powderfreak

And only a couple days removed from a huge snowstorm. It’s like no one is enjoying it, just focused on it disappearing, ha.

Crazy strong inversion this morning. I had 15F at my house, 20F at 1500ft at the office... but snowmaking was shut down due to temps. 20F in the parking lot and no snowmaking?! 30F at mid-Mtn and 31F summit. Every morning per tramway code we need to run all auxiliary power on the lifts, so the Gondolas back up diesel motors pump out some blue smoke when they start up... check out the visual representation of the low inversion just above the base area by the horizontal smoke layer.

I think it starts compressing on itself pretty fast at those amounts. Unless you cleared and added the total to it, I think it could’ve snowed up to another 10” but only added a couple inches to the depth. I think at 40” you probably only add an inch of depth if the snow rate is 3”/hr. That’s extremely hard to maintain. Even if snowfall tapered to 1-2”/hr there might have actually been no gain or even settlement. Just an amazing high-end event. The fact that there was 24-30” on the ground and gaining 6” per hour in snow depth is incredible to me. Usually at 24” stuff starts to compress... but to stomp on the gas at that point up into the 40s for snow depth is insane.

We approve.

Over a decade now I’ve been a paid photog... my stuff is everywhere. Brochures, trail map covers, now in Vail Resorts media. Magazines. Coffee table book on the greatest ski runs in the world. If you see a Stowe shot, there’s a chance I took it lol.

That was Xmas 2015. 65F straight to the summits on Xmas Eve. I remember it because the cherished Stone Hut on Mansfield burned to the ground in the strong, warm south winds (hard to believe a “Stone” hut can burn but yes it can).

Ice skating will be world class, ha.

Lol that’s brutal. Flooding rains. Phin does well on southerly flow for QPF, gonna fill that well up nicely.

If I had a day off yesterday I was going to go down just to photograph the aftermath. Plenty of shots on social though.

Yup. At least a couple times a winter. The good rainers are when the top of MWN is like 47F while the Gulf Coast is 18F, lol.

My brother-in-law and niece last night in BGM suburbs not far from the airport.

Yeah definitely could’ve. I still go back to all the photos in ski social media of people dropping tape measures into the snow and having 40-42” on the ground in that band in the Greens. Peru is also at like 2000ft I think? I mean could’ve had a 44” depth? I always think if someone cleared but had a 40” depth, they probably would report like 48”. That COOP has been around for a while so at least he’s likely consistent through his storm data.

I still remember the Fairbanks Museum guys in St Johnsbury VT showing a solid +2-2.5F increase in daily temp averages around 12/24-12/25 and that’s on a 140-year data set. There’s obviously noise of a degree up and down but graphed it was definitely the biggest deviation from the mean of the whole month.

-8F Big inversion... car says +6F up at 1500ft and had -8F on start up in the driveway.

18z ECMWF surface prog capturing the sharp drop well here and at your place. Seems like it’s colder than this guidance so far though in CNE.

Cold night coming up? -9F this morning and currently 4F at 8:30pm. Fresh snow cover always gets the bottom to drop out. Haven't seen much chatter about these clear/calm nights though. New England villages should be crisp in these conditions. Despite the lack of snow here, it’s still got that holiday vibe (photo from this evening but not mine).

What did you hit last night with the fluff after clearing out? -9F this morning up this way... even 3.5" of snow radiates like mad, ha. On that note, I finally melted down the snow and found 0.38" in it. Cold but dense, the classic north side of the fluffy deform band. Zero settling today. 4F currently.

Really? I honestly haven't heard that one yet. In all my social media days I don't know if I've come across that, ha. But it sounds like something a casual 3-5 day a year skier might say, ha. Anyway, here's the 3" at Mansfield 3,000ft High Road Plot that I reported. It snowed lightly for another couple hours after this but wasn't worth rechecking, figured it just topped off the 3" line.

Lol this from Ludlow, VT. That’s a healthy 24-hours.

Was at the Mtn Ops office here at Stowe around 5am this morning for work, grabbed a shot of a groomer passing by on his way to the gas pumps. I love the early morning energy of operations before a ski day.

I leave the large outer cylinder out in the snow (Stratus) and melt that. I have cracked the inner one before leaving it out and getting water to freeze in it... so that comes inside all winter.

That’s awesome! That should be a record from that COOP.

Yeah I remember now, I thought you meant a model prog... but yeah when the track for rain can be 2000 miles wide and the track for siggy snow is like a 200 miles wide, it’s definitely easier to get the former over the latter.

What map is that? Sounds interesting lol. Or man you mean that one that shows the narrow tracks needed for a big snowstorm while the zone for a Rainer is like 2,000 miles wide?

Pretty easy to find the band.