powderfreak

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.

I loved Ray's "LBSW".... figured that's what he meant. We all know where we want the Mother Nature to leave the white stuff (I mean c'mon, it's too easy).

This one is great. https://en-gb.topographic-map.com/maps/lrfs/Vermont/

No one likes a load blown south of them. Everyone likes loads to be blown on them I guess.

That's wicked cool. Just the casual wild dog wandering around the yard.

Lots of ideas. I’ll try to circle back later.

Yeah 2-4” or 3-6” stuff would be just fine into holiday period.

Like you have been on top of for years, there’s still some compression going on along the gradient that likely indicates faster flow and could lead to less organization, but it’s a good place to start. Would roll the dice with that look any day. Compared to almost anywhere else on the globe those heights are compressed just as tightly around our area into the North Atlantic. It looks great but still run the risk of shredding energy. Negative tilt helps a lot in keeping it together.

The trough/height angle is pretty awesome. Negative tilt in the mean over New England? Let's go. Just off-shore is that vertical south-north anomaly couplet we like to see to not let stuff escape eastward. Increase that Atlantic ridging a bit and that's a real solid look.

Lol look at the snow texture around the Mansfield stake. That’s all you need to know. Firm and weird. At least there’s something white still on the ground I guess. And the texture today on RT 108 (closed) near the Stowe gate into Smugglers Notch at 1500ft.

Could use one of these in ski country ahead of the holiday vacations.

On the positive side, it takes a relatively comfortable and advanced society to get to this point… where people become comfortable and free enough to voice opinions on every possible topic.

Lots of debris and a few trees down on my drive up. These ski racks are galvanized steel and very heavy but we’re lifted and crashed into each other. Groomers said it was absolute mayhem last night on the mountain. Ice rink looking good though .

Powers out. Absolutely roaring wind. This is wild. It’s been hours of this now just roaring down the east slope. Mansfield gusting 103mph as of 2AM.

Cranking. I’m surprised we still have power with some of these gusts. If trees had leaves on them it would be widespread power outages. 73mph the high gust so far on the north slope of the Adirondacks.

Official 60/50 obs for 0154z at MVL/Morrisville-Stowe Airport. 60F… 16/10 Celsius