powderfreak

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.

Yeah March is going to kill it. It was on pace for above normal here even into like late February I think. BTV was pacing on normal or above normal until March 1st. Still out of the last decade it's better than 2011-12 and 15-16 for sure.... and had one of the longest durations without a thaw/rain for skiing than I can remember, with decent snowfall where people live around here.

Snow depth or snow total? The Mansfield stake doesn't have snow total information, just depth data. The previous snow total data is very inaccurate due to collection methods. As I think J.Spin and I have said plenty of times though the higher summits have taken the brunt of it... down where people live the totals aren't that bad or that far off. This has been the best skiing on record for those snow depths at the stake. Everyone commenting this season how 48" was skiing like 80". The low elevation snowpack is what does that.... it was pretty solid down low. I figure I'll end up around 100" on the season off an average of 120"... probably within 1 S.D. (so normal).

11F with a wind chill of -10F as I walked into the office at 5am. Going to pass on this weather right now. 5F with 40-50mph winds up at the picnic tables, ha. Those tables frozen solid into the snowpack like they are stuck in a concrete foundation.

I agree. May to September for the warm season. The rest lean towards cold season characteristics.

Holy crap, lol. I love the wildlife you see in your yard. I thought 3 deer outside this morning here was interesting... you’ve got a whole herd, ha.

Only an inch up here above 2500ft. Just not enough QPF.

Last year was by far the largest whiplash on record... snowed here May 9th and then May 11th to the valley floors, then a week later a bunch of NNE sites set their hottest May temp on record (some even set their hottest temp period). Snow to 90-95F in like a week. And it stayed like an absolute torch up in NNE in June too.

That one storm was heavy heavy jealousy. I might punt a winter to get a 30”+ in 12 hours.

“Any shifts north and we would end up with even more precipitation” is another way to look at it... but from what you share of his posts the fear is *always* less.

The flip side would be if we removed the Grinch storm, this is probably close to an all-time winter for consistently deep snowpack. However I always struggle with the logic of “wiping away” events or removing them to then compare a new set of parameters... because they did happen and every single season (be it summer, fall, spring, winter) or every month can look very different when we start cherry picking events to add or delete, ha. Sort of like, if we get rid of a few of the 90 degree days, summer wasn’t very hot.

Yes, good way to put it. Some years we have more snowstorms and worse retention or more rainstorms so it’s a trade off.

Change from 12z to 18z EURO.

Last year March 1-17 your neighbor recorded only 5.8" of snowfall. This year he's got 9.4"... so you are running close to twice as snowy as last March, lol. I guess maybe that's why these stretches don't seem all that uncommon to some of us. Maybe the length of it this year is longer than normal but it's been off-set by the retention in snowpack. We do go through some very snowless periods at times.

Ha yeah. This was the time of year the sh*t had just hit the fan like within 72 hours of now. Over this way we've had more snow to date this March than last March, which is hard to imagine but we do go through some really dry Feb/Mar spring patterns at times. I remember 2005 or 2006 (maybe both of them) were like back to back very lean and dry second half of winters. Like record low snowfall on back to back years in the spring.

I don't think there were any lifts running last year on St Paddy's day... I don't remember much except being shut down, ha. It started snowing again in April and May though. I don't think much happened last March for snowfall IIRC. I just checked CoCoRAHS and most sites appear to have had less snow on the ground last year on this date than this year.

Yup, full on party on the slopes. Love it. At one point I got passed by two banana's that were being chased by a gorilla. People all dressed in costumes and beads. Leprechauns. The annual dying of the Waterfall under the Gondola to make it green. Fun stuff.

11F this morning and 54F with like 25% RH this afternoon? Sign me up for a month of this. Can go spring skiing all day and still get home with hours of daylight left? This is by far the best time of year. We’ll be melting out in town in the not too distant future with all this sunshine coming up. Then it’s time for skiing followed by biking.

What a day. Man I love this weather... thinking we got some sun burns today too... but St Paddy’s day and spring skiing is just an awesome combo. Such an amazing vibe out on the hill. We live for these days. Can’t wait to do this for another week straight at least. High diurnal changes and beautiful weather is a fantastic combo. 54F off a low of 11F to fulfill my fetish for 40+ diurnal swings and RH under 30%. Like living in a CO ski town.