powderfreak

It will be very elevation dependent, snow limited to the mid-slopes and higher, like >2500ft to 4000+ at the ski areas. But healthy signal for mid-level deformation followed by NW upslope flow for the NW Greens and Whites. Euro now on board with decent QPF signal.

12z GFS is interesting... it has a nice swath of what verbatim would be half a foot of paste rolling through above 2,500ft. Might get interesting in the Northern Greens...

I almost think it’s passed a bit. When I was in college at UVM all anyone wanted was a Tacoma. That or a Nissan X-Terra, lol. That was 2003-2007. I feel like I see less of those now. I also haven’t lived in Burlington for 12 years now.

That list surprised me on an aside, ha. Figured Subaru would be #1-5. Reading into it there's still a lot of farm and manual labor, construction, in the rest of the state etc that overwhelms the Subaru numbers around Burlington. And Subaru doesn't make a working truck.

Yeah, I do think even if it was cheap to pave and maintain paved roads... it might not matter... there's also like a sub-conscious (or maybe more overt sometimes) vibe of "don't bring the suburbs here" by paving everything. People moving up to the North Country and start demanding roads that have been dirt for centuries should be paved is a good way to ostracize oneself, ha. Sprinkle in that humans love to resist change in anyway at all and roads stay dirt. On an aside too... looks like both states have a pretty similar list of most popular vehicles. Trucks in both NH and VT by far the most popular despite the stereotypes, ha. Looks like it goes Ford, Chevy, Toyota for both states. Most Registered Vehicles in Vermont 1) Ford F Series 2) Chevy Silverado 3) Toyota Tacoma 4) GMC Sierra 5) Subaru Forester Top registered vehicles in New Hampshire 1. Ford F-Series 2. Chevrolet Silverado 3. Toyota RAV4 4. Ram 1500/2500/3500 5. Honda CR-V

Big ice last night up in that 850-925mb cold pocket. From a colleague who's about to start banging ice off the lift.

Do you repave them annually though when the frost heaves buckle them? We always discuss it on our small road but grading it a couple times a year is so much cheaper than having to pave it and then fix it all the time. It always seems to be a cost discussion around these parts as it's very easy and cheap to fix a dirt/gravel road but when a paved road gets in unacceptable shape its very expensive. Limited infrastructure budgets probably play a much greater role than environmental reasons. There's a frost heave on RT 108 leading away from the ski resort here that's like a mini- asphalt halfpipe where everyone local knows to slow down to like 30 mph in a 50 mph zone. Just formed the past couple months, who knows when the state will deal with it. I'm sure some of the bad mud roads if paved would be a disaster in short order and then rarely get fixed... so you're left with this unacceptable paved road year round instead of a couple weeks of mud then grading.

Lift Maintenance found 1/2-1” of clear ice on the FourRunner Quad above 3000ft here. Sounds real rugged. Going to open with the Triple that stayed below the ice line.

This is one of the weirdest stories I’ve heard. Driver became stuck in mud in Middlesex, VT… and I have no idea how it gets to this: Mud season nightmare: A VPR host was stranded for 7 hours on a rural road. She barely survived. Nearly three weeks after Linda Radtke’s mud season disaster, she was still finding mud in her ears. She hung inverted out the driver’s side window. She was freezing, unconscious, her mouth in the mud. When Matthew Collins, a driver for The Auto Clinic, arrived on the scene, he could not initially make sense of what he saw. Something was hanging out of the car window. It was Radtke. She was wrapped in a dirty sleeping bag. She had one leg stuck through the driver’s side window of her car, lodged beneath the steering wheel. Her face, buried in the mud, was obscured. “You could hear gurgling,” Collins said. “She had a very, very faint, shallow heartbeat, just barely breathing. Her airways and all that, her nose, everything was full of mud.” https://vtdigger.org/2022/04/07/mud-season-nightmare-a-vpr-host-was-stranded-for-seven-hours-on-a-rural-road-she-barely-survived/

Pingers here too. 36F. Mansfield sitting 29F.

