powderfreak

Looks like that's yesterday's snow after the 6am report? I don't think anything happened overnight. Nothing more than some scattered flurries up this way per grooming last night. Decent amount of stars out too.

Bread and butter on the south shore. Love to see it. Just refresh every day or two.

That’s how climo works... every storm isn’t a gradient with the north getting the most each time. Even several events in a row can favor areas with much lower snow climo. In the end, Mother Nature loves her averages. This is the time of year with the furthest south baroclinic zone. Very glad so many posters can get a taste of snow-on-snow winter.

I saw some photos from Gabe at Sugarbush today, looks like they got the same amount in these squalls as Mansfield. This was one of those high ratio moose fart snows but models had no real indication of a flare up of any consequence. I definitely was caught off guard with pockets of 30-40dbz rolling into the Spine. This was last evening's 18z EURO output for 4am-10am the next morning, ha. This ended up dropping 5-6" in like 3 hours at the ski areas where zero measurable water was expected. Tough to forecast that.

It's pretty nuts in the upslope zone for ski conditions. 5" in 3 hours this morning, and I think it's snowed 12 of the last 14 days.

Ho-Lee-Fuk

I've been hanging with you in the totals this season. Normally you are up with J.Spin and out of reach of me. This winter we seem to be running fairly identical. J.Spin is about where he usually is relative to me.

High Road Stake on Mansfield had 9" stack from last 30 hours or so.

This is wild. It snows every single day. Locals on cloud nine, high fives and hoots and hollers coming from all over the ski area.

He’s trying to say he wants Bryce playing in the mud while he gets blue bombed over and over vs. blue balled. But I don’t really get the jackpot fetish as long as there’s snow on the ground and it’s snowing either.

3+ at the ski area since 6am.

This is incredible. Like old times in N.VT. It is just nuking snow at Mansfield in these 30+ DBZ.

Good snow out there today. Buddy's birthday and a great crew. Awesome snow conditions. Paper cups of 1874 whiskey in the parking lot to celebrate. 3-4" of new snow on the mountain in a consistent snow globe. Life is good up north.

We've had sparkling dust the past couple hours. MVL ASOS saw a couple hour period of like 5-8 mile visibility obs, and it keeps bouncing around below 10 mile max. Nothing on radar but it's like crystals forming just overhead in the cold and floating down. Very low level stuff in this cold. The snow growth layer of -12C to -18C is so low right now, pretty much at the surface. Any moisture is condensing into flakes.

It hasn’t rained up here since the Grinch Storm I think, at least at elevation. We had that one wet snow event that was paste above 1,000ft and white rain (but always wet flakes) below in January. But this 4+ week run without rain or even much above freezing at all has been very fun. Will have to check the stats on the temps though.

That second pic is awesome. Great to see widespread deep winter vibes.

It's for safety for sure, but also for the guest experience given other capacity restrictions. Lodges have a sharply reduced capacity per square footage and the time limits set at 30 minutes inside... but the big reason for the limitations are the lift lines. Uphill capacity has been severely restricted and to be honest, it's keep the conditions much better and given me a lot more access to untracked powder. I'm getting less runs for sure, but they are quality runs. From my observations, the FourRunner Quad averages around 2 people per chair as singles will often be ok with doubling up. Sometimes you get a group of 3 or 4 to even it out. These are state guidelines too, not ski area ones. It's the same at all resorts, with no more than 2 singles on a Quad and 1 single on a triple, double or enclosed Gondola. The Gondola at Stowe actually averages less than 2 passengers per 8-person cabin. The uphill capacity of the Gondola is somewhere between the MRG single and a double chair this season. I still remember when it hit me that uphill capacity was at like 20% of a normal season. In front of me it often takes like 6 cabins to get 8 people up the mountain, because if you are a single you ride alone and there are a lot of singles.... when a normal season those same 6 cabins could carry 48 people in line and we would regularly do it, the lifties stuffing singles into every empty seat. So by my estimates, the FourRunner has been running 50% normal uphill capacity and the Gondola at around 20%. That is just crazy, but the benefit is the run down is just a lot of powder. The groomers just don't get skied off like they used to, you can find corduroy late in the morning and packed powder all day long. A recently powder morning this week had me counting the chair capacity in the photos. Despite a full coral, the seats are only 56% filled in this photo. A group of 4 really skews the numbers, those are very rare these days. But it keeps the powder around a lot longer.

Unfortunately you just have to pound the refresh button on the reservation page. They won't be releasing more spots, but people do cancel. I know folks who have been able to get one during the holiday weekends so far by checking religiously. Unfortunately the most likely time to find an opening is usually the morning of, almost like going to a sold out sporting event but waiting outside the gates to scalp a ticket. It's been a weird winter and as someone who has access to and reads as many guest surveys as possible (the written comments are telling), I know that whenever you hit capacity/sell out (Christmas holiday period, MLK, powder Saturday's this last month and now President's weekend) there are people angry that the capacity limit isn't lower... and there are people very unhappy that they can't ski. It's one or the other depending on the person's experience. You are right, that unfortunately President's Weekend can often be the #1 weekend of the season for visitation... depending on how MLK weekend or the Christmas period went. This year the snow is definitely the best it's been all winter long and heading into one of the big three weekends. Good luck dude, I wish I could help ya out more.

That's what I've always preached. People don't understand what a couple inches of sparkling powder on top of the snowpack every day or every other day does, aside from the wintry vibe of flakes falling. It just makes the whole pack look "fresh" like the whole thing might've just fallen today, even if it's only a couple cosmetic inches on top. The trick is keeping the snow looking like it all just fell recently, all winter long.

2.3” up here at 750ft. Around 4” at 3000ft.

2.3” at home for this little event. 3.5-4” at the Mtn.

3-4” at the ski area. Awesome snowy day.

Ski area approaching 3". About to head out for an afternoon of some pow turns.

Snowing pretty good out there. I was surprised with this one and the vis is staying pretty low at MVL. Might be 2" soon? Down to 0.50sm moderate snow and has been hanging around 1 mile vis past several hours.

1/2sm moderate snow at the ASOS now. Winter as it should be with cold baking soda falling. KMVL 091554Z AUTO 17003KT 1/2SM SN FZFG VV016 M10/M12