powderfreak

Yeah let’s get some sun and dry weather for these extended daylight days.

Good soaking straight through Providence County it looks like. Ginxy too.

It’s a heady topic psychologically in all aspects for sure.

4 generations today for Mother’s Day. Everyone vaxxed and living. We move on. Red Sox best record in the MLB. Good times.

No I get it, I only used that phrase because I know he’s called himself a conspiracy theorist that tends to get it right. It was too far, out of line. Just reacted to a sad way to live is not caring about wearing a mask. All good, I appreciate everyone’s opinions and love the dialog.

Ha yup, my wife wears glasses like you and hates it, hated it from day one... doesn’t care what science says it’s a damn inconvenience. We joke all the time about it. She’d rather wear a football helmet over a mask. But I also need to get out and see some of the rest of the northeast. The way you guys talk about folks being scared and it’s a badge of honor to go out to dinner at an Olive Garden or TGI Fridays. Interesting. Some perspective that I’ve come to realize for myself, is that here we live in one of the most known tourist towns in VT... people travel from all over the US, even internationally in the winter to ski here. They come for foliage and the come in the warm season too. So the vast majority of people I come in contact with since like last foliage season, are all traveling. And by nature if you are going on vacations or taking weekend trips, you aren’t very “afraid”... hotels busy, restaurants breweries, several hundred thousand skiers over winter. I think all I see is the segment of the population that *is* traveling and living their lives normally. By nature it would be hard to come spend a weekend or a week in a tourist town if you were truly frightened of COVID.

Sorry you hadn’t bolded the other part at first. But c’mon, you said it’s a sad way to live.... like at the time following guidance was the wrong thing to do. I’m definitely too naive and quite sheltered up here. My first thought isn’t that there is some larger conspiracy going on, just that hey, we wear a face diaper for a time and can get on with life. Maybe the next time they want us to wear a football helmet to go outside, we all have our limits though .

I just try not to live in fear that everyone is trying to pull a giant conspiracy over my head... it’s too much energy to worry all the time that every decision has an ulterior negative motive. Constantly trying to figure out what someone is really after or if they are trying to screw me over. I’m probably too naive.

Yup, you’ve resisted since day one so no surprise there. Because you didn’t want it to be a default. It would never ever become muscle memory for you because of how much you dwelled on it since day one. For us sheep, it was just another way to get on with life. Conditioning happens real fast if you don’t care or resist.

Muscle memory for the most part, IMO. It gets burned into you pretty fast, like putting pants on in the morning. See it a lot too and honestly I do it without thinking I think. We are out all the time, and regardless of risk it’s habit already within a year of COVID starting. Like getting in the car and putting a seatbelt on. You don’t think about it or why you put it on, you just do. Humans adapt real fast to carry on with life. I don’t care one way or another, I don’t need or care to wear a mask but it’s muscle memory at times. Like if people just told you when in a car, you don’t need a seatbelt anymore.

HFD showing upper 50s at 10:30... Though that airport is only at 16 feet elevation, probably chilly air pooling at the bottom. Your warm season stuff is pretty funny, every day is beautiful and warm where you are. Summer is a mentality, right?

Getting out at .6 is looking like it was a good decision by the hour, ha.

No idea on the actual amount but that’s a great synoptic snow spot with high retention. Great CAD and synoptic storms with east or SE flow dump loads of QPF. Big pack building spot, and honestly at 1800ft it’s always going to snow a good amount. Snow season is long at that elevation. Brookfield is nearby, that’s the highest elevation on I-89 in VT and gets good early/late season snow. Would be hard to go wrong at that elevation.

All I was saying is the synoptics sound exactly what’s happening around parts of the interior. Maybe not CT, haven’t looked, don’t care that much, but graupel, mixed precip in areas, even some snow coding on p-type in Dacks, chilly brief rain in others. I had no horse in whatever race you are running, ha. Just sounded like what happened in some areas of the Northeast.

Sounds about right what Coastal wrote? Popcorn cold pool showers around in some areas. Sharp evaporational cooling.

Mostly virga? Had a few brief light showers hiking today but didn’t see anything frozen. A buddy reported a mix of sleet, snow and graupel at the top of Killington earlier. I figure wet-bulb and evaporational processes with these showers must be strong.