From 65F yesterday and perfect spring weather to a very cold sleety rain today. A full 180 degree switch from what’s the nicest weather you can think of to what’s the most miserable.

We’ve been sleeting with the rain today too at 37F at the base of the ski area. Summit has been showing 30-31F so that 850mb cold layer is there.

Amen there. The dew crowd would definitely prefer 70s for temps if the dews were also 70s over a dry 88F. I understand it too, as 79/71 feels almost more uncomfortable than 88/54 or something. I'll always take the dry heat... the type where you get into the shade and find relief. Not the days when even in the forest it feels like the leaves are dripping with humidity. Calling for an Above Normal summer temp regime though seems like it isn't even a forecast at this point... it's just what happens now. Getting 3 summer months below normal in the means would take a volcano or something these days.

That's wild the differences from here to there during the last few weeks. Today was another Top 10 Spring ski day. No crowds, good coverage, all the steep/narrow Front Four still open. It's going to look a lot different after 1-2" of rainfall though over the next couple days. Upper Starr just before it rolls over and out of view. Upper Goat, just one ski width wide elevator shaft. There could be 12 feet of snow on the ground and that skiers right side would still be bare rock with snow only packed in on the skier's left. That's what makes it a classic. You fall and you can go for a very uncomfortable ride downhill, just aim for the snow instead of steep ledge.

Haha, I will say I don’t share the hatred of springtime like you guys do. It can be a really nice season up here. On an aside, the 2PM dew point at CAR was 3F. That’s wild. Red flag air mass. The RH map shows todays “winners.”

The next couple months are when SLK-MVL-BML can shine north west of the Marine Mank. Days like today with super dry air and warmth. I feel like April/May and even June in recent years have really amplified the over-the-top mild days.

I got 62F here and not a cloud in the sky. People out in shorts. MMNV1 is showing 50F right now at Picnic Tables… warmer at 4kft than SNE. Dews in the 20s… dry 26% RH spring glory.

What a day. 10/10.

Bonus day of sunshine and mild weather. Full sun. Was 26F at my house at 5am with heavy frost. Looks like we grab one more good spring ski day before 4 days of garbage time.

I’d need to see more model support and run to run continuity on that 12z GFS run… but verbatim that would be a large elevation snow event for the upslope zones of NVT. This time of year with cut-offs slowly meandering around they are always possible but that particular run needs a lot more support. Wouldn’t surprise me to see some Mtn snow though on the backside of that system with ULL pushing east slowly. But might only be 2-4” or something.

True, makes sense.

I love this time of year. The long daylight, plenty of snow left, evaporating skiers, corn snow. Spring skiing at its finest. Now for some retrospective… There was a time back in mid-March when I was skiing around with Andre and we were checking things out after the mountain failed to see a freeze in four days. We’d just seen over an inch of rain as well. It looked dire. The natural snow trails looked smoked and secondary snowmaking runs were not fat. The prospect of Mother Nature limping us out of another season was looking likely. A month left and we’d be skiing main snowmaking routes and that was it. Fantastic. Skip forward two+ weeks and today we skied Upper Starr in the sunshine. Upper Liftline? Open. Goat, good coverage. The Hayride rock reefs in the flats above the Waterfall pitch? Covered. Even mighty Chapel Lane was sporting wall-to-wall good coverage for downhill polling today, ha (it barely pitches downhill). It’s funny how it works out but despite the dire scene a couple weeks ago, Mother Nature has come through big time with several healthy snows, and cold weather that will make the last two weeks of lift service on Mansfield very fun. And it’s safe to say there will likely be a considerable “third season” of skinning given snowmaking snow depths. Bravo on the revival Mother Nature. If you look closely here, you can see Mount Washington glowing white even on an iPhone photo on the right side horizon.

It’s that time of year for sure.

We are actually in much better shape than last year at this time to be honest. The last 2 weeks have held ground if not gained.

Yeah I’m a big fan of spring. Still so much snow, the skiing today is phenomenal and it’s nice enough in town to walk the dog for an hour at like 6pm. So much snow left… zero people. This is why ski areas close with lots of snow ha.