powderfreak

This is some of the worst weather conditions I've seen in a long time. Just high winds, sleet and freezing rain going sideways. My car was completely encased in ice after driving up to the office. It's 23F up here and 13F at the summit now.... it was in the low 40s like 90 minutes ago. Everything flash freezing as we speak and ice pellets just slamming into the windows.

It is pouring sleet and freezing rain sideways in strong winds. This is about as nasty a weather condition as it gets up here this morning. All water is in the process of turning into a skating rink. Temps just plummeted... 40s to 20F style.

It is raining with authority here just to the north of the 89 symbol in the center of the radar. Not ideal right before the busy President's Day week/end. Radar beam is over-shooting it in E.VT.

Yeah any warm sector event is a cutter. We pour rain. It's been mid-40s at both home and work since I woke up at 4:30am and got to work at 5am (yes, it's only 30 minutes from the time my alarm goes off, to the time I'm logging on at the office up the road, ha). There's going to be a lot of frozen water after the flash freeze in the early AM hours after midnight. I think the skiing is wrecked on the whole until it snows again. Creek beds blown out, harder to move laterally on skis in the woods. Trail undersurface will be extremely firm, if not outright ice. We live for adversity though, it is New England.

559" for MWN's windy under-catch gauge is crazy, ha.

They seem a lot more common all the sudden now that you moved north... hmmm.

And flatter terrain so it's not getting scraped off... need mellow terrain, tons of grooming, and light crowds right now. We are delaying opening until 10am tomorrow. I just updated Stowe.com/Snow with our plans for the morning. No sugarcoating there, ha.

The number of 1" snowfalls in the mountain snow tally is pretty crazy. Some year's those are always 3-5"... and you have three of them in 7-day stretches. We keep ending up with like 2-3" totals "for the past 7 days" a lot this winter.

Wind is cranking up here at the ski area. Showing 47F at 1500ft and very well mixed.

I took one run and did the snow/water survey after that and then went home, haha. I'm so over firm and fast conditions this time of year. In November or December, sure but not week long stretches of it in mid-February. I'll find something else to do. No patience for it in February/March/April. May not ski for a good solid week after this next one unless it snows a little . To illustrate how solid the ungroomed snow is, this guy snapped his ski in half on a mogul. It's a Stockli Stormrider! Those things are solid skis but no match for frozen moguls right now.

Holy crap. MVL ASOS is torching. Yesterday at 4am it was -8F. Today it’s 48F. Talk about a 24 hour delta.

Red Sox fans before the 2004 ALCS…

Yeah I honestly haven’t looked into melted water averages at first order sites but anecdotally I’d say it’s dry. I read on Sugarbush’s blog that they’ve actually been having water supply issues at Lincoln Peak over the last month due to cold/dry January. Rivers are frozen solid and low water flow…that’ll change here soon, ha. You are right, the events we are missing this winter aren’t the big ones but the SWFE 0.50-0.75” of snow to ice… the moderate ones that sometimes make up the seasonal water average. It’s been high precip events or low-to-nothing water starving “events.” Another several inches of QPF (or even 4-8” in the mtns) to get to normal would really have changed the “active-ness” of the winter tenor.

Lol that's awesome. I think I'm mid-50s here with crude accounting and have gotten there in a much less fun way than you guys. Lots of 40-65" amounts across VT except the normal snow belts in the 70s and 80s. Need to get up above 2,500ft in the northern Greens to get 100"+ so far and those are areas that average 250"+. What is interesting to me is how dry it has seemed too. The snowpack is low for this time of year but the water amounts are also very low. I ran some snow cores today for NOAA as one of their Mets reached out to see if I could get them some numbers for Hydro prior to the rain event. 3,000ft had only 38-42" depth but the shocker was really only 8.0-11.0" water. I've seen that plot have 20"+ of water in mid-February before and have seen 25-30" of water in April... so much so that this scale goes all the way around the dial and back into the single digits, lol. If I had to wager a guess, normally it's 16-20" at this time over the past decade or so. We've missed a lot of the frequent smaller precip events it seems... the 0.25-0.50" water events or Advisory level snows. The only reason the mountain snowpack is this high is because that last snow event fell into the 1.50-2.00" water amount at this elevation. This is the highest reading of 5 from the High Road Snow Plot. Down at 1,600ft there was 22-24" of snowpack and ~6-7.5" water from various readings. Normal I'd wager is around 10" of SWE. Been an interesting winter with few events it seems... that shakes out to lower than normal water levels in the mountains and lower snowpack. For the places that have lower average annual snowfall, if you can hit a couple of good events out of the few that we've had as a region, you're in good shape (ie. coastal DE/NJ/LI up through Ginxy and SE MA).

