powderfreak

What a day on the hill. Might’ve been the most I’ve skied all season. Definitely the most roving cast of friends I’ve skied with. Lowest lift lines of the season too. This is why spring skiing is great.

NNE climo sensei J.Spin told them not to lose faith. Spring never moves in for good in March.

I want to clarify I don’t like high dews, but warm/hot and dry is growing on me each year. I love this weather right now. But hiking in dews during the summer and the bugs that come with muggy weather, pass. I want summer days hot and cool refreshing nights.

Tolland Hills upslope event. Like the difference between J.Spin and BTV. Those are fun events, cool stuff.

"We aim to improve 500mb scores to rival that of the fabled UKMET." NOAA says it will lead to better predictions of hurricanes and other extreme events, ocean waves and weather systems high in the atmosphere.

With those super low dew points, as expected the bottom dropped out as soon as the sun went down. It's already 30 degrees colder than this afternoon... atmosphere becomes a vacuum once the sun goes behind the Spine. It's almost like a cold front moved through, doors and windows slammed shut before the heat kicked on. Will be below freezing in not too long.

He’s still on the dry persistence forecast going on like three summers... the next 5 months will be “don’t be surprised if XYZ finds a way not to rain.” Suppressed, South Coast, far NW, only the Cape, etc everything leaning towards no rain for heart of SNE.

All part of climo in the North Country. Late season snows count, lol. That’s often how these early mild stretches go... then end with some big snowstorm(s) as the rubber band snaps back and reminds you that it can snow into early May. Euro/GFS/GGEM all have something in that time frame early next week.

Doesn’t get any drier than that for a warm air mass... textbook definition of Chamber of Commerce weather.

BTV with 66/6 for 9%. FSO (Highgate, VT) with 66/0 for 7%. VSF with 62/3 for 9%. Today was some legit desert air mass. Temps in the 60s with dews in the single digits to even below zero is absolutely wild.

Forget about COVID though... Some fantastic spring skiing these days. Was on Spruce today enjoying some south facing sunshine as this part of the mountain closes Easter Sunday. This is definitely one of my favorite times of year.

That describes the current situation pretty well. The base area mazes, base lodges and indoor spaces are the target. No one is telling anyone what to do once the chair leaves the terminal and you are up/out on the hill. And by far the vast majority “get it” right now... go skiing, pull into the maze where it’s face covered time, then I go back up for another one. Lots of grilling and tailgating in the parking lots... people still out there with grills when I just left the Mtn at 5:30pm. Its not like it was back in Dec/Jan when the ski areas just wanted to stay open and avoid some super-spreader event being traced to their practices (or lack thereof). Many resort employees (older) and all ski patrol and stuff like that are vaccinated too... which has definitely cooled the vibe off too. Its still spring skiing and it’s still a fun laid back vibe. The people dressed in gorilla, Bigfoot, Borat and banana suits seem to be doing just fine, ha.

Definitely the SOP at most large resorts. First half of the season all ski areas just got hounded for not being strict enough on mask compliance... social media was a bloodbath of photos of people without masks over their noses, videos of guests hounding other guests, the customer surveys were wildly biased towards folks not feeling safe enough. It still is probably 66% to 33% in favor of or thankful for a strong hand of compliance... but that’s down from probably a 90-10 breakdown in January. Spring weather and vaccines are starting to turn the tide a bit more evenly. But still people by and large seem to understand what’s going on and are very polite. There are always a few that are looking for a confrontation.

This. Trying to keep everyone happy all the time when something like COVID is so political or divided and people stand so firmly on one side or another. As an employee, you tell that person drinking the Gatorade in a non-restaurant setting to pull up his mask and the person is annoyed.... don't do it and walk on by and another group of guests will get on you for not telling the other guy to pull up his mask. The lift lines can have people going at each other, going at the staff, etc about whether a nose was exposed. Guest 1 tells other guest 2 to pull up his mask, guest 2 responds that guest 1 needs to go home and watch more MSNBC... then guest 1 tells him to stop drinking the Fox News coolaid, Rush Limbaugh is dead, deal with it. It goes on and on. Ahhh... life in America. Cant wait for next season.

66/13 A 47 degree rise from the morning low of 19F so far. Given the dew points so low again, we may very well hit teens overnight again. It's going to absolutely plummet as soon as the sun goes down.

65/13 13% RH. It is very dry out there. If it started raining it would be like 39F, lol.

