powderfreak

That was a real nice Euro run at 6z… juicy.

Where is @PhineasC? Snow chances coming up. He's not around. If it's because he told Forky to get bent, yikes.

Yeah usually by the time you get into NH/ME in that set up it’s pretty universal snowfall… not a lot of variation. Very little mesoscale variation with a slug of warm air advection.

Goal posts narrowing. RT 2 north with the classic SWFE area of southern Greens to Center Harbor to all of western Maine from Rangley to Tamarack to Dryslot. Don't care what the snow map says, Dryslot snows more than that shows. It's got the feel of a large area of 3-6", with 4-8" for the climo swath... sharp gradient on the south side but 1-4" with sleet then rain. The trick is finding out where the gradient is but the overall vibe seems to be of narrowing goal posts towards SWFE climo.

How do you get synoptic 87 knots? I can’t process that.

We were talking about that the other day in the office... how ice storms and occasional high wind or flash flooding is a "threat" here... but no matter what, those who experience TOR threats on the regular are on a whole other level. Tornadoes, high-end severe storms, and hurricanes are the apex predators of the weather world.

18z GEFS did tick south... it keeps increasing that RT 2 area in MA the past couple runs. It is world's different than some other guidance though in terms of the warm air advection and precipitation amounts across the north country.

Yeah I’m just looking for 3”+ as usual, ha. Cover the grass, plowable… 3” is usually my number to hit to be considered “an event.” I do think 3-6” seems like a starting range here, in line with ensemble means.

Like walking back home in college at UVM in Burlington at 2am while it’s dumping with a girl…. ”You seem cheery, you excited I invited you back to my place for the night?” “Sure, but I’m also stoked the flow is blocked and the snow has backed up into the Champlain Valley…”

A good place to be. I feel like these like to be SVT-Dendy-Dryslot style events for a jackpot zone. Merely climo-wise.

This type of SWFE is right in your wheelhouse there climo-wise. SE low level flow under SW flow aloft.

As someone often on the edge of synoptic systems, I feel like an expert that can speak on plenty of systems where east/west is the discussion . Meanwhile folks in ORH don’t know what worrying about ticks east/west/north/south are like.

Well SWFE vs coastal storm will be different. Plenty of conversations about east or west depending on the system.

Need some of that Sierra snow... Mammoth Lakes down at town/lake level. Palisades Tahoe... 5 feet storm total after the last round brought another 24" in like 12 hours.

White Christmas for at least half of New England on that run.

The mountains have cover as the trails show, even at 1500ft where I usually spend all daylight hours, ha. We bare down low though. But it’s a very sharp gradient and it has been mild as expected this week. We’ve had ground cover a lot of the time even if just a couple inches, several snowy evenings. But as we all expected, this week has been mild afternoons with warm 850s. Nights get crisp. This well above normal period has been well advertised. This was the December 11 - 18 (7-day) Euro ENS 850mb anomaly from a week ago on the 7th. Luckily we all knew this week was coming. Advertised and delivered.

That seems premature. It can change in a hurry, but then again that’s breaking right. Maybe it snows 100” in February. Its crisp outside now. 19F at local home PWS and 19F at the summit. I see some 15s northeast of here. Good for snowmaking. The cutters do hurt the appeal though when the ground cover has been light so far.

Dear Santa, Please bring snow. -Your friends in NNE It has felt like we've been a few weeks behind climo all fall/early winter. Walked the dog with a hoodie this afternoon. Had the vibe of mid-November.

Best of luck dude, savor every day with those you love. Congrats on getting hitched too.

18z ICON would do it FWIW (not much). Actually is Ray in northern Middlesex or Essex county?

Not sure I’d want to be on that bridge.

What?

Weather wise, this seems like it'll be the pattern/theme this week. With warmth aloft, when we mix out it'll be mild. When the wind goes calm we'll be chilly. Crazy how much variation there is this time of year. It wants to be cold at the surface if it can. The high/low columns show the range depending on wind... 48F at 3pm, 32F at 6pm, 43F at 9pm.

There is a surprisingly snowy pocket in north-central Vermont that retains snow well too. It does well in upslope and synoptic... but also retains it with better CAD. The northern Green Mtn Spine does have a decent gap in it between the Stowe/Smuggs area and closer to Jay Peak up north. Belvidere is a tall mountain but stands a bit alone. A decent amount of moisture moves through that zone though and then ends up falling in spots like Eden, Greensboro, Walden, Cabot. All very snowy spots with most residents above 1,200ft and even some in the 1800-2200ft level. There used to be an old COOP spot in Eden that was pretty damn snowy. I think they had 80-90" in March 2001... it's no Weymouth, Mass in 2015 but still a solid monthly total in a snowy spot. Also on CoCoRAHS you'll often find Greensboro (Hill Farmstead Brewery town) and Cabot (cheese) in the top 5-10 snow spots in Vermont annually. I truly believe that gap in the Spine leads to maximized snow on the west side of the "secondary" spine that runs from the Orange Highlands up into the NEK. You also get NEK type cold air damming in many of those valleys (800ft) up through the mid-slopes (2,000ft). Then they do well in synoptic events too, far enough away from the NEK downslope areas on easterly flow that can plague spots like Lyndon and Saint J. The more mellow/rolling terrain that averages pretty high there, isn't like the sharp up/down high elevation next to low elevation spots that can be found near other parts of the Spine. That lack of huge terrain changes limits wind flow mixing, turbulence, eddies, etc... things that disrupt the cold air damming. As we saw in the last event, the key contributor is wind flow that mixes out the inversion and in many events, areas surrounding the largest terrain are more likely to see turbulence in the lee side of big terrain mix out first. That zone just seems to benefit from a combination of better CAD, along with solid synoptic snow, and a break in the Spine allows mesoscale snow to thrive. As we see elsewhere (like the Winooski Valley), anywhere there is a gap in the terrain and some sort of inversion or mechanism aloft to block the air slightly... you get moisture to converge as you force it through the gap and then it hits the secondary barrier. Just like water in a stream moving between and then into rocks. It is definitely one of the most underrated snow spots in New England IMO. But it's rural and you have to be more committed to living there.

Beer. Apologies to all. It's my Friday night before a two-week stretch of 70 hour work weeks while the rest of the world enjoys vacation. Relaxing tonight, ha.