powderfreak

A friend took this shot from a drone today in Stowe, but man, what a day. Love these sunny March days.

Yeah that would’ve gone right over you. I had other friends who assumed it was snow shedding off their metal roof. I mean you hear it and your mind just assumes it’s anything but a meteor, ha. Right at like 5:40pm. Didn’t have a blender on or something?

Ha that thing cruises right over my house on that trajectory. Didn't see anything as we were looking southeast at the time when the noise hit. I had no idea something like that could be so loud. It was one of those "WTF is happening right now" moments. Never seen my dog like that either... she was like "instinct tells me this is bad, we gotta get out of here right now." “Heard and felt it from in the house midway between Stowe and Morrisville. Had no idea what it was!” one woman wrote. “Heard and felt it in Waterbury, Vermont. Rattled the house and windows!” another added.

What a bluebird morning. Earlier view of the Mountain Operations Center (MOC).

Anyone catch that fireball over VT or the noise last night!? I had no idea what it was, at first thought it was fireworks very close by, but then the sound tailed off oddly like a crackling. I figured then it had to be an F-35 out of BTV flying low. I was walking the dog on the Rec Path in Stowe (right about the time I took that photo of snowpack in my previous post in this thread). The dog freaked out, slipped her collar and started to run home. I got her to stop after the noise ended and she was just sitting in the Rec Path shaking. I even text my wife about 15 minutes later when we got home. Auto-correct changed a couple things (we call our dog "the bean" but it sometimes changes it to a beanie hat, ha) but that was crazy to find out it wasn't a fighter jet flying low, but a Meteor that entered the atmosphere over Mount Mansfield State Forest. It was loud!

Game Stop, at least that’s what the millionaires on Reddit show when they post screen shots of their investments lol.

Getting to the time of year where snowpack differences start to show up big. I’ve got 15” of concrete that you can walk on, but parts of the lower village look like they may only have a foot or so. Then you get higher up and closer to the Spine by a few miles and it’s a healthy 20+ of mushroom caps.

What a day. Starting to warm up and the wind has finally stopped after like 4-5 days of strong NW gales.

Nice standing waves rolling off Mansfield. This is looking east from 1,500ft.

Some flurries out there. A few fluffy, large snow flakes being incredibly lazy flurries floating off the peaks into the valley.

Yeah to be clear, I didn't think a Day 10-15 op output on the 18z GFS held much weight... but it's crazy to think about that solution. And great point about the models and how the conditions on the ground change. Do the models really grasp that surface feedback change?

That’s a temperature departure map?

J.Spin pep talk time while Phin is looking at those numbers and can’t fathom how to get there. The other thing though, it is only an 11-year POR so it’s still hard to completely see what the floor or ceiling of climo is there. Theres probably some 80-inch March (like 2001 at the Eden, VT COOP) or a 5-6” March on the low end. Just need to spread out the POR. But winter is a LONG way from over in the northern mountains.

Good god that looks horrible. Not happening but it’s even crazy to think about. Its like 5 full days of -20C or lower 850 temps up here. I can’t imagine a worst way to run the 3rd week of March than dry, frigid polar vortex over head. 5-day anomalies just for shits and giggles. And a 5-day average of -20 departures at the surface in the mtns. GFS your drunk.

Good point. Makes those positive anomalies for many in SNE even more impressive. Solid February.

Yeah, even the 6z models had it snowing steadily right now but nothing but a few wind whipped flurries moving through. 6z NAM sim rad product had a nice upslope pulse this evening from 4-9pm that didn’t happen, lol. Pretty substantial short term busts for GFS/NAM on this one. I won’t lie, I’m looking forward to the warm up.

I couldn’t get warm. That’s the worst type of cold... wind and evaporating snow. It’s a damp cold with the moisture but also not enough moisture to produce meaningful snow. Arctic sand snow type conditions. The wind was obscene here today with gusts to 50mph at times even at 1500ft when they’d roll out of the Notch and then funnel into the base area...especially late in the day. Could see plumes of blowing snow off the ski trails go like several hundred feet in the air at times and move across the forested hillsides. Just a lot of turbulence and chaos in the flow today.

The moose is constipated. At some point he'll release his gas. Probably when no one expects it. Eternal optimists here in Vermont. It's just so cold and blustery out there. Some of the woods are skiing nicely with the fresh wind drifts but I'm over this cold at this point in the season to be honest.

Yeah all the other models were pretty strong. Euro just never bought into it. We’ll see. Doesn’t take much to fart another 4-5” this evening. Its the ratios and the wind. We can make 5-6” from like 0.15-0.20”... but the strong winds have just hammered it on the ground.

The daytime today was always supposed to be sort of a lull with another increase in moisture and weak dynamics this evening. We’ll see like you said, ha. The differences between GFS and EURO at 18z and 00z last night were large. Euro schooled most models on this one.

Busted overnight. Thought we’d get 3-5” last night, turned into 0.5-2.0”. Extremely high winds and no loft to the snow. Definitely would’ve stacked a bit without so much turbulence. We’ll see what today brings.

Yeah for sure. I was speaking long term though. Even in ten years there’s no way IMO that location is getting 250-300k skier visits. 150k seems like it might be attainable if they can attract families. They need to build a brand that makes people want to drive past other resorts.

It’s tough to get big bombs up there... but they’ll build snowpack to the roof tops in the eastern townships on 6-10 incher’s in like a 2007-08 style.

Looks like moisture is starting to rotate back into the area from the north and that moisture should start to get blocked and converge further.

Yeah you start to run into the age old problem of ski resorts... there just aren't enough "core" skiers out there to sustain a good operation at any larger scale, and those core skiers normally aren't paying full rate anyway and their cost per day is usually pretty low. You need money for upkeep, maintenance (of lifts, grooming machines, snowmaking systems, etc) and even things like getting fresh coats of paint on the lifts to keep presentation standards high cost a good deal of money. So then you need to start attracting a higher dollar value guest. And in order to do that you build more ancillary businesses (say a water park, golf course, skating rinks, kids adventure centers or activities center etc) to attract them. In order to keep surviving, you realize you are going down the classic "resort" pathway, and you start to diverge from your original goal of just being a core mountain. But its necessary to survive for many ski areas, especially ones that require a long drive to get to from population centers.