Yeah it is flowing from all accounts I hear. 19F this morning here and going back into the 60s again. Very hard freeze each night and then very warm day times. It's crazy that you can get a high in the 60s under sunshine but then spend 12+ hours below freezing during the 24 hour period. The overnight lows will keep the departures from getting all that high.

FB Memories reminded me of today back in 2012 when the great melt was occurring.... I've never seen rivers running through the trails like that before. Highs in the 70s and overnights in the 50s... I think we even hit 80F in the valleys for a couple days. The overnight lows were the killer though. I remember showing up at 5am to Ops and it was 57F outside at that time.

34 degree drop so far at MVL in the past 4 hours. 28/21 currently. Same 28F at the local PWS. Frozen again with muddy parking lots and wet snow now very crunchy...happens quickly with this dry air.

Awesome views today. Looking towards Alex, Diane and Phin's neck of the woods.

Been solidly below normal this month at -2.0. This will start chipping into it but with the high diurnal ranges it's not that warm all things considered. Yesterday was a +12F on the max temp and a -9F on the minimum that averaged just a touch above normal. That's the way to run a spring... warm above normal daytimes and cold, below normal nights. Lost 17 degrees in one hour, and 25 degrees in under 2 hours this evening. Temp just plummets when the sun goes down. 60F to 35F in a flash.

42 degree diurnal swing yesterday and at least 43 today. 53/11 and today’s 62/19 (might have hit higher between hours). It does feel insane to have the heat on at night and temps in the teens leaving the house in the morning, then opening windows in the afternoon because the sun is baking the living room. The old heat in the car in the AM, then A/C in the PM air mass.

Yeah I wasn't drawing any connections to being healthier to what we should do in the future. Just an observation for sure but one can see why it's true. We just all became insane clean freaks and cut down on a lot of the things that spread illnesses. Lockdowns are a thing of the past for sure. But it will be interesting to see if the cleanliness/hygiene stuff continues.

In general the snowpack now is granular and there's obviously no fluff factor. It is well compacted several times over and the man-made snow has a ratio of like 3:1 sleet before it gets compacted by the tractors (groomers) and skier traffic. That stuff takes an insane amount of energy to melt. I mean even in a year like 2012 when it was like nights of 50F and days of 75F for like 4-5 days, the snowmaking routes largely held up. That glaciated snow just does not melt fast... there's a reason why I'm wandering around up there finding piles of man-made snow in like June even after weeks of above freezing temperatures 24/7. The natural snow, certainly that's going to go faster. But the snowmaking routes will hold for quite some time. The other thing to consider right now is these warm sunny afternoons have very dry air. As long as the air is so dry, the snowpack actually gets protected a bit via evaporational cooling on the snow surface. A thin skin of colder temperature (evap cooling lower temp) develops on the interface of the snow and air. The dry air really is a savior for snow preservation. Everything froze solid last night too, and the night time freezes are big as well. Now if dew points spike to 50F in heavy rain the equation does change a bit but the fact remains that the man-made snow right now is basically a solid block of ice that's like 2-8 feet thick depending on the trail/area. I can see the grooming team's snow depth sensors which gives a map of the mountain and the snow depths under every pass the snowcats make on the hill. It'll be interesting to see the progression of that over the next week. By and large though, take the "over" on expected life span of man-made snow... it takes a lot of energy to melt that. Sort of like if your yard was filled with 4-5 feet of sleet. It would be there forever.

Yeah I'm 100% in agreement. I wasn't trying to make an argument that it's how it should be... just a pure observation that I think many people have noticed. I mean I can't remember the last time I heard someone say they were sick with a stomach bug or threw up or whatever. Definitely pre-COVID. I honestly can't remember another winter when I didn't get sick at least once with something and that's a pretty common realization. I completely agree too with the immunity stuff. I mean if I went 5+ years without getting as much as a head cold, I'd be worried a headache might kill me. The human race would be crushed in like a few generations if we took this many steps to round-the-clock disinfect everything possible, wear masks, never gathered with multiple other families and freely moved around. I do think the lasting effect will be people will stay home more when they are sick with even the smallest thing. Many employers were like hey you can come in to work if you aren't puking your guts out. Sure you had a slight fever and feel crappy? Take a Tylenol and see how it goes. I think the lasting effect will be more people realizing they are sick and will stay home... and society will be more ok with it. There definitely was a lot of pressure to go out into the world and carry on normal life even if you were sick. And on the skiing stuff, for sure about the masks. I think we'd get along, ha. Mask down when skiing and out wandering around on the mountain, mask up in full approaching base area and lifts/parking lots/etc. That was how most of us approached it... not wanting to get shut down, so you do what you need to do to enjoy the winter.