powderfreak

1 hour ago, dendrite said:

I mean that’s really nbd for them. It’s weird to see strong NW flow and they have the same temp as BML. 

Yeah it’s same at summit of Mansfield as MVL.  Rare in CAA.

The last cold shot was -24F summit and -12F at MVL… this one is even at -13F all elevations.

-13F this morning, wind chill at MVL ASOS got near -40F.

Mansfield is sustained 50mph, gusting 60mph.  Wind chill -50s.  It’s like the face of the moon outside.

-13F leaving the house this morning.

45 minutes ago, dendrite said:

GFS was BGM to BTV. I mean is anyone really going to doubt it cutting through upstate NY at this point?

48 hours left… that’s a long time in model wold.

54 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

There was a day last year at Cannon where a squall blew through and my two younger kids were being pushed uphill by the wind and couldn’t get down the hill. It was pretty funny. 

Kids blowing through the base areas like tumbleweeds on there way to lessons. That's awesome.

Just now, Hitman said:

I could/would ski on a day with temps like tomorrow, but only if I could get into the trees, where it’s somewhat wind protected and I’m working up some heat internally.  Bombing down groomers at 40 mph when the wc is -30f, is no bueno.

That's a great point.  Natural snow terrain or something that makes you work, keeps you mentally interested and physically working.  Cruising groomers gets old at those temps.  Of course with kids they don't seem to mind from what I've seen on the hill.  They enjoy being out there if mom and dad have dressed them appropriately.

1 hour ago, PhineasC said:

Even the chill VT guys like @powderfreak following phish on tour may pretend they are happy with cirrus while BOS gets 2 feet but we all know they want 2 feet at Stowe and rain in BOS.   It’s human nature and none of us can control the weather anyway. 

God I think I'm pretty chill (wife thinks too chill/laid back, ha) but I hate jam band music.  Not sure why but I'd rather listen to teen pop on the radio than Phish or stuff like that.

We don't pretend to be happy, we'd always love two feet of snow, but I think it's almost an appreciation of the climate you are in (almost cockiness/confidence) that causes the mellowing out or chill vibe with weather.  You start to know it'll snow at some point or you take satisfaction in knowing it's a snowy climate on the whole... no need to fret about it.  Where I sleep isn't the snowiest place but it gets the job done.  Where I am when I'm awake and the sun is up (like today I was up the road at the mountain from 5:10am until about 6pm), it's a pretty snowy place.  J.Spin also knows he'll jackpot locally in plenty of events.  You know the events that work best for your spot and know they'll eventually come (like this one).  I think you can already see a mellowing out of your worrying in your second winter up north.  Just wait till its like your 10th or 15th.  The more you appreciate the climate you are in, the more you start to lose the competitiveness of weather IMO.  That's when you can really gather round the fire and sing kumbaya .

Meteorology is also pretty damn fun and awesome to really dig into, which is why we are all here anyway right?  Seeing deeper meanings for why weather is the way it is and how it pans out.

54 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

Gotta remember too that this is literally the only couple days of skiing many families may have the whole year. Need to be honest with them but also expect that they may brave it to do a few runs since they prepaid and traveled all that way. I used to ski in conditions like this when I skied 4 times a year and paid a lot of money to do it.

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.

5 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

That sounds like the best update you could give with the basic facts without just telling people to stay home, which of course the Stowe bosses would not appreciate. LOL

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.

8 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

You gonna be on duty to rescue the beginner popsicles off the icy slopes tomorrow? 

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.

1 hour ago, PhineasC said:

Gotta feel for the MLK weekend skiers tomorrow. Holy moly. 

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

2 hours ago, PhineasC said:

I am not totally familiar with the geography up there, but you are facing NW right? This is an east flow event from the coastal (it's not really a coastal anyway) but I'm sure when the winds shift you will get buried in fluff with all the residual moisture around and it's not like the low escapes to the east, it goes right over NNE. Should wrap some stuff around I would think. Anyway, mesos will reveal more about banding as we go forward.

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.

39 minutes ago, bwt3650 said:

What’s with the snow hole over the northern greens?  

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.

10 hours ago, bch2014 said:

Is there no longer any racing on Hayride? I know you mentioned that it's the only remaining trail that hasn't seen snow guns, which surprised me, since I thought it often hosts races. I like that trail quite a bit, especially in the spring. What's the rationale on blowing, say, Gulch (a relatively obscure bump run) over a wide trail like Hayride?

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.

15 minutes ago, J.Spin said:

It’s really interesting to hear it put this way.  I sort of disagree with the first part, insofar as I find just about any mountain that combines relatively steep pitches, high-capacity lifts/skier traffic, and manmade snow, to be a recipe for horrible on-piste conditions.  It’s not just Stowe that behaves that way, any high-capacity resort (eastern or western U.S.) suffers on that type of heavily-traveled snowmaking terrain unless it’s refreshed.  The tough conditions can definitely be alleviated by natural snow, which makes a dramatic difference between places like Whiteface and Stowe – both of these are mountains with plenty of great, steep terrain, but Stowe getting roughly twice the amount of annual snowfall makes a big difference.

The absolute diametrical opposite from the situation above would be Bolton’s Wilderness area, that I just described for jculligan the other day.  There you’ve got lower-angle terrain, low capacity lifts or human-powered ascents, and zero snowmaking.  That’s a recipe for great conditions, with Wilderness having the added bonus of being entirely above 2,000’, and having some of its lower slopes being very well protected from the wind.

Your other point about Stowe being different when the off-piste opens up is appropriate though – that creates an entirely different world.  I’ve done the calculations on Stowe’s actual acreage when you can ski everything, and the in-bounds terrain alone is roughly 2,600 acres.  With the Hazelton Zone it goes to almost 2,800 acres, and then when the sidecountry (both sides of Mansfield, notch side of Spruce, etc.) is added you’re looking at something in the realm of 3,000 to 4,000 acres of lift-served skiing.  They never advertise those numbers of course, but everyone who skis the mountain when the snow/base is good knows how massive/expansive the terrain is, even if they don’t know the exact numbers.

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.

29 minutes ago, alex said:

Expecting the usual downsloping/shadowing for the first part of the storm, then the fun stuff. Hopefully it won’t disappoint like most things this year! Headed to Stowe next week so it’d be good to have good conditions there. Wasn’t Great last time and the family is like - why are we skiing here again??? Need to change their mind, but they’re spoiled 

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.

7 minutes ago, MRVexpat said:

What's your thought on ratios assuming CVT/NVT don't get in on that banding?

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.

3 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

18Z GFS Narcan me 4 you 8 Hunchie 14 Pete 18 yowzer.

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).

1 hour ago, PhineasC said:

Yeah, these events are usually great here because I can get the east flow and then the NW flow after the storm passes. Thinking 8-10 here right now. The storm is moving pretty fast so there is an upper limit. Excited to see what this does in meso range. Should be some bonkers NAM runs as it tries to jam the tropical moisture into the Whites.

I will be in MD until Wed so will need to live vicariously through my cams and everyone's obs until I get up there.

Looks like they will get 4-5 down here so not a total loss.

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.

34 minutes ago, dryslot said:

Its on.

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.  

9 minutes ago, moneypitmike said:

Yeah--06z is a lot snowier.  Looks like by the time any mixing might occur many would be dry-slotting.

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