We’ve always had black labs. Growing up my family would raise them for Guiding Eyes for the Blind down near NYC. Foster home a puppy for 18 months, train it basic stuff and then give it back for the real training. As a kid though giving away dogs after 18 months with a puppy was damn hard, always thought my parents were cruel but they saw it as community service. We had a couple dogs go on to work as guide dogs and another became an ATF bomb dog. If the dog would fail the guide dog personality test, they’d offer them to other gov’t agencies. It was pretty impressive to see the puppy that couldn’t figure out where to piss go on to learn how to navigate things like rotating doors for their human and guide them through NYC streets. Our next one though, my wife wants a rescue and I support that. Just partial to knowing what you get with a lab.

Get outside. Took the dog for a hike up to the near the alpine. Lots of people out and enjoying the day on the mountain. Down to a foot of snow cover up here.

Yeah beef we only buy on sale and can go a couple weeks without eating it. Wife isn't huge on red meat. I'll definitely agree with you on the household products. That stuff is getting pricey, laundry detergent, the pods for washing machines and dishwashers, etc. A lot of it seems gimmicky but they are moving towards that stuff.... just give me the basic detergent for either the dishwasher or washing machine, not some pod with 4 different gels that'll clean that plate like never before. And every cleaning product now has some new R&D formula to clean better!!!! and we'll charge you for it. More bubbles! Foaming! A gnome who comes out of the bottle and spit shines everything.

Snowmaking is always a gamble but the gallons of water pumped are very consistent year over year. They just end up in different areas. Sometimes different trails are fatter than other years, or different spots are deeper on different years. It all has to do with the weather conditions when snow’s being made in a given area. One trail catches an arctic outbreak, another trail gets the short end of the stick because it was 24F when it’s guns were on instead of 4F when it’s neighbor got snow. Which runs got a second or third coat... some only get one because of time or weather, etc. I bet that spot lasts another 3 weeks, might make June.

No because we limped along in other areas. And it’s not like it was a whole trail, it’s a stretch on Main Street near the pumphouse. Basically could’ve allocated those resources a bit better but what it tells me is that there was a great favorable window of snowmaking when that area was hit, and it might have been left on for a day too long, or more likely it’s an overflow gun pile. Last winter was a poor snowmaking season with high minimum temperatures and lengthy stretches “around freezing”... like 25-32F is fairly useless for snowmaking and it seemed like we had a lot of that. It’s pretty easy to see right now what trails had snow made on them during one of the few arctic snaps we had. Though to be honest, in this case it’s the section of trail near the Spruster (Spruce Booster).... and when that pumphouse is moving water, there’s always a few guns going right outside as overflow guns. Often times the rogue deep spots can be found near valve houses or pump houses... Stowe has a classic one at the top of the Haychute on Upper Lord, where the snow is often to the roof of the building there. That’s because if snow is being made on Mansfield, those couple hydrants need to run. We often call them “lone soldiers”... just like randomly there will be a gun or two running to control water overflow.

What’s like an average yearly increase, say over the past decade? How different is that from a normal YOY increase?

Yeah I’m a big dairy fan, haven’t noticed any difference in that realm. I also shop in Morrisville, VT so mileage may vary compared to more populated areas, ha. What foods are you guys seeing an uptick in particularly? Manufactured stuff or like meat/produce? All of it?

Yeah it’s just the manmade stuff for the most part. Still patchy natural cover above 3,000ft and some depth in the evergreens above 3500-4000ft... but you can go to the tops and really only encounter man-made snow in most areas. As you can see in that first photo, it’s all bare ground except like 10-15 feet under the snow guns, ha.

That’s interesting. I’m with HubbDave, we haven’t noticed any real big increase that some of you have. But we mostly go with sale items and tailor the menu to that. Eat a lot of chicken (under $2/pound) and my wife likes pork chops... that always seems to be BOGO, ha. Veggies seem similar on the whole. But again we go into Shaws or Hannafords looking for what’s on sale and build menu around that. Can always find sale items. I’m sure those of you with kids though are on a much more fixed, less flexible grocery list. Maybe not though, but kids like consistency.