powderfreak

Might put some lipstick on the pig late tonight and tomorrow with an upslope pulse, ha.

I actually went out under my own free will. When I walked out of the office in my ski gear people just started laughing and shaking their heads. Last day of season for Sensation Quad so I wanted to get a ride in.

Strong south wind blowing rain sideways through the base area over here. It’s inspiring outside. And I hear ya on the humidity. We radiate well in summer so as soon as the sun goes behind the hill it cools off real nice along the river. But if dews are high and it’s cloudy, that temp isn’t dropping. Those are the only evenings I turn my AC on. Even those 93F days in May was such a dry heat that temps would drop like 30 degrees in 2 hours and it was comfy again.

I’m sure facing south with the big windows isn’t ideal for keeping that place cool in the summer sun. First year you get one of the hottest summers and a lackluster winter... there’s always next year.

Pretty inspiring stuff out there, ha. Barely below freezing with sheet freezing drizzle coming in on 60mph winds. This lift went on wind hold right after me, absolutely wild up top getting blasted by the southerly low level jet. Freezing rain up here on strong winds. Just special weather conditions.

Checked my files, found that event that caused the 2012 April snow depth spike. What a textbook upslope storm late in the season... high QPF and long duration during cut-off season. That one fit with all the studies showing best upslope occurs with a stacked low tracking through northern ME and FVE area into adjacent Canada. Several panels of 0.1-0.25" QPF in northern Vermont was the signal for huge storm. Looks like ~1.70" storm total liquid realized down in Stowe Village over the multi-day event... easy to see how the mountain saw 2-3" QPF total. BTV in the Champlain Valley was only 0.25" or so outside of the upslope zone. From bare ground to a fresh 2+ feet in April 2012 after the big melt out. Hopefully we still have one coming, even if it's a month from now. The Picnic Tables.

Wow you're right, just saw they only are reporting 96" on the season. That's nuts. Hard to cover that Granite State rocky terrain with 96" over 4 months. Over 100" less than we saw at 3,000ft... yeah that would've hurt quite a bit.

I heard some more of their struggles this year making snow revolved around power issues they’ve had. Guess they had to rent a bunch of monster diesel generators or something like that. Reading online it seems like they’ve had several power outages this season too (most recently on 3/20) and are working with Eversource to figure out more reliable power? No idea if that’s a new thing or if it’s something they’ve struggled with for years.

Did it go down that far south? I remember it as more of a NVT upslope event from a cut-off bomb.

Yeah there was a monster upslope event with 2-3” QPF. Had like 26” of dense snowfall and I believe it was the day or two after Easter that year. We didn’t have enough snow to ski on for the Easter Sunrise service and then like two days later the snow was up near the top of the picnic tables that had been on bare ground prior.

This was a high end melt.... up there with 2012 because it's not done yet. Tomorrow's rainer is going to be another bloodbath. 2012 went from 80" to like 20"... that's still top dog melt, ha.

They are pretty darn accurate. Can give a very good picture of snow depths on trails... can even see where the snow guns deposited the snow. Yellow is very deep (5-10 feet), red is like a foot before grass. Shows you where the stockpiles are.

Ski area base depths are generally a made up number, pay no attention to those. We even know it’s a made up number but people want to see “average base depths.” WTF does that even mean? Could be 0” in a bare spot or 120” when man-made snow is piled up. 0-120” then. We sort of mocked those this year on the snow phone by saying like 9 to 99” sometimes. We’d find the deepest pocket of manmade on the grooming data (the snowcats map snow depth on the trails like a fishing boat measures water depth) and use that as the upper end and give a ridiculous range. In the end the grooming data will give an average snow depth for a given trail by averaging depths of all the passes... but snow depths vary so much. All winter long at any ski area there’s a wind swept area with bare ground and then another area with 15 feet under a snow gun. Thats why the Mansfield COOP stake is the barometer here. It has its own issues BUT it’s consistent and has a 65 year period of record to compare to.

Melt patterns are so tough this time of year when you have consistent snow cover on one aspect (like E-NE) almost 1500 vertical feet lower than say S-SW. But then there’s a micro-scale stuff... there’s one house near me on Mountain Road near the old Gables Inn that literally just doesn’t melt. Large pines and a hill side block any afternoon sun, but it covers like his whole property. That guy could probably claim an 8” depth right now at 750ft while he looks out at literally no snow in all directions at that elevation. But yeah it’s a little weenie-ish. Though with time the records have usefulness as a comparison to that specific site and not the general area.

Lol it’s amazing the obsession with drought.

It’s white at 1500ft, a light pasting on the trees. Pretty tight line around 1300-1400ft. Lifts all iced up from the changeover from moist to frozen. 2” of paste above 3,000ft.

High-end.. nice work. Power companies are pretty good with weather too in the mountains, shouldn't be more than a few hours at most (unless it's a localized "completely f'ed)." I feel like I saw your neighbor mention losing power a few times but probably before you moved in. This is a high-end weather event IMO relative to climo. The upper level energy was strong and the warm air advection with it was strong. It was primed to lead to pockets of wind damage as the leading edge of that H5 vort max swung through. At least it's been an interesting day meteorologically.

That’s awesome. The first moose and every one after that is always exciting. The NNE wildlife is awesome, I’ve been thinking the bears will show up soon with this weather. Animals are on the move this time of year. Its time for activity when the conditions seem like the warm season. They don’t know climo, they just go by cues... I’m sure that’s a memorable sight for the kids.

Let’s add today... 72 hours after the first photo. River will start eating away at the neighbor’s lawn soon. Still rising. The drought is real up here. Glad Dr. Dews was concerned about water in VT .

Middlebury Snow Bowl, lol. Yeah we had some good pulses of wind at Stowe but it’s hard to compare because winter usually brings some extreme synoptic gusts... so some t-storm pulse gusts to 50mph would stand out big in July but right now it’s like another windy day. If that makes sense. We’ve had some big wind events lately too out of the NW... I do think if today hit in mid-summer that wind would’ve been something but wasn’t all that impressive right now relative to the other recent stuff. The rain though, it just won’t quit. So much water leaving the mountains.

Yeah that happened first, lol. Then it got pitch black and t-storms came next. Felt summery in the sunny warm sector.

This one isn't missing. Torrential rain and thunder. Back on hold for lightning.

Yeah that first round didn't leave that much rain, maybe a quarter inch at the mtn. I think this squall line is going to dump some water.

Ha yeah I was on the Stowe twitter and Tim Kelly tweeting to Duck and Cover. Velocity scans seemed to weaken a bit. Still a pretty solid line. Suns out now and it feels humid all the sudden. Crazy weather.

We went on hold at 11:44am for thunder up here at the ski area. Nothing on the lightning maps but was called into dispatch by both guests and ski patrol. Not sure how those lightning sensors work that well.