powderfreak

A little Lurk Skiing this morning for a buddy... the original ski method was one long pole until humans decided it made more sense to hold one in each hand. Look at the Notch in the background... just completely torched of snow joining 2012 and 2016 for this time of year. It's weird though, it feels really rare but then you think it's 3 out of last 10 winters, so maybe not quite as rare at 30% of the last decade looking like this on this date.

Paging @Ginx snewx, paging Ginxy. For as long as I've been on these forums he's touted September as the best beach month. It is very similar, just like skiing... usually (not this year, ha) the deepest snowpack of the season is achieved when people have moved on to other warm weather activities. Humans get bored easily and want to rush into the next season before it's actually here. Just like the posts on here of a certain someone looking for HHH weather in like late April and winter storms in October.

Spruce trees just igniting from spontaneous combustion.

The melt slowed down dramatically... it's starting to ramp up again though as the next few days may be pushing 65+ even at 1,500ft base area elevations. Basically all it has to do to not melt is be +20 over climo, lol. As soon as the pattern went back to highs in the 40s there for a while the melt slowed to pretty much an non-noticeable rate. I think the next 4 days are going to do another number on it. We are about to get really warm again. Here's Thursday and Friday afternoon's relative to normal 2-meter temps... back to back 20+ departures.

No sunset here but a great afternoon at the snow beach. Mild, full sun, soft snow and a fun posse. It was a good day.

Nothing like “raw” damage. Wife and I can sign up on Monday. Time to send it and get poked.

Yeah for sure, should be enough to get some standard deviations on snowfall too. There’s no doubt that area of New England was about the absolute shaft relative to normal. Did you gets get into that December band?

71/1 at EWR now. That’s wild. 6% RH.

It may never rain again.

Ahh ok so not *that* long ago. But long enough. Sort of like setting temp records at the MVL ASOS, ha.

Yikes. What’s the POR?

Phin's area must've had a sharp gradient... don't see any snow on the cam there but his neighbor up the hill reported 2.3" with 3.0" fresh depth this morning. This time of year you can get those sharper rain/snow lines over even 200-300 feet.

“I’d wear a mask to respect others”... I respect that view even if I’m not sure I’d pack myself into a stadium. Once poked, I’d go.

I guess NW wind brings more marine influence there locally east of Hingham looking on a map, makes sense coming off the bay. But isn’t Weymouth west of there?

Wow, I only looked at BOS ASOS and saw upper 50s on the water (only like 5F cooler than BDL)... assumed that was representative.

Are you 44F with mist? Ha.

Yeah that looks legit. Nice looking band just pushed into Phin’s neighborhood too.

Meanwhile sunny spring corn over here in NVT, haha.

It’s a weird mix of like historical precedence and just lost of interest. Too far north to get day traffic, but then people rightly say Jay and Sugarbush go longer. I think it’s falling now firmly in the “this is just what we do” regardless of ownership group. Third Sunday in April has been the day for decades. Business levels play into it but it’s also weird that we get almost zero push back from the local community. They look forward to closing or at least have also accepted that third Sunday in April. They all just will be skinning the very next day. Most of the people I know couldn’t wait to close Big Spruce so they can now skin it with friends and dogs. Main Street is a bump run right now all from skinning traffic. I truly believe the local community enjoys the closure with snow still left because this is such a strongly uphill oriented town and area. They know they can go to Sugarbush or Killington for a while, but it’s an odd mix of people who cannot wait for the lifts to stop running here. To answer your question, the main reason I get is just “That’s what we’ve always done.”

Yeah looks like Phin and Alex seeing snow too. I’d think it’s a good flow for that northern slope of the Presis. Crazy, I’m going to walk the dog in a hoody when I get home probably, ha.

Sunny over here but wow has it been windy all day at the ski area. Impressive gusts of 40+ rolling through at times at 1500ft. Even MVL has been consistently around 30mph for gusts and sustained 15-20.

That's mammatus. I've seen them outside of thunderstorms before too. Ninja'd by Dendy.

Variability in the 10-day progs. Still below average water, but there would be some dampness.

Late this afternoon I took my final Gondola ride of the season... this first weekend of April is the historical closing weekend for Spruce and Gondola, with the Quad running for two more weeks. We always close in the same pattern (first Sunday in April for the others, third Sunday in April for the Quad) regardless of how much snow is on the ground. 2011-2012 will remain the only winter I do not remember making closing day as we ended it on April 1st. But this also is a good reminder that even though it looked bleak 7-10 days ago, it's also really, really hard to truly finish off the Mansfield to the point of closure prematurely. A photo from the last run on the Gondi, and this is how it's supposed to end on a bluebird spring day with soft snow on all 2,100 vertical feet. Also the last day of the Gondola means access to the High Road Snow Plot (which is really just a pole attached to a board set out in a random clearing at 3,000ft) gets restricted, so I pulled the snow board out of there. Doesn't look like any snow is on the horizon and we can use the Lookout Plot to assess upper mountain snowfall if it does. It's funny how this simple device is so well regarded among the Mansfield faithful. People (like me) crave data and these sites give consistency to the snow measurements... instead of just eyeballing it while out and about. The looks on two snowboarders' faces was funny when I just randomly blasted out of the woods (in an area skiers usually do not go, which is why its a great spot to measure) with this board and pole over my shoulder like I'm just casually skiing around.

Today was worlds better than yesterday... that extra 10 degrees made a big difference in fun factor due to the snow surface. Yesterday never softened and while there were pockets of fresh snow, the steepness and wind blown nature of the snow led to a lot of just glare ice. It was essentially a spring day that doesn't soften, and leads one to feeling unsatisfied, ha. The bright sunshine but sub-freezing temps just never got the snow into that "playful" zone. Today however, fantastic. Everything I skied except the upper third of Nosedive softened nicely. The Nosedive "Turns" were the only thing that was really firm and slick all day in that cold pocket. Can see the difference easily on the temperature graph... yesterday stayed sub-freezing and today ticked up past that critical 32F point.