powderfreak

Interesting needle threading event possible Thursday... The big 3 models... GFS is by far the furthest east with accumulations. Need a tick eastward from EURO and the GGEM is close. 12z GGEM 12z EURO 12z GFS

Big hit on the 12z GFS

The whiteouts have been incredible this morning with the wind and snow. Legit car stopping whiteouts like I posted in the NNE thread. When the gusts come through the visibility goes to pretty much zero, even on foot walking around the ski area you have to just turn away from it and let it pass, ha. Looks like the upslope pulse is winding down. About 3" of what feels like 10:1 snow... small flakes and some graupel it seemed and very wet initial inch.

Yeah you get rocked on southerly flow it seems.... good mixing there on that direction coming down off MWN/Presidentials. Today's much windier here on the east slope than yesterday. Yesterday the south wind was all up high over the inversion... stayed 2,500ft+.

Seems like a surprisingly dense 3” or so at 1500ft here. Hard to be sure with the wind but that’s what I’d estimate. Has decent water content... 10:1 probably. Pretty close to HRRR runs yesterday evening.

Just full on blizzard conditions. We stopped a couple of times on RT 108 just dead stop in whiteout conditions. Couldn't see anything. Stopped in middle of 50mph zone, grabbed a shot while waiting for the whiteout to pass. Love me a good ol' Mansfield upslope morning. Like a mini-winter storm. Over on the other side of the resort seemed sheltered from the wind a bit by the hotel. They probably turned off the heated walkways in all this spring weather, ha.

Dumping snow in town, not much accumulation but world is white again. Roads are terrible.

Latest HRRR has a period of snow tomorrow morning. Cosmetic snowfall possible.

Sweet. Ski Town vibe.

Inversion mixed out on the high elevation eastern slope. From low 30s and ZR...to 38F now and 40G60 out of the SW.

Can tell the ground is still frozen... just monster pooling of water on the ground everywhere. Everyone is now a proud new owner of a swimming pool.

Might put some lipstick on the pig late tonight and tomorrow with an upslope pulse, ha.

I actually went out under my own free will. When I walked out of the office in my ski gear people just started laughing and shaking their heads. Last day of season for Sensation Quad so I wanted to get a ride in.

Strong south wind blowing rain sideways through the base area over here. It’s inspiring outside. And I hear ya on the humidity. We radiate well in summer so as soon as the sun goes behind the hill it cools off real nice along the river. But if dews are high and it’s cloudy, that temp isn’t dropping. Those are the only evenings I turn my AC on. Even those 93F days in May was such a dry heat that temps would drop like 30 degrees in 2 hours and it was comfy again.

I’m sure facing south with the big windows isn’t ideal for keeping that place cool in the summer sun. First year you get one of the hottest summers and a lackluster winter... there’s always next year.

Pretty inspiring stuff out there, ha. Barely below freezing with sheet freezing drizzle coming in on 60mph winds. This lift went on wind hold right after me, absolutely wild up top getting blasted by the southerly low level jet. Freezing rain up here on strong winds. Just special weather conditions.

Checked my files, found that event that caused the 2012 April snow depth spike. What a textbook upslope storm late in the season... high QPF and long duration during cut-off season. That one fit with all the studies showing best upslope occurs with a stacked low tracking through northern ME and FVE area into adjacent Canada. Several panels of 0.1-0.25" QPF in northern Vermont was the signal for huge storm. Looks like ~1.70" storm total liquid realized down in Stowe Village over the multi-day event... easy to see how the mountain saw 2-3" QPF total. BTV in the Champlain Valley was only 0.25" or so outside of the upslope zone. From bare ground to a fresh 2+ feet in April 2012 after the big melt out. Hopefully we still have one coming, even if it's a month from now. The Picnic Tables.

Wow you're right, just saw they only are reporting 96" on the season. That's nuts. Hard to cover that Granite State rocky terrain with 96" over 4 months. Over 100" less than we saw at 3,000ft... yeah that would've hurt quite a bit.

I heard some more of their struggles this year making snow revolved around power issues they’ve had. Guess they had to rent a bunch of monster diesel generators or something like that. Reading online it seems like they’ve had several power outages this season too (most recently on 3/20) and are working with Eversource to figure out more reliable power? No idea if that’s a new thing or if it’s something they’ve struggled with for years.

Did it go down that far south? I remember it as more of a NVT upslope event from a cut-off bomb.

Yeah there was a monster upslope event with 2-3” QPF. Had like 26” of dense snowfall and I believe it was the day or two after Easter that year. We didn’t have enough snow to ski on for the Easter Sunrise service and then like two days later the snow was up near the top of the picnic tables that had been on bare ground prior.

This was a high end melt.... up there with 2012 because it's not done yet. Tomorrow's rainer is going to be another bloodbath. 2012 went from 80" to like 20"... that's still top dog melt, ha.

They are pretty darn accurate. Can give a very good picture of snow depths on trails... can even see where the snow guns deposited the snow. Yellow is very deep (5-10 feet), red is like a foot before grass. Shows you where the stockpiles are.

Ski area base depths are generally a made up number, pay no attention to those. We even know it’s a made up number but people want to see “average base depths.” WTF does that even mean? Could be 0” in a bare spot or 120” when man-made snow is piled up. 0-120” then. We sort of mocked those this year on the snow phone by saying like 9 to 99” sometimes. We’d find the deepest pocket of manmade on the grooming data (the snowcats map snow depth on the trails like a fishing boat measures water depth) and use that as the upper end and give a ridiculous range. In the end the grooming data will give an average snow depth for a given trail by averaging depths of all the passes... but snow depths vary so much. All winter long at any ski area there’s a wind swept area with bare ground and then another area with 15 feet under a snow gun. Thats why the Mansfield COOP stake is the barometer here. It has its own issues BUT it’s consistent and has a 65 year period of record to compare to.

Melt patterns are so tough this time of year when you have consistent snow cover on one aspect (like E-NE) almost 1500 vertical feet lower than say S-SW. But then there’s a micro-scale stuff... there’s one house near me on Mountain Road near the old Gables Inn that literally just doesn’t melt. Large pines and a hill side block any afternoon sun, but it covers like his whole property. That guy could probably claim an 8” depth right now at 750ft while he looks out at literally no snow in all directions at that elevation. But yeah it’s a little weenie-ish. Though with time the records have usefulness as a comparison to that specific site and not the general area.