powderfreak

That’s like another planet to me right now but all in New England. Crazy. That’d be like T-shirt weather after -15F this morning.

Ha me too.

Had -15F this morning, now up to 13F. There’s been some cold around.

The power line up the driveway along the Mountain Road... caked. The wind has been blowing off the dry snow, but the melted and then frozen snow has left an icy glaze on the trees. Hopefully it can all fall off before the power goes out in a gale.

Drove through Waterbury on the way to BTV this afternoon… the best snowpack between here and there was in Waterbury, exit 10 area to the Hydro Dam. That area gets smoked on ESE flow… right up the Winooski Valley into the Spine, elevation doesn’t seem to matter. What a stunning drive though, just pasty snow the whole way. Power lines completely covered and defying gravity. The pockets with no wind were absolutely caked.

Midnight high of 23F. Dropped to -1F earlier this evening. CAA all day long. Slow, steady drop.

Do we cloud over or radiate. That is the question.

Game changer snowstorm for the mountains. It's amazing what real snow is like, ha. A former employee visited today and enjoyed some birthday powder. This dude showed up at the ski area as an 18 year old from Iowa four years ago. He was dealing with some stuff, moving on the wrong trajectory, and needed a change of scenery. I took the big brother approach and he excelled and thrived. The amount of personal growth and increase in personal responsibility during one winter was awesome to witness. Snowboarding became his outlet. He moved to Aspen and spent 3 winters there, now he's back east at Loon. You love to see it, snowboarding changed his life for the better.

There are pockets out there for sure. Almost everything is open now. That storm was just what we needed. Funny thing I notice too… parking lot was packed but the Quad was ski on even with Gondola on wind hold today. Everyone goes into the woods and skis tougher terrain which makes for longer laps. Spreads bodies out on the hill while they slowly wander in the woods and bumps, natural snow stuff. Much different than when everyone is just fast cruising firm groomers and recycling back to the lift line after a 4 minute run down. Now runs take 20 minutes.

Coming in with 13” at Stowe… probably 10-15” could suffice depending on elevation and wind. Great increase in the snowpack.

A couple shots from today from the real camera. Definitely a much needed storm. A solid increase in snow water equivalent gives us the base we need. Now we can fluff it up with refreshers going forward.

Definitely. The QPF aspect was solid. Down here it was certainly wetter and/or got above freezing at home. Snow has a bit of a crust. Snowing lightly again, looks like the western slopes have blossomed up. We joke about J.Spin but there's a reason the models often put small areas of QPF maxes in his neighborhood. That Winooski Gap seems to add convergence on westerly wind set-ups.

If we can add this from 7pm to 7am (12hr total) of high ratio fluff we’ll really be in business.

Color me impressed up here. There’s 9-10” on the ground of dense snow where we park on the holiday weekends at 1300ft. Legit storm, can’t believe we weren’t that far off areas modeled almost double us or more.

Yeah never got above freezing at 1500ft. Looks like a proper ski area base village now.

We are at about 9" at the ski area. Never would've guessed that amount today. I had 3-6" and then 3-6" upslope tonight. I bet we got a good inch of QPF, models had less than that for sure today.

That's f'kin awesome . What a cam grab.

Was powder, now paste.

Storm seemed to deliver a bit more than expected. Its been a great day. Upslope portion should be solid tonight too.

We are getting smoked pretty good. Was powder, now paste.

We are dead calm on Mansfield east side despite summit gusting 90mph on the radio towers. No real lift issues either. Meanwhile Bolton was completely shut down on west side.

That mid-level band looks insane in Canada. That thing is massive on the regional radars.

An hour ago, early AM view from the OE Gondola checking the wind. Snowstorm vibes.

You get some better mixing there? That's crazy, hope you get power back quickly. Going to get cold tonight.

About 3" now. Really dumping with 30-35dbz moving through. Good dendrites in the higher echoes.