powderfreak

Obviously the "product" is much better if it's not too rushed though. Ideally you make snow on the trails you want to open, and then can let the piles drain for a couple days, while you make snow on other trails. That's generally the play if its an ideal world. Then you can open up some groomed terrain (the trails that had time to drain) and some ungroomed on the routes with current snowmaking. When I say drained too... all the snowmaking water likes to pool in the middle of those big snowmaking piles/whales. So when you see fresh snowmaking and jam your pole into it, and look down a foot or two to see blue snow or even water... that's what ideally has time to drain to the bottom and into the ground. Generally if rushed to open and short on time, you are forced to have to put snowcats on that and spread out the snow right after it's made. In that case you are generally smearing that wet soaked snow from the middle of the piles all over the trail. Leads to a very icy product. There's a big difference in snow product from snowmaking that has the chance to sit for a couple of days before being pushed out... and snowmaking that just gets pushed out right after it's made. That's always why at mountains you'll see big snowmaking piles sitting there for a few days and people are usually like "why hasn't that been groomed and open yet!?" It's because they are letting it dry out, not because they are lazy lol.

Yeah depends on what people mean when they say "cover a trail" because there's making it white, making it skiable, and then making it an actual product that you can sustain traffic on. Killington North Ridge area is like 500 verts and the trails are reasonably narrow. That's like 24 hours and you can groom it out with a cat. 12 hours and you can probably open it ungroomed. At Stowe we have to open top-to-bottom and need at least a good 72-hour run time to adequately put depth down on 2,000 vertical feet to the point where it can sustain daily grooming and skier traffic.... as well as put enough snow/depth around the lift load/unloads to support operations. Still, it can happen pretty fast. It can be warm until like November 12th and then get a cold shot in the teens and things are ready to go like 4 days later. A place like Killington opening the North Ridge can pull it off in probably 36-48 hours from gun start time to loading public skiers on a lift.

Do you have a snowcat to push uphill? Its something that being familiar with the snow output of the operation that if you think you can do it, you probably can. Mother Nature is the biggest wildcard though.

This notch in the velocity data, following the coastline. What a loop. Thanks dude.

This would be quite a winter storm... 2.30+ inches of water so far from SYR to BOS suburbs. Big water amounts over a wide range of areas. Some 5-6+. Pretty impressive and still going.

I hate that it does make me feel older to dislike these days... but man I am definitely not a fan of these chilled, wet rainy days. Low clouds, low ceilings experience, where terrain just rises up into the clouds in all directions... gets dark with headlamp required to be outside by 6pm. After the time change in a couple weeks, it'll be dark at 4:30pm. A few months ago it felt like you could start a hike at 6pm, hang outside for an hour or three. Days and days of dark, chilly rains. Seems like stick season in the hills though. It held off for as long as possible but now we are in it until it starts snowing with more frequency.

The rain totals have been solid. This thing is making some QPF... all the way back through SYR in upstate NY. I know most want wind but it's a solid synoptic moisture laden system, need some of these in the true cold season.

This is still one of the best memes I’ve seen for this forum. Well played.

Thanks for the clarity dude. Makes sense along the coastal plain. I’m (like you) more used to our interior climo where it seems rainfall is always stabilizing unless it’s a convective downburst or something.

I thought it stabilizes through lowering lapse rates in precipitation? Cool, moist saturated air? I just know it seems that folks are usually like “wow rain stopped and wind started roaring”… I think there’s better mixing without rain cooled stabilizing boundary layer. The real question is there an inversion present at all in the low levels? If so I think rain stabilizes and strengthens the inversion.

I thought rain was usually a stabilizing mechanism unless it was true convective rain? Or is that what you mean? I figured many times big wind is in the dry slots with better mixing.

Hmm I’m not sure I totally understand the question but my first reaction is pushing snow uphill is hard. No matter what you are trying to cover, it’s easiest (by far) to push snow and spread it out downhill… so start higher rather than lower. Not sure how much water you can move, is the one fan gun maxed out?

It probably would’ve been fine on the other part of the house? I don’t think you need to build a new wing on your house to support those things.

Ha yeah the massif stretches into the clouds sometimes. Big fan of microscale stuff myself.

What a disaster of a day. 38-42F and raining with low clouds most of the day. The only redeeming value was seeing snow on the ski trails just below the cloud deck. These were the days we tried so hard to avoid .

Want to be in the Sierra right now. Mammoth Lakes, CA. Sugarbowl.

Nice to see white stuff up there. Too foggy and rainy down here to get a nice photo.

Ski trails are white above like 2,400ft. I was up at 330am letting the dog out because she was all antsy and seemed to have to go out, and it was small ice pellets it seemed. Precipitation was bouncing and it was real loud on the fallen leaves. Looks like that was right when precip started so probably evaporational cooling got some IP down in the valley.

30/28 at MVL... crisp night setting up prior to WAA. METAR KMVL 250220Z AUTO 00000KT 9SM CLR M01/M02 A3016

Congrat's and good luck dude on the applications. A guy named Murphy thinks there will be some localized mixing of high winds aloft in your neighborhood. He doesn't have a met degree though.

Even a brief period of wet snow above 1,500ft might be the most interesting thing that happens in the North Country with this system, ha. Otherwise, wet, dreary week.

I was wondering that. It's cold and it *feels* cold out... like if clouds were to come in and it started precipitating that some flakes during the onset might be possible in the higher terrain.

Looks like he’s taking the cautious approach.

That's wild, ha. We are in that phase that I think Will has described as the nuclear fallout time of year... aka stick season. But man when it starts to rain tomorrow and the week looks wet on the whole, it starts to take on that dreary, leafless, brown, dead, wet look of how they portray western Russia in movies. Gray, dark, dead. I forget the exact terminology of it, but we are there ha.

What a day. Traveling to other areas of the US (this time the south) always reminds me that I love where we live. From the beach to icicles in 24 hours. It was cold up there even with the sunshine. The shadows grow early and the sun sets on the NE aspect of the mountain in early afternoon lol.