powderfreak

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.

Lol it’s amazing the obsession with drought.

It’s white at 1500ft, a light pasting on the trees. Pretty tight line around 1300-1400ft. Lifts all iced up from the changeover from moist to frozen. 2” of paste above 3,000ft.

High-end.. nice work. Power companies are pretty good with weather too in the mountains, shouldn't be more than a few hours at most (unless it's a localized "completely f'ed)." I feel like I saw your neighbor mention losing power a few times but probably before you moved in. This is a high-end weather event IMO relative to climo. The upper level energy was strong and the warm air advection with it was strong. It was primed to lead to pockets of wind damage as the leading edge of that H5 vort max swung through. At least it's been an interesting day meteorologically.

That’s awesome. The first moose and every one after that is always exciting. The NNE wildlife is awesome, I’ve been thinking the bears will show up soon with this weather. Animals are on the move this time of year. Its time for activity when the conditions seem like the warm season. They don’t know climo, they just go by cues... I’m sure that’s a memorable sight for the kids.

Let’s add today... 72 hours after the first photo. River will start eating away at the neighbor’s lawn soon. Still rising. The drought is real up here. Glad Dr. Dews was concerned about water in VT .

Middlebury Snow Bowl, lol. Yeah we had some good pulses of wind at Stowe but it’s hard to compare because winter usually brings some extreme synoptic gusts... so some t-storm pulse gusts to 50mph would stand out big in July but right now it’s like another windy day. If that makes sense. We’ve had some big wind events lately too out of the NW... I do think if today hit in mid-summer that wind would’ve been something but wasn’t all that impressive right now relative to the other recent stuff. The rain though, it just won’t quit. So much water leaving the mountains.

Yeah that happened first, lol. Then it got pitch black and t-storms came next. Felt summery in the sunny warm sector.

This one isn't missing. Torrential rain and thunder. Back on hold for lightning.

Yeah that first round didn't leave that much rain, maybe a quarter inch at the mtn. I think this squall line is going to dump some water.

Ha yeah I was on the Stowe twitter and Tim Kelly tweeting to Duck and Cover. Velocity scans seemed to weaken a bit. Still a pretty solid line. Suns out now and it feels humid all the sudden. Crazy weather.

We went on hold at 11:44am for thunder up here at the ski area. Nothing on the lightning maps but was called into dispatch by both guests and ski patrol. Not sure how those lightning sensors work that well.

Oh it’s at May 22nd levels last year. Mentioned that on the Snow Phone Report today, ha. Its a melt similar to 2012, maybe not quite that but it’s not done yet with another rainstorm coming. We just don’t like angst here in VT, we’ll find a way to turn it into a positive, .

Yeah 2011-12, 2015-16 especially, those are fails in the past decade. This was a long duration of off-piste skiing that a D/F winter won’t have. We literally never went in the woods in 15-16. Hard to describe, but this season just didn’t feel *that* bad from a “feel” standpoint. Anytime it doesn’t rain for 6+ weeks is a good stretch. This year had it's moment when you stack up snowfalls for weeks on end, even if they are light.

That week will still be king from 2012... but this week definitely gave it a run for it’s money. But second class for sure. I always remember your spring trips Ginxy, good stuff.

I won’t lie, I still think we have one in the bank. It would be very hard to completely miss on a synoptic event from March 1 onward for the mountains. Maybe it comes April 15th on Tax Day (it has in the past), or even April 27-28th in 2010 when 5-24” (5” BTV, 24” at 3,000ft plot) fell across NNE. Led to May 1st snow cover in the mountains. CoCoRAHS early days back then.

Regardless of ski area, the story is similar. The snow depth on Mansfield at the fabled COOP stake is at 36”. Last year it was May 22nd before the depth dropped below that level. Two full months later than today, I was hiking with the dog with a similar snowpack up high. This is turning into an impressive melt, with the rain and maybe some convection still to come.

The crowds? Snowmaking? Grooming? Everything is worse now? I'm a little curious too but I am always careful as a VR employee to push it too far (full disclosure, they seem to treat me well and pay me far better with benefits, bonuses, etc than previous ownership and nearby competitors. I don't care who the owner is, I love Stowe and Mount Mansfield so my opinions will reflect those locally) . I do like to ask opinions though as maybe I can help avoid it or do little things to change that when the opportunities present themselves. I'm no big wig but for some reason they respect me and I feel like I have a voice. In the industry there is what is termed the "Vail Sucks Guy" that sort of follows a certain pattern. You said everything Vail touches turns to shit and then @bwt3650 gave some examples he saw, and hit the nail on the head about remote customer service just being completely unprepared for the call volume. Embarrassing. It seemed like an honest thought process of pros and cons. That's what we We always talk about it because we want to know what's wrong but the majority of comments seem to be of a "Vail Sucks Guy" mentality. Here's the condensed definition from the Storm Skiing Journal: "Do you want Vail Sucks Guy to elaborate? Good luck. There are plenty of thoughtful critiques of Vail out there. They did not come from Vail Sucks Guy. Vail Sucks Guy knows “a lot” of people who have been screwed over by Vail. Vail Sucks Guy could tell you some stories. But he won’t. Instead, Vail Sucks Guy is just going to tell you that Vail sucks."

Yeah i think the wet bulbs were still in like the upper 30s up here when it was 63F at 8% RH. It reminded me of a trip to the Arizona hills in April a few years back when the super dry air would have it feel like summer at 75F in the sun, but literally the minute the shadow grew in the evening it would drop to under 50F in what felt like minutes. The type of stuff where hikers in the Grand Canyon are struggling due to heat exhaustion and then like 2-3 hours later going hypothermic with the loss of the sun in those 3-4% RH air masses where they do 50-60 degree diurnal ranges on the Canyon floors. The wet bulb is still so low.