powderfreak

Sorry dude. Pulling for ya. It’s a tough market out there.

The wind is hammering us. Roaring and honestly surprised we haven’t lost power. East side of the spine/barrier on strong westerly CAA. We can mix down very well in these thaw to CAA situations… like water flowing over a line of rocks. It drops down with force behind the barrier. The tree boughs have been getting abused the past 15 minutes. I’d wager it’s consistent 40mph gusts.

9:30pm has flakes up high. The front is through. Wet and windy.

Hopefully you guys can ride the amped-up parade to a snow event on the next one. Nothing wants to suppress. As ORH says, even a light snow event is better than a cold rain so might as well root for snow if the opportunity arises.

Some torrential rain and gusts 30-40mph with the FROPA up here. MVL ASOS with 38mph, not impressive but around 40mph gusts are noticeably windy. There’s a lot of water coming out of the mountains down the waterways.

Knockout punch… torrential heavy rain. Love when the Spine east of BTV maximizes snowfall, but hate when the local mountains maximize the rainfall.

Remember when models had this suppressed under NNE… the NAM won this one. At 84 hours it was amped more than all of the rest and sure enough, rains to Maines.

Love your posts on this stuff BTW. So level headed and matter of fact without getting politically emotional about it.

Yup the lack of freezing up even to 2,000ft today has really prolonged this warm up. These are the ones that seem like the snowpack is doing ok in what one thinks is the torch… only to realize another 24-30 hours of above freezing temps means otherwise. I always hate that about torches… you feel confident about less snow loss than expected when you are halfway through, but the back half always is brutal.

Looks like deep winter in town here lol.

Yeah we've done some monster dry heat in April/May/June the past 5 years it seems... May seems to be a usual suspect where we are doing 90s with dews of like 40-45F and red flag warnings. Even before full leaf out. Like end of spring stick season and it's in the 80s, ha.

Yeah this is the snowpack map. Seasonal snowfall has been low but it's already past all of 2015-16's totals, ha. It's probably going to be in that 2011-12 style snowfall total.

I did notice the GFS was attempting to do it to. I mean we'll need something. If next weekend rains and torches, might be joining Kev on the bring the early heat train, ha.

"How's the sliding today? Frozen groomers?" "It's more like loose granular on top of pond ice." "10-4."

That change from mixed atmosphere to calm resulted in an almost 20 degree temp drop at HIE. That's a big difference for one hour.

It's amazing to be honest. The very last place cold air rots at the surface. I know the type of chilly fog that temp/dew means, it's not pleasant... while the larger region is 10+ warmer with some T/Td spread. The wind just will not mix down. Mountain summits hitting 100+ mph gusts with many areas seeing 25-60mph gusts down at inhabited levels. But that area of NH just likes to stay calm in the lowest levels. Love it.

Just in general, if you have new leaders and a loss of institutional knowledge at a business, you can run into some challenges and not know how to immediately solve them with the resources you have at hand. Throw in two poor winters, a pandemic, large-scale staffing issues in the service industry (plus a vaccine mandate to work)... it's a tough time to be thrown into that. In order to survive the past couple years required a knowledgeable team in the macro and micro senses. I think things would have been done a bit differently in hindsight for some acquisitions.

Yes! For sure. There are certain spots that are always icy (maybe it's wind, pitch, skier pinch point, etc) but after getting to know a mountain you know the trails that can be icy for whatever reason even if there's 10 feet of snow on the ground. You also know the parts of a trail that may be more prone to ice... so you ski a trail a certain way assuming that spot will be icy and focus on the other parts of the trail. Maybe a certain pitch always has ice but you know skiers right is usually much better and snow collects there... so you blast down the trail almost sub-consciously going to sides and parts of trails that are nice. It's like a second nature once you know a mountain. And it leads to a much better run. You can have two people ski the same run and one is like wow that was slick and the other person knew how to ski the trail to get the most out of it, and they think it was in pretty decent shape, ha. Of course it can also just be plain icy skiing when it rains in back-to-back storms and then goes arctic cold with all the dry blower powder that falls afterward blowing into the woods in many areas . Makes for great powder glade pictures while we ice skate on the adjacent trails.

Ha yup, on like hour 6 of 55F or higher here. Hammering winds too. With every hour the snow takes more and more of a beating.

Oh for sure at BW. Up here though you drive past many mountains known for great grooming and cruising like Okemo, Stratton, etc in SVT… if that’s your main jam you aren’t going an extra 2 hours to get to N.VT which really isn’t known for its groomers. I don’t think you’d ever see any of the Sugarbush to Jay Peak stretch hills on any top 10 list for grooming. I personally think Stowe isn’t a great mountain when weather dictates only groomers. My first year at UVM we were all sort of like “I don’t really get it, not a ton of trail options.” But then the second year we had people show us around off-trail and how to really ski the mountain connecting woods and natural snow trails and it was like ohhhh now I get it. You start on one trail, ski it to woods, pop out in another trail, ski bumps for a bit then go back in woods and end up on another trail, etc.

I wish it was only 1% lol. That would mean on a normal Stowe midweek day that only 15-30 people are skiing the woods (myself and friends would occupy almost 30% of that, ha) and on a max capacity Saturday there might be 80 skiers/riders heading to the woods. We both know that’s a pipe dream. I’d wager it’s up to as high as 50% or more on a powder day up in NVT. I’ve never heard anyone say, in 15 years in the industry, something like “I drive past all the other ski areas to get to Jay Peak for their groomed runs.” A lot of people ski the trees on a regular basis and it’s a large reason why they pick certain mountains.

It’s pretty special out there. Like T-shirt weather walking the dog as water is flowing everywhere over the snowpack and large ponds are forming everywhere. This should be even more special once it freezes up.

Rooting and forecasting are different though, no?

I mean, it's out of season a bit but one of those days you don't think about what it means... just enjoy it . What a sweet afternoon. So hard to hate on it even if it does a number on the snowpack.

Ho-lee-fuk. 67-68F at MPV ASOS at almost 1200ft. 61F at MVL. Up to 60F at the ski area 1500ft.