the chaos.

Does the mid-level warmth come in earlier than expected? We are going to sleet up north, just a matter of how quickly.

Best forcing up the St Lawrence Valley, and across SE SNE. Montreal looks good being just NW of the mid level lows.

Love it. Doubt it.

We spiked to 37F in the valley this evening as soon as the westerly winds kicked up. It’s not melting anything but feels balmy outside. Blowing pretty strong though.

Another 4” today of denser wetter snow. Seemed like more QPF than models had. About two feet in the yard now. Mountain did 6” at 3,000ft.

Just think of how frequently rainy it is in the warm season, afternoon showers and storms ruining warm season activities… it all comes around eventually. Just got into the right mid level temps, prevailing westerly flow, with just enough low level moisture aided by the lakes… over a long period of time.

I know ha, it’s tough giving observations when the forum is split like this. But it’s what’s happening. Aiming for more of an observational approach than a gloat.

Crusty the clown may finally come pay a visit to the snowpack after tomorrow… certainly one of the next two events (Sunday). Net gains for sure, but we haven’t seen any precipitation type but snow for the last 5+ weeks. Of course it’s a holiday/vacation period coming up. The last liquid precip occurred during and just after the Xmas/New Years period. Hopefully Mother Nature can let the vacationers experience the current vibe up here. Just filled in.

What a day.

We just don’t know!

That phrase should be on a T-shirt.

Dog walk scene this evening. Just continues to snow. The -12C to -18C 850mb temps at the ridgelines for weeks on end is putting the DGZ right in the sweet spot for mesoscale precip. Even the synoptic snows have been hitting that best DGZ. Its amazing what a normal, cold winter can do. The Mansfield stake data indicates a weak La Niña provides the most consistent snowfall seasons, though the data set only goes back to 1954. There is probably a reason why though, even with randomness. Northern stream over southern stream?

&& .NEAR TERM /THROUGH WEDNESDAY/... As of 620 PM EST Tuesday...Main focus of this update was to try and depict the stationary front and associated heavy snow that has stalled from southern St. Lawrence County, across Burlington, and out to the Northeast Kingdom. Models do not have a good handle on this feature, as it was expected to slide south through the region easily. It is now stuck here over the forecast area, and it`s hard to say how long it will continue to dump snow on that spot. Best forecast is that it may last through about 10 PM, give or take an hour. Will continue to monitor.

Better to have loved and lost than never at all?

Good west to east boundary across the region right now. Precip keeps reforming west of the bigger terrain barriers along the axis, love to see it. A quick 4” at the Lookout snow cam… there’s maybe an inch of feathers here in town to the east though. Its more from mountain westward to BTV.

Yeah for sure, if incidents were common they'd never be used. Hotronic is the brand Stowe always sold. I also didn't mean to imply the products themselves were the problem... as with most things in life, user error is often the culprit. If there's a potential for injury with a product (any product at all), there's always someone who can manage it, ha.

Some good squalls this evening, pretty stationary through BTV to Mansfield. Mountain snow cam has picked up a quick 4”. Sounds like a couple inches in BTV too. Going to tough when this pattern finally ends of snowing every day.

Word of caution with that but would love to hear the “adventures” ha. There’s been some incidents where that goes wrong, it goes very wrong (like your feet getting burned while you are on a chairlift with no way to stop it until you get off up top).

Thats some ice in Berks and ORH hills.

One last scene from the hill this afternoon. This is a south facing aspect, the sunny aspect. All aspects around the dial are good right now.

I treat the GFS and ECMWF as equals today. It could go either way for sure. You just hope the positive busts continue.

Thats a good point. That has massive holiday weekend/vacation week implications. And because Nature has shown time and time again that it hates vacation periods, it’ll probably be wet and crusty instead of deep and soft. It’ll be fascinatingly annoying for the casual skiers to see parts of NNE get buried (or at least not rain or thaw freeze cycle) for like 6 weeks… only to see the last time it rained was coming out of the Xmas-New Years vacation period and then the streak ends at Presidents Weekend/week vacation period.

VT's going to do well when the prevailing method of snowfall is mesoscale, orographic, lake effect, upslope, clippers, westerly flow. ME is going to do better if we are in a coastal pattern with more S/SE/E/NE flow events.