powderfreak

The general temperature pattern should be the same though, no? Warmest day of week won’t change and the departures would be the same if you always ran X-degree variance from another station. Crazy warm start to January, borderline blow torch in the means. Crazy a radiator site like TAN only has gone below 32F on what 3 of the first 8 days of January?!

Final day of Inversion Week at Stowe.

Crazy, feels like one of the coldest days in a while, lol. Barely hit 20F up here in the valley so far. Finally getting some ice going. Coldest day of the week in fact.

Gene, the crystals are actually pretty decently sized even above the cloud and at the top of the cloud. It literally is like a science project floating through a snow producing cloud, ha. There’s ice crystals of varying sizes on the top and above the cloud... the sparkling stuff with very little moisture. I’d imagine then once in the cloud the crystals are gaining weight and moisture because once on the lower end of the cloud the crystals are actually falling...vs just being suspended and floating around on the top of the cloud. Here’s a friend’s shot entering the cloud today. You can see the sparkling ice crystals suspended.

That's awesome, the rime has been ridiculous under the cloud layer here too... seems like up to a couple inches of pure rime on the trees. That view of MWN is sick though... you can see the narrow moisture zone and you can also see the lack of rime up top on MWN. A mid-slope rime where trees look darker/non-white higher up. How high is Bretton Woods at the top? Wasn't poking out?

They are good in the morning and skied off in the afternoon. Pretty classic evolution right now. There's still snow though for the groomers to put down each night, this morning had some great runs... legit packed powder IMO. Afternoon scratchy. Need more snow for sure.

There’s no real ice on the River behind my place either, it’s been absurdly warm. Normally it seems like 1-2 feet thick with just a small narrow channel of moving water. It still looks like November.

It's real shallow.

And this is what's happening above the snow this morning. Just chillin' at the picnic tables in the sunshine.

Been sunny all week up high lol. MWN with 100+ mile visibility. Skiing this morning was wild, sunny up top and beautiful, freezing fog in the mid-slope and then snowing in the base area.

I don't know. Aside from snowmaking which I'm sure few care about, I feel like it would be much worse if we were below zero the entire time. But to run no measurable precipitation for 10 days in spots... that's a snoozer. Didn't even look that close either.

Is this the summary of "10 Days in January", ha. What a snoozer.

Snowing in town this morning and up to about 1,500ft.... Grooming team on radio telling me they have clear skies above about 2,500-3,000ft. "It's been snowing about halfway up the hill at times tonight and then you drive out of it." It's crazy how good the snow growth was this morning driving in for coming out of a cloud that's only like 1,000ft thick. Only a dusting but those were legit big flakes, the type when you hit your high beams it looks like you are driving a space shuttle. This inversion has been bonkers this week.

Sweet day out there. Packed powder. chalky bumps with bluebird overhead and a Notch filled with clouds from the trapped low level moisture.

If it's going to be low-tide, at least it's still a post-card most of the time. The daily views remind us of what a world we live in.

Rare Kelvin-helmholtz clouds, series of waves traversing the ridge line. Checking all the boxes these past few days with awesome clouds.

Way behind...

Pretty awesome wave-breaks going on this morning. Caught this one while riding the Gondola. Just big waves rolling in and curling into the mountain.

Another solid inversion morning. Absolutely bonkers gradient right now on the summit at Stowe... 3,600ft... 15F top of FourRunner Quad 4,000ft... 25F at MMNV1 The MMNV1 data is jumping all over the place, 5 degree swings in the 5min data. A couple hours ago went from mid-teens to mid-20s... but still bouncing right at the inversion level. It's either mid-20s above it or mid-teens below it. View from Whiteface in the Adirondacks this morning:

Time lapse I took this afternoon. https://www.instagram.com/p/CJt1W0pB3An/

The 5 days to start January have been almost hot relative to normal. It just goes to show how low normal is this time of year than it can be so far above average and still snow... still keep snow on the ground. BTV is a quick +10.5 over the past 5 days to start January, and Mansfield summit at +12.5. Low diurnal changes likely the culprit. Mansfield normal temps the past few days are 18/3... the actual 29/17. Pretty impressive actually! With a strong subsistence inversion those summit departures won't get much help through the first 7-10 days of January.

It has really been a blow torch over the past two months. Terrible for snowmaking weather but also shows just how cold the NNE climo is that we can be *this warm relative to normal* and still keep some form of snow cover. It has been pretty high end warmth in the mountains though. Higher elevations seem to be the worst but it's been extremely warm in the means everywhere. +7.3 for a monthly departure at Mansfield for December and +5.3 at MVL. I do think the valley has been cooler relative to normal compared to the high slopes due to radiational cooling kicking in at times. This recent pattern though has been pretty rough relative to normal. Getting a snow event out of it has definitely hidden the warmth. It's masked the just absolute torch this winter has been so far. On a 2011-2012 level at this point up here as far as temperature departures go... even going back to early November 2020. Here's the 60 day departure.

Yeah that's the disclaimer statement to the public.

It's like he's realizing something that many mets realized a decade ago. It doesn't matter to the masses unless it's realized at the SFC level. Still is very useful information for the science, but the perception and verification is what happens on the ground.

Here's another one from a friend (not my shot but similar view). Mountains make weather really so much more interesting when you can actually see the atmospheric profile in the vertical.