powderfreak

I'll hire you and put you in employee housing dorm room up here for the winter. It won't look like this though :

Started as rain and now over to all snow at 1,500ft in the base area. Trails are turning white not far up. Looks like big flakes just a few hundred feet higher. Nice lake effect/upslope connection.

Cell phone shots but decent sky scenes walking the dog this evening along the river. Water receded pretty fast after the rains, but still decent compared to mid-summer levels. Walking the village dog path, watching the backlit precipitation from a passing snow shower over the mountain with rain down lower, a good evening. That speed bump called Mansfield caused just enough lift to trigger a brief shower/squall as it moved NE of here.

Yeah I just looked at Sunday River, if you knew when you were planning a trip you can get midweek tickets for $52-$65 and $80-$110 depending on the weekends. Even that is significant to non middle class families/people though. I get it completely, day of pricing is ridiculous but like most endeavors these days if you plan ahead you can save big over rack rate. The business world has really embraced dynamic pricing in all sectors.

Well the “season passes” though are different than before. Sure you can get a full season pass for like $700 (7 days of skiing at $100 for say), or buy any “pass” of 1-7 days ahead of time. It’s definitely an expensive sport, no getting around that but you tell me how many days you think you’d ski and I bet I could find you daily rates comparable to $40-$45 back in the 1990s (like $90 today). I think it’s always been a sport for the wealthy, even $45 in 1994 was solidly middle class. I guess I just don’t see it as being far removed from what it was back then. Every year the NSAA (national ski areas association) logs a new record high in skier days. We also live in a time where there is a lot of affluence… like if in the 1990s someone said every human will walk around with a $1,000 phone in their pocket, folks would be like say what!? It doesn’t make it better but I bet you could ski today for a very similar price as back then controlled for inflation. You’d just need to go about it differently than deciding on a Friday that you want to go buy a ticket and ski the next day.

Haha maybe I’ve got the beer then. I thought you meant trough over us since September. My bad.

But season passes have literally never been cheaper. And advanced commitment with dynamic pricing is how the world works now. You only pay $120+ per day right now if you just don’t do any research. Like we talked about you can buy 1-day tickets valid any day at like a dozen mountains for $65/day right now if you do it ahead of time. That’s cheaper than $45 in the 1990s… ~$90 today. The sticker shock though of walk up tickets creates bad press and sentiments just like yours… because you hear those prices and it’s like holy crap! But like almost everything else in life now, pre-buy is the way capitalism has figured out how to avoid financial uncertainty. Like even my heating propane, if I pre-buy I’ll save several hundreds of dollars instead of buying it as I go. Ski areas are talking the airline mentality too… give us money early we will give it cheap. You walk up on the day you want to fly and buy a ticket (if available) will cost $1,000 instead of $300. Im not sure I agree with it because of the negative press that comes with the lists of the most expensive walk up day tickets. There’s no “but you can do it much cheaper” disclaimer. But it’s the world we live in where every company on the planet will take less money now over the chance you decide later not to spend any.

Beer?

First frozen of the season in town and boy was that anticlimactic lol. Graupel shower just rolled through with solid white balls bouncing off the car and then immediately melting. It’s like 48F outside so can see what evaporational cooling can do along with CAA aloft. Lasted about 60-90 seconds . But it was the first frozen I’ve seen at home.

Yeah I mean ski town housing has been an issue for decades and decades. It just slowly gets worse but larger scale it’s nothing new. Out west is on another level though.

Doesn’t look that much different? Or am I missing something?

What a place, looks like Maryland this time of year. The difference between north and south this foliage season has been much more drastic than usual. Been full stick season for weeks now it seems.

Yeah the precip pattern shows similarities, impressive for a warm conveyor belt firehose that moved up the coast… blasting Atlantic moisture into that coastal front.

This times 100. Great post man.

Was there? I thought the precip was moving from SE to NW on major WAA into the coastal front? Looked like great H85-H7 frontogenesis along that thermal gradient as high PWAT air slammed ashore. I thought it was all warm conveyor belt. Up here today had more CCB characteristics I think.

Ahhh makes sense too. The one I read just listed it as Valdez. They say that spot averages 700” a year compared to the meek 330” at Valdez . 700” under 3,000ft of elevation is absolutely bonkers.

If only it was snow. The Spine has been getting firehosed all day long on cyclonic W/NW flow. Several spots on the west side of Mansfield are up to 2”+ just today, compared to a little over an inch here in Stowe Village today.

So like rural NNE/America but with more snow? I’d need meth to shovel a foot per hour and my wife certainly wouldn’t stick around for that weather… so no women and meth checks out.

I guess the trade off is you go like 6 months without seeing the sun... from precip and the solar cycle.

Yeah even down at sea level they average (!) 326" in Valdez. If you average that much heavy wet snow at sea level, what happens at 10,000ft must be nuts. Can't imagine living in a place where you can get 15" in 90 minutes lol. The winter storm has brought extreme snowfall — 15 inches fell in 90 minutes in Valdez — made travel hazardous south of the Alaska Range. Normal suburban home but there has to be 6 feet of mushroom caps on the roof.

Usually it’s the opposite… you get colder and snow levels drop the harder it precipitates, then rise when it lightens up. It is hard to process for sure that much water falling as snow in such a short period of time. But I’ve heard even at sea level there in Valdez, AK they can get snow rates of a foot per hour in cold storms.

Still raining out. All day long. No bueno. River is quite high. The other day before the rain, one last tree with leaves on the mountain. Stick season except for that one yellow tree.

I bet its legit to be honest. Models have 12-24" of QPF in that area over the next 72 hours. You're taking ocean moisture and slamming it into 10,000ft of prominence and wringing out 20" of water in single digit temps up there. Those places can get 1,000+ inches per season it's estimated but no one really knows. Wish we had a high-res NAM aimed on those peaks, the resolution would probably resolve some incredible QPF amounts.

Next 72-hour snowfall. Note the amounts are in feet not inches. Max amount is 28 feet in the next 72 hours on Mount Marcus Baker .

"Just don't come anywhere near my house and we'll be ok. The barn is yours."