powderfreak

It is damn cold. 24F at MVL right now and low 20s like you at 1500ft. First day I’m frozen walking the dog right now.

Funny you said that. I had to run to Berlin for something and the snowiest spots were Exit 9 and then again up near the Berlin Mall. Didn’t matter elevation or location, it was just like you could tell where stringer snow showers had passed through. It would change by the mile on 89.

Ha I mean it makes the most sense. Maximize the cold shot, make all the snow you can before the mild day on Thursday. Push it all out on Thur/Thur night and open Friday. Also bonus of employees get Thanksgiving with family for the most part.

Good snow shower activity going on. 1” on the hill so far, nice little pulse up.

Same here! Ha.

25F with 3 mile -SN in town… winter vibe today.

That winter was like 70" lower in seasonal snowfall at 3,000ft than even the next lowest total (2011-12) in the last 25 years. It was like a true 50% of normal snowfall which is just something we don't see up here. I want to see the 150% version with 450" not 150" (2000-2001 came close though). That's my famous Christmas Day photo of Mansfield Gondola through Smugglers Notch and across adjacent northern Greens and there isn't any white (or even ice on the cliffs) except for one sad snowmaking white stripe down 2,000 vertical feet. Only time in 65 years with not even a trace on Xmas. Just straight 0.0" depth at MMNV1 . I might have to talk to a therapist after even thinking about that winter. Need to go Google image search “snow in Weymouth, MA February 2015” now.

Just wait until you get scarred by a whole winter of that like 2015-16.

Just get those lows up near FVE and spin moisture back this way, the mountains will do the rest.

Cue up a comment in a day or two that “Scooter already canceled December…”

Had some snow showers in town earlier when I was getting our boiler serviced. Looks like 1” fell at 3,000ft but I saw nothing more than a slight trace on mulch beds at 1500ft.

The bolded is all that matters at this point. ULL in the climo favored spot. That 12z GFS was fairly textbook. H85 temps cooling to around -12C too for high ratio fluff most likely. Long way to go but those upper level features are certainly noticeable. Like J.Spin mentioned I always say, the mountains don't move so the lift is where it always is. Just need some of the larger features to line up.

Good point J. All frozen QPF is good frozen QPF. Relative to the frozen water on the ground naturally right now, a tenth or two increase would be a significant increase. Up here it still blows my mind the difference between Mount Mansfield's snow preservation with that at Spruce. Hiked Spruce today in shorts, filtered sunshine and 35-45F. No wind. Sterling work road was snowpacked and slick in the shade, but with plenty of snow free zones. Meanwhile Mansfield is consistent snow cover from a low elevation on up.

Ha it’s like a few hundredths to a tenth or maybe two tenths somewhere that gets “hammered” with precip. Even if all snow and cold it’d be like an inch type event. Passing snow squalls would bring more.

The bottom line is this is a lot better than the mild heavy rainer that some models had last week for this system.

Yeah you’re right. I thought they might be able to stay snow once they see flakes but the models still have the 850mb freezing line lifting just north of there tonight (4am snapshot on the Euro). Very light precip amounts though. I think the northern Greens at stay snow now above 1500-2000ft but no real precip either.

The frontal boundary system was pretty weak and I don't think we got much southerly flow ahead of it. Models had 850mb staying below 0C from the beginning of the precip so it should just get colder. Only a coating to an inch possible IMO. Stowe's snow cam showing snow since the beginning but no real accumulation more than a half inch maybe (there's 2" on the board but it was wet sticky snow that was stuck to the board when it flipped back up this morning).

Oh nice so it’s getting pretty low. Good news.

I don’t know but I remember my parents sent photos of them filming it. Said it was a Hallmark movie. They were right in the Woodstock green and some of the buildings around the green. All fake snow piles and white on everything while the trees are deep green.

Haha so true. And glad you get it. I’m going to have to explain that this week. Like listen skiers/riders… the benefit of hammering snowmaking through the cold snap far outweighs an opening 24-48 hours earlier. Looks like the upper mountain started as snow this evening and avoided any rain. 29F up top and 39F down here in the village with cold rain. I’d bet the snow level is near 2500 feet?

The one thing ski areas will be considering (as I know we are) is that the prime snowmaking window is Monday afternoon through late morning Wednesday. In order to groom and open Wednesday, snowmaking on that terrain probably needs to be off at noon Tuesday to dry out a bit before getting pushed out Tue night. Personally my Mtn Ops hat says don’t waste the coldest night of the year (Tuesday night) so far on a route that’s likely thin to begin with and blow snow straight through until noon Wednesday and then it warms up for Thursday… blow snow through the whole cold shot and then open Thur/Fri with more robust snow depth on the main route. The benefit of waiting 24 hours to get yield out of the whole cold shot outweighs a Wednesday opening to me. Of course you’d just be making snow on different terrain Tuesday night but the goal is to shore up the opening route enough that you don’t need to go back to it with snowmaking just to stay open if we get a cutter. One strong coverage route is better than two weaker routes in terms of business continuity.

Reasonable line of thinking. The law of averages favors anticipating a winter between the margins. That’s how I go into it until proven otherwise.

I've heard whisperings in the industry that they are trying for a Wednesday opening. People on social seem to be wondering the same thing as they are at Stowe, ha. Snowmaking today was on the upper mountain at BW and I saw some FB comments wondering why they weren't able to make snow top-to-bottom because it was cold enough for natural snow to be on the ground. The base area elevations have been tricky! When I was up surveying the snow coverage at Stowe late today I caught the alpenglow on Mount Washington as the western slopes turned orange and pink.

Late afternoon I had a great view of the evening alpenglow on Mount Washington as the setting sun lit up the west facing slopes... shot from about mid-mountain on Mount Mansfield over 70 miles away. Didn't have much to add to the leaf discussion, ha.

It’s definitely harder to convince people that with 2100 vertical we need *all* of it sufficiently deep to sustain nightly grooming and high skier traffic. We are ready on 1600 verts which is a lot of skiing to be honest. But telling folks that the lowest few hundred verts are holding up the whole thing is tough. We just don’t have the upload/download set up that some other hills have. And 1500ft mid-slope has been cold enough for natural but not cold enough for long productive snowmaking. Same issue we had most of last winter to be honest. Days and days of upper 20s to mid 30s.