powderfreak

66/13 A 47 degree rise from the morning low of 19F so far. Given the dew points so low again, we may very well hit teens overnight again. It's going to absolutely plummet as soon as the sun goes down.

65/13 13% RH. It is very dry out there. If it started raining it would be like 39F, lol.

Yeah it is flowing from all accounts I hear. 19F this morning here and going back into the 60s again. Very hard freeze each night and then very warm day times. It's crazy that you can get a high in the 60s under sunshine but then spend 12+ hours below freezing during the 24 hour period. The overnight lows will keep the departures from getting all that high.

FB Memories reminded me of today back in 2012 when the great melt was occurring.... I've never seen rivers running through the trails like that before. Highs in the 70s and overnights in the 50s... I think we even hit 80F in the valleys for a couple days. The overnight lows were the killer though. I remember showing up at 5am to Ops and it was 57F outside at that time.

34 degree drop so far at MVL in the past 4 hours. 28/21 currently. Same 28F at the local PWS. Frozen again with muddy parking lots and wet snow now very crunchy...happens quickly with this dry air.

Awesome views today. Looking towards Alex, Diane and Phin's neck of the woods.

Been solidly below normal this month at -2.0. This will start chipping into it but with the high diurnal ranges it's not that warm all things considered. Yesterday was a +12F on the max temp and a -9F on the minimum that averaged just a touch above normal. That's the way to run a spring... warm above normal daytimes and cold, below normal nights. Lost 17 degrees in one hour, and 25 degrees in under 2 hours this evening. Temp just plummets when the sun goes down. 60F to 35F in a flash.

42 degree diurnal swing yesterday and at least 43 today. 53/11 and today’s 62/19 (might have hit higher between hours). It does feel insane to have the heat on at night and temps in the teens leaving the house in the morning, then opening windows in the afternoon because the sun is baking the living room. The old heat in the car in the AM, then A/C in the PM air mass.

Yeah I wasn't drawing any connections to being healthier to what we should do in the future. Just an observation for sure but one can see why it's true. We just all became insane clean freaks and cut down on a lot of the things that spread illnesses. Lockdowns are a thing of the past for sure. But it will be interesting to see if the cleanliness/hygiene stuff continues.

In general the snowpack now is granular and there's obviously no fluff factor. It is well compacted several times over and the man-made snow has a ratio of like 3:1 sleet before it gets compacted by the tractors (groomers) and skier traffic. That stuff takes an insane amount of energy to melt. I mean even in a year like 2012 when it was like nights of 50F and days of 75F for like 4-5 days, the snowmaking routes largely held up. That glaciated snow just does not melt fast... there's a reason why I'm wandering around up there finding piles of man-made snow in like June even after weeks of above freezing temperatures 24/7. The natural snow, certainly that's going to go faster. But the snowmaking routes will hold for quite some time. The other thing to consider right now is these warm sunny afternoons have very dry air. As long as the air is so dry, the snowpack actually gets protected a bit via evaporational cooling on the snow surface. A thin skin of colder temperature (evap cooling lower temp) develops on the interface of the snow and air. The dry air really is a savior for snow preservation. Everything froze solid last night too, and the night time freezes are big as well. Now if dew points spike to 50F in heavy rain the equation does change a bit but the fact remains that the man-made snow right now is basically a solid block of ice that's like 2-8 feet thick depending on the trail/area. I can see the grooming team's snow depth sensors which gives a map of the mountain and the snow depths under every pass the snowcats make on the hill. It'll be interesting to see the progression of that over the next week. By and large though, take the "over" on expected life span of man-made snow... it takes a lot of energy to melt that. Sort of like if your yard was filled with 4-5 feet of sleet. It would be there forever.

Yeah I'm 100% in agreement. I wasn't trying to make an argument that it's how it should be... just a pure observation that I think many people have noticed. I mean I can't remember the last time I heard someone say they were sick with a stomach bug or threw up or whatever. Definitely pre-COVID. I honestly can't remember another winter when I didn't get sick at least once with something and that's a pretty common realization. I completely agree too with the immunity stuff. I mean if I went 5+ years without getting as much as a head cold, I'd be worried a headache might kill me. The human race would be crushed in like a few generations if we took this many steps to round-the-clock disinfect everything possible, wear masks, never gathered with multiple other families and freely moved around. I do think the lasting effect will be people will stay home more when they are sick with even the smallest thing. Many employers were like hey you can come in to work if you aren't puking your guts out. Sure you had a slight fever and feel crappy? Take a Tylenol and see how it goes. I think the lasting effect will be more people realizing they are sick and will stay home... and society will be more ok with it. There definitely was a lot of pressure to go out into the world and carry on normal life even if you were sick. And on the skiing stuff, for sure about the masks. I think we'd get along, ha. Mask down when skiing and out wandering around on the mountain, mask up in full approaching base area and lifts/parking lots/etc. That was how most of us approached it... not wanting to get shut down, so you do what you need to do to enjoy the winter.

