powderfreak

I was thinking your home base must be doing well? Earlier I saw 7.6” in Jericho and 8.0” in Waterville with snow continuing. This should pack into Smuggs’ NW facing topographic bowl if the wind can stay down on that side. Meanwhile the Stowe SE facing topographic bowl and down the West Branch has been getting crushed with wind. Really hindering actual accumulations despite snowing consistently the whole time with low visibility. Even at home the flags are straight out. Like rocks in a river, the lee side is in the backside "churn" of the barrier.

I think there’s actually a decrease in “snowfall” with height because of wind and lower ratios… but doesn’t mean there’s less SWE. I saw someone say Smuggs has more snow at the base than the top, and I’m talking it through… upper elevations could be seeing wind packing that QPF into 10:1 3-4” while calm spots down lower are doing 20-30:1 of fluff. Like if you get 0.30” QPF… 700ft in Jericho is calm and 8” at almost 25:1. Meanwhile high elevations could be 3” of 10:1 wind-packed stuff. Mansfield High Road checked in with 3” of dense wind packed snow, for comparison but felt like the QPF was in there.

Yeah I dunno, maybe I’m just off. Definitely seeing much higher winds east of the crest. Maybe that’s just skewing my perception on accumulations. Would need to see where the QPF is landing. This felt blocked to me, with 3-4” just west and 0.5-1.0” just east. Like even up by Jay… Alpine Haven (1500ft) at 3.5” while Westfield at (1,100ft) just 1.0”. Same around here. J.Spin sneaks through the Winnoski gap with 3.9”. That’s like a 0.7-0.9 type Froude to me.

I'll try to look but my guess is this is closer to 0.5-0.75 for Froude. A 1.0 usually dumps more than what's happening now on the Spine itself. I think because of the Winooski River gap there you do well at a wider range of Froude numbers. This looks really blocked up to me. Edit: Looking at the NAM and GFS Froude, you're right, it's unblocking a bit throughout the day up to 1.0 or even just above later this afternoon. It was at 0.50 last night and early this morning. Then tonight it goes back down to 0.5 - 0.7 on GFS with the less mixing (overnight).... before daylight starts to mix it out and rise it back up to 1.25 at max afternoon mixing.

After the debacle that was 2014 when January had more rain than snow despite brutal cold… hanging on by a sweater in 2015. Then 2015-16… We are in a much better place these days haha.

We are getting severe downslope winds on the east side of the blocked flow. Gusts to 60mph and almost the entire ski area is shut down. Even in town, ripping 30-40mph gusts. Light snow but it’s a lot of wind.

Thats encouraging. Cars white here but still small flake size.

Old school thread start. Well done Tip.

Yeah that wouldn’t be surprising. The long duration totals into Friday will probably get there. 2-4” every period (12-24 hours)? Personally I think the GFS is way overdone on scope and total. That QPF would require a great maritime moisture feed or be on the backside of a synoptic storm. I’ve just seen these set-ups, and it’s largely just moisture slowly lapping up against the Greens. But it’s not deep moisture… so shallow low level snow will favor the west slopes and nooks and crannies through the Spine IMO. The Upper East Side will do fine but probably a strong gradient as one drops in elevation on the east slope.

The ASOS’s are registering it as haze (HZ) or mist (BR). Arctic cold just squeezing out low level moisture, of which there isn’t much but just enough? METAR KMPV 070200Z AUTO 31005KT 2 1/2SM BR OVC011 M16/M18 A2970 METAR KMPV 070155Z AUTO 32005KT 2SM HZ OVC011 M15/M18 A2970

Same here. Looks like a fog or mist. Flow is quite blocked and looks to be during this event. I’m not super high on this one… think it’s going to be small dense Arctic flakes east of the crest. We just drove back from BTV and the snowiest place on the drive was Williston on French Hill (I-89) from the rest area until you drop down into Richmond. Flakes were a bit bigger and road was covered. Everywhere else was a fine mist like visibility. Radar confirms too, the best lift is occurring like 10 miles west of the actual barrier.

This is a wild 6-hour panel.

Good point. Cant make this stuff up. Precip pattern is NW flow. When it goes prolonged SE flow, the precip pattern flips.

Hopefully one of these lifts north. Going cold and dry in SNE after the past few years, would be brutal.

Almost like a teabag up north here. Should keep flakes in the air for several days up this way.

Days and days?

This has western slopes written all over it. Blocked flow spreading down the western foothills.

On every skier’s Xmas wish list. Custom JSpin poles with the marketing slogan, “don’t just wing it.”

He's gonna come up to a stake strapped to the side of that thing one of these days lol. Would turn into the best 2,000ft snow plot out there.

I know I tickled the bear a bit with those comments. I might head up tomorrow or Tuesday to check it out, ha. In the end, without a consistent plot of measuring in the EXACT same spot all the time it’s hard to judge sometimes. Like if @J.Spin always went to exactly the same plot of trees to measure at Bolton. @bwt3650 always went to the same cluster at Jay. “What did your group of trees get in this event?” . I think there’s a lot of that to my anal retentiveness, it’s just apples to oranges (consistent spot vs skiing around making an observation) and I wish it was all apples to apples and we had western SNOWTEL stations everywhere. Stowe’s annual snowfall dropped about 40-50” when we went to a one/two location measuring vs skiing around estimating (330” to 280”). I think Sugarbush has dropped markedly since they went to their snow cams too. Which is why I doubt we will see it up north. I know what happens when you are handcuffed to a singular spot, even if you “feel” there’s more out there. My money will always be on 20% more increases from Sugarbush to Mansfield and Mansfield to Jay (300” vs 360” type).

Looks like we have some more light QPF coming in the mountains.

I feel this, despite my life requiring 10pm to 5am. Persistent poor snow growth arctic light snow at 1-3sm and 12 degrees. Roads look like Alaska tundra with dry dense sifting around between the snowbanks. Champlain Valley in on it too with BTV at 0.75sm -SN at 18F. KBTV 050156Z 04006KT 3/4SM -SN VV017 M08/M11

I think it was a pretty well modeled event for sure, went about exactly as they showed. Being obsessed with “new snowfall” isn’t the best either, it can dampen things a bit, ha. Like with Mansfield (3,000ft) at 22” in past week, I know that’s getting all settled out and such. For whatever reason my focus goes to what is the very recent addition to the snowpack because that’s what goes into the annual tally. Snow definitely can add up over time and skiers usually don’t care when or how it ended up there or even exactly how much it is as long as it’s good. It’s just anal retentive measuring on my part to be quite honest .

It’s interesting how different people perceive snowfall. A friend skinned next to Gilpin and said the number he’d pick was 18” for snowfall, no chance anything near 30”. Said he did find one pitch that was ridiculously deep but on the whole he was thinking 18”. Skied Mansfield and then went to Domeys Dome next to Gilpin. Classic snowfall audit… but again, not Jay, just his estimates in the area. I only share this not as a "ha, don't believe it" but because it was exactly what I always say... that area gets more snowfall but about 10-20% more on average than Smugglers Notch/Mansfield area (which gets 10-20% more than Sugarbush/MRG). It just fit my long-standing beliefs, that's all. And in America, we all like information that fits our own thoughts . I always find the different estimates interesting and sort of funny.

19/10 -SN