powderfreak

Yeah my family would've absolutely skied when I was growing up. Family trip to the mountain, going skiing. Maybe not all day, maybe start at like 10-11am or something, but definitely would've skied.

Ha we always have talked about these types of days internally and I generally feel if you are going to tell people not to come… as a business why are you open then? Like if an business tells people not to come to them, they might as well close. So if we are going to run lifts, explain the situation to them, don’t sugarcoat it, and let them make their own decision. Certainly aren’t trying to drum up business and would prefer you make the best decision for your family… like if I had kids I might reconsider tomorrow, or you could make it into a game too. One run then a hot chocolate or something. Then 1-2 more runs and a break, etc.

Ha, I was trying to put out operations communications this afternoon to lay it out for anyone wondering. If this doesn’t make you want to ski, I don’t know what will . Honestly the wind chill of -40F might be too high, should’ve put -50F.

Yeah my car said 0F leaving the mountain an hour ago with wind increasing. And that’s warmer than it’ll be at any point tomorrow. Yikes.

Ninja’d! Wow that was close @mreaves, haha.

I like this first stab at it.

Can see the better lower jet dynamics track NEward and that’s what is bringing most of that lift. The nose of the jet goes from like Berkshires and S/C VT up into NH/ME. Less velocity means less upglide over the cold dome. Higher velocities should see higher precipitation. 850mb 700mb

Jay Peak ski area faces east actually (it has a lot of prominence from Newport area) but it’s also a Spine so it gets enhancement from all angles. I bet meso-models will increase the Jay Peak QPF. The real trick here is to look at the 850mb velocities and you can see where the jet tracks and why certain areas get more precip. It’s not as cut and dry as aspect.

The low level jet and warm conveyor belt head east up the coast while the mid-level banding and cold conveyor is way west. We are sort of in no-man’s land for forcing as the storm occludes and the surface low goes east of us (keeping the Whites in a strong moist SE flow) but the mid-level lows go west of us so banding there is west of that. If the system was vertically stacked we’d be golden on the west side of the surface low. I like 5-10” up north here once upslope is in. Say 3-5” dense synoptic and 3-5” NW flow.

Hayride hasn't been the race trail for a good decade or more now since they put the Sensation Quad in and blasted out the Main Street Race Course. That's where all the UVM Winter Carnival races along with Eastern Cup and other Pro-am races have taken place. It's much nicer IMO to have the racers more isolated to that area of the hill as I remember in college having Hayride all netted up and marked off definitely cut down on access to key woods like Tres Amigos and shots on both sides of Hayride. It's clunky to hold big races there in the middle of the hill. When looking at snowmaking choices, the buildout has always been intermediate terrain off Quad first, then open Gondola with Perry, then Nosedive and start building out on Spruce (Sunny Quad), then Gondolier and Liftline... historically ending with Hayride. Snowmaking capacity is what dictates the smaller trails like Gulch... as often they can run one big trail (say 75-100 guns) plus a smaller trail with say 20-30 guns. Of course air and water capacities and temperatures play into it, but that's how you get smaller runs going in tandem with the big projects. Hayride is a monster project though, I think top to bottom that trail has the most hydrants on it... though Nosedive is right up there too. Both of those usually eat up all capacity.

Appreciate your viewpoint Jay. You are right, that was my biggest revelation after skiing Mansfield a few times. Spruce too, once Over Easy opened up. My first years in college you had to ride like a green prison bus from side to side. It was an effort and not appealing to ride over to Spruce. But there is a lot of terrain accessed over there too...into the Notch. A lot of acres. Now we just take a couple minute Gondola ride across the road/river (that drains the Notch) to Spruce and can go from there. Low snow years and lack of refreshes makes piste skiing get boring after a while. It's been 6-8 weeks of basically the same skiing, groomed snowmaking trails, at the northeast ski areas. We are all itching at getting on something more interesting. Having the natural snowpack to wander and "choose your adventure" here is what makes Mansfield the most appealing. This photo today was just off Chin Cip (which opened a few days ago) and we did see 13" at the snow plots this past week or so. So things are improving in the means.

Mansfield isn't a great hill without good snow to be honest. It's steep, gets skied off quickly by traffic edging hard and high lift capacity. It honestly took me a couple seasons in college to "get it" and understand the hill. There really aren't a ton of trails, it's what happens when between those trails is skiable and/or there's good natural snow. Otherwise it can be a hard, dark, cold icy hill. Sees a good deal of wind too... but I think it's the pitch that generally does it. There's a sweet spot of intermediate pitches that excel in less than optimal snow conditions. Places like Okemo (wide, intermediate trails), Stratton, etc and I would imagine Bretton Woods falls into that too. Perry Merrill has been skiing the best of any trail at Stowe lately and I think it's because it's wide open and more mellow sustained pitch. Traffic doesn't "scrape" as much on the turns. Narrower and steeper pitches around the ski area (like say parts of North Slope, Lord, top turns of Nosedive, etc) can get very icy without a refresh from constant scraping. There's some interesting theory around it in Mountain Ops worlds that trail design/width/pitch factors a lot into surface conditions.

Honestly haven’t looked at soundings yet. But it has 4-8” dense for most of C/N Greens type of look unless we can get into a cold conveyor belt or mid-level banding. 18z GFS tried to develop a bit better set up when winds back NE.

I hope you guys are right, that’s how we get more snow up here too if that thing tugs SE.

I like these EPS snow probability maps for seeing where the model thinks the mid-level deformation banding will be and then the low level jet warm conveyor belt snow into the first major barriers off the Atlantic (Berks/SVT/Monadnocks/Whites).

Yeah I'd be shocked to be honest if you didn't get double digits. 8-10" is a good starting point but I bet you can pull 12-15" at least based on the former CoCoRAHS observers measurements and this type of event with strong low level flow. Duration will be the limiting factor but should be some high precip rates for a good 8-10 hours.

lol. Just need to get those mid-level goodies slightly further SE on a BGM to BTV arc and we'll be in business. Just need to keep getting away from that split conveyor belts and have some big deformation band arcing from PA in NNE.

Yeah that’s much better. Colder SNE and gets the mid-level stuff more into BTV forecast area instead of north of Lake Ontario.

Been some tough model reads the past day or two… like some don’t even look at them before making statements when they are so readily available.

The funny thing is we all want the same thing… east, so the mid-level fun over PA and SYR can angle northeast and not up into Ontario/Quebec. I will admit I get triggered a bit by map interpretations that I think miss the larger image lol. Hopefully it actually goes southeast.

It’s also not SE… maybe it increased you by 3% on front end thump before rain? Minor increase in snowfall isn’t a tick SE per se when PA/upstate NY see the largest increases is what I was trying to say. I want it east too.

I don’t doubt it can go east and I need that primary to go east of VT to get into any mid-level lift. I mean they are talking lower than noise level in a couple percentage points in one county. Grab the tail of the wolf and get bit.

Lol ok one or two counties of CT went from 48% to 52%. I forget how IMBY we all are despite large increases in PA and upstate NY. I just hate poor analysis on easily read models .

No it’s not. It’s the same or at least increased the westward side. Upstate NY saw biggest changes. Here’s 12z.

18z EPS snow maps looks very similar. Continues highest probs Berkshires to SVT, and Whites into adjacent Maine.