Oh yeah, they were fully backcountry skiing. There are a lot of folks who do that in NNE.

It’s like 30% water at 1600ft and say 20-25% water at 3,000ft. There’s some room there but once it hits 40-50% water it is really “ripe” and melts fast as it can’t absorb H2O beyond that.

Ran some snow cores for NOAA ahead of the warmth. Low snowpack and low water equivalent. I’ve seen 20-24” of water in mid-Feb at 3000ft before. HIGH ROAD 3,015FT 38-42” and 8.0-11.0” SWE (9.0” MOST COMMON) BASE AREA (1,600FT) 22-24” and 6.5-7.5” SWE

Yeah its likely going to stall for an hour or two at the Spine. Sharp drops though, flash freeze. Might go to freezing rain instead of snow as aloft looks a tad behind the SFC cold.

Fort Kent was a cool town. Took pride in being so far north.

It may be a Kuchie map but the consistency in Canada is insane to me. That Canadian Shield of snow. Imagine if that was 300-500 miles further south. Gradient and how consistent snowfall amounts are north of it over a full two week model run is crazy.

I remember a good April Fools storm that year with like 10" of dense snow falling on the day of the ski area's pond skim event... then later in April a 14" upslope storm hit with high QPF, like spring graupel. It just wanted to precipitate that winter. Not many QPF concerns.

Holy sh*t. A full burial and one partial burial in an avalanche in the Adirondacks back on Saturday. That's a big slide. Saturday February 12, 2022 a large (R4, D3) skier triggered avalanche occurred on the furthest lookers right slide path in the well known northeast facing Angel Slides area on the shoulder of Wright Peak. The slide appears to have been remotely triggered by two skiers ascending the slide path. The crown of the avalanche at ~3,750 feet in elevation is estimated to have been 80 cm (~2.5 ft) deep at the deepest point, and reached approximately 150 feet across the entirety of the slope. From the start zone it is estimated the avalanche traveled more than 1000 feet to the toe of the avalanche.By their own estimation the slide released approximately 500 feet above the two skiers. Both skiers were caught and carried around 150 feet. Skier one may have experienced a brief loss of consciousness, after coming to with a partially obstructed airway due to snow impacted in their mouth they were able to extract themselves from their partial burial after five minutes. Skier one located skier two with the lowest beacon reading being greater than one meter. Skier one dug out skier two who was fully buried and inverted, and had his airway cleared in approximately 10 to 15 minutes after the beginning of the incident. Skier two was not responsive and breathing faintly. As skier one continued to extract his partner, skier two regained consciousness. Both skiers recovered to the point that they were able to extract themselves from the woods despite the loss of some of their gear.On the same slope we observed a snowpack of 70 cm in depth. Our results in the snow pit were as follows; CT 15 Q1 @ 60cm (measuring from the top), ECTP 14 @ 60 cm.Read the full, unedited report on the observations page of our website via the link in our bio.Thanks to those involved for sharing the details of this incident with us. It is our hope that sharing this information will increase our community’s awareness of avalanche hazards and highlight the need for more education and information to help mitigate the risk of traveling in avalanche terrain in the Adirondacks. https://www.instagram.com/p/CaBSEC6OsJR/

Yeah I don’t think that winter gets as much credit but it snowed a lot. Most snow I’ve ever measured on the mountain with 375” at 3,000ft. It just wanted to snow.

That winter was great… 16-17 is underrated in NNE.

Cold, winter evening. Had a dusting of snow today and the last of the moisture hung around Mansfield before dissipating right at sunset.