Well I think you are discussing two different things. It's not an argument one way or another, it's just a statement. I don't think anybody really needs a study to tell that excessive hygiene, masks, bathing in hand sanitizer, and limiting large indoor gatherings with other people leads to less illness transfer. I mean if you want to wait for a study to tell you that staying in your own little circle and avoiding touching things that other people have touched (and if you do immediately hand sanitize after), not touching your mouth or nose (due to the mask) with germy fingers and spray sanitizer everywhere all day long helps you avoid getting sick... I don't think that's earth shattering news to anyone. Less touch points, less exposure. You are immediately assuming though that it is the desired state we want to live in. Getting sick is good for the body and building immunity. It's just you hear from so many people that they never had a stomach bug, never had even a slight head cold, etc this entire winter. It's really rare up here at a ski area to not have multiple sicknesses ripping through departments. Ski areas are germ factories with people sneezing and wiping their noses with their hands (can't do that with a mask) and then touching everything. It's definitely something people have been talking about up here. But I don't think anyone has connected that statement to "that's how normal should be".

Yeah you wouldn’t like it here would be my guess. No one is messing around when the state gov’t has swung audits through. We had so many complaints the first half of the season about non-compliance with mask wearing (folks will call the state and complain that you Phin aren’t covering your nose at all times, ha) that it had to be cracked down on hard. I think since Presidents Week is when there started being more push back the other direction but the first half of winter was entirely people thankful for the heavy hand of mask reminders and feeling safe was a big deal. Many times the skiing public will just take it into their own hand and you’ll have 20 people telling some dude to put his mask on correctly. For the ski areas it was necessary just to operate to be heavy handed. They didn’t want to have a large COVID outbreak traced to them and they didn’t want to be forced to cease operations... so from a business continuity standpoint it made sense to lean hard towards one side. I think it’s gone about as well as could be expected under the given circumstances. From what I’ve heard all the VT areas are very similar in their practices. I can also clearly say that mask wearing and hygiene does work really well. This was by far the healthiest season for many departments... not so much as a case of the sniffles going around. I’ve never gone through a whole winter without getting a solid week long sickness... and those stories are everywhere. Folks now realizing they didn’t even have a single cold this winter. Hygiene and masks isn’t just theater, it does seem to work. Never had whole departments leveled with a stomach bug or fevers, head colds, etc like past winters. Sterilized world.

We did 11F to 53F yesterday... should do a similar range again today.

20F here and 33F at the picnic tables. It’s coming.

Wood/lumber seemed like a commodity that would always be cheap. Trees are everywhere and you can grow more of them. Insert a health crisis and here we are, ha. Agree with you, it won’t hit the previous low price point.

I read almost all our guest surveys and this year there’s a COVID question added for comments. It seems like the comments mirror American division on the topic. One group loves the COVID safety procedures or thinks more should be done. The other group thinks it’s crap and way overboard. In general I’d assume the larger ski companies will fall on the more intense side of the COVID stuff. And it may not be state by state per se. I bet Boyne Resorts (owners of Sugarloaf and Sunday River among others) implemented very similar COVID policies at all their resorts regardless of state. As did Vail Resorts, Alterra and POWDR. Now whether the leadership actually cascades that down to the staff at the same “tone” at each resort is a different thing.

I like sleeping in a bit on days off now and not having to race up there for a 7:30 or 8am first chair if it’s snowing, ha. So many good benefits of this time of year.

It’s crazy, it sounds like the lumber supply is really struggling. Tons of DIY projects all last summer (Lowe’s and HD had extremely strong summers as they were lucky to be deemed essential) and a boom in housing construction and upgrades/additions to existing housing over the last 6 months. Lumber mills shut down for COVID cases and drastically reduced supply... it also sounds like not a ton could get through from Canada for a time. Seems like lumber will be expensive until the supply and demand can find an equilibrium?

Awesome day. This morning was the spring equinox at like 5am. Nice timing as the day dawned bright and temps have warmed up nicely. From this morning... can tell the sun angle is rising as the alpenglow isn't as pink anymore, more of a golden color:

Love that mentality... classic Vermont. Enjoy each season for what it's worth. This is going to be an epic stretch of sun and high diurnal changes. Chilly nights and mild days.

Ugh, my brother-in-law's father was doing better and then we just found out he's taken a turn for the worse and it's looking very bleak. Been on a ventilator now for a couple weeks and may not make it much longer. My BIL's brother was living at home and they think he had it first... he experienced no symptoms at all but was the first to test positive. His mother then only had a cough for a few days and also tested positive. His 58-year-old father got it and it sounds like he may not survive it. Everyone bracing for the worst. The brother's guilt is extremely high right now, thinking he may be responsible for killing his father if he doesn't recover. That's a big burden to carry for the rest of your life, despite the fact that it's not truly your fault. It's happened to thousands of people, spreading it to someone they love. What a strange virus. Three get it. One has no symptoms, one has a cough, and another is on his deathbed.

We very concerned. Once the snow melts we will all run out of water. Be forced to squeeze it out of the muddy ruts on the dirt roads as the ground thaws.

I wish we could've gotten your true impression of winter without any records to compare to. Just a blind test study. Like if you didn't have any Randolph data (none of us did) and it was just a pure winter observation.... it would've been interesting.

I think that hits the nail on the head, and even not skiers/boarders... if you just ask random people who know nothing about climo they think this was a good winter because there was a decent snowpack for so long and it didn't rain often, ha.