powderfreak

Well I think you are discussing two different things. It's not an argument one way or another, it's just a statement. I don't think anybody really needs a study to tell that excessive hygiene, masks, bathing in hand sanitizer, and limiting large indoor gatherings with other people leads to less illness transfer. I mean if you want to wait for a study to tell you that staying in your own little circle and avoiding touching things that other people have touched (and if you do immediately hand sanitize after), not touching your mouth or nose (due to the mask) with germy fingers and spray sanitizer everywhere all day long helps you avoid getting sick... I don't think that's earth shattering news to anyone. Less touch points, less exposure. You are immediately assuming though that it is the desired state we want to live in. Getting sick is good for the body and building immunity. It's just you hear from so many people that they never had a stomach bug, never had even a slight head cold, etc this entire winter. It's really rare up here at a ski area to not have multiple sicknesses ripping through departments. Ski areas are germ factories with people sneezing and wiping their noses with their hands (can't do that with a mask) and then touching everything. It's definitely something people have been talking about up here. But I don't think anyone has connected that statement to "that's how normal should be".

Yeah you wouldn’t like it here would be my guess. No one is messing around when the state gov’t has swung audits through. We had so many complaints the first half of the season about non-compliance with mask wearing (folks will call the state and complain that you Phin aren’t covering your nose at all times, ha) that it had to be cracked down on hard. I think since Presidents Week is when there started being more push back the other direction but the first half of winter was entirely people thankful for the heavy hand of mask reminders and feeling safe was a big deal. Many times the skiing public will just take it into their own hand and you’ll have 20 people telling some dude to put his mask on correctly. For the ski areas it was necessary just to operate to be heavy handed. They didn’t want to have a large COVID outbreak traced to them and they didn’t want to be forced to cease operations... so from a business continuity standpoint it made sense to lean hard towards one side. I think it’s gone about as well as could be expected under the given circumstances. From what I’ve heard all the VT areas are very similar in their practices. I can also clearly say that mask wearing and hygiene does work really well. This was by far the healthiest season for many departments... not so much as a case of the sniffles going around. I’ve never gone through a whole winter without getting a solid week long sickness... and those stories are everywhere. Folks now realizing they didn’t even have a single cold this winter. Hygiene and masks isn’t just theater, it does seem to work. Never had whole departments leveled with a stomach bug or fevers, head colds, etc like past winters. Sterilized world.

We did 11F to 53F yesterday... should do a similar range again today.

20F here and 33F at the picnic tables. It’s coming.

Wood/lumber seemed like a commodity that would always be cheap. Trees are everywhere and you can grow more of them. Insert a health crisis and here we are, ha. Agree with you, it won’t hit the previous low price point.

I read almost all our guest surveys and this year there’s a COVID question added for comments. It seems like the comments mirror American division on the topic. One group loves the COVID safety procedures or thinks more should be done. The other group thinks it’s crap and way overboard. In general I’d assume the larger ski companies will fall on the more intense side of the COVID stuff. And it may not be state by state per se. I bet Boyne Resorts (owners of Sugarloaf and Sunday River among others) implemented very similar COVID policies at all their resorts regardless of state. As did Vail Resorts, Alterra and POWDR. Now whether the leadership actually cascades that down to the staff at the same “tone” at each resort is a different thing.

I like sleeping in a bit on days off now and not having to race up there for a 7:30 or 8am first chair if it’s snowing, ha. So many good benefits of this time of year.

It’s crazy, it sounds like the lumber supply is really struggling. Tons of DIY projects all last summer (Lowe’s and HD had extremely strong summers as they were lucky to be deemed essential) and a boom in housing construction and upgrades/additions to existing housing over the last 6 months. Lumber mills shut down for COVID cases and drastically reduced supply... it also sounds like not a ton could get through from Canada for a time. Seems like lumber will be expensive until the supply and demand can find an equilibrium?

Awesome day. This morning was the spring equinox at like 5am. Nice timing as the day dawned bright and temps have warmed up nicely. From this morning... can tell the sun angle is rising as the alpenglow isn't as pink anymore, more of a golden color:

Love that mentality... classic Vermont. Enjoy each season for what it's worth. This is going to be an epic stretch of sun and high diurnal changes. Chilly nights and mild days.

Ugh, my brother-in-law's father was doing better and then we just found out he's taken a turn for the worse and it's looking very bleak. Been on a ventilator now for a couple weeks and may not make it much longer. My BIL's brother was living at home and they think he had it first... he experienced no symptoms at all but was the first to test positive. His mother then only had a cough for a few days and also tested positive. His 58-year-old father got it and it sounds like he may not survive it. Everyone bracing for the worst. The brother's guilt is extremely high right now, thinking he may be responsible for killing his father if he doesn't recover. That's a big burden to carry for the rest of your life, despite the fact that it's not truly your fault. It's happened to thousands of people, spreading it to someone they love. What a strange virus. Three get it. One has no symptoms, one has a cough, and another is on his deathbed.

We very concerned. Once the snow melts we will all run out of water. Be forced to squeeze it out of the muddy ruts on the dirt roads as the ground thaws.

I wish we could've gotten your true impression of winter without any records to compare to. Just a blind test study. Like if you didn't have any Randolph data (none of us did) and it was just a pure winter observation.... it would've been interesting.

I think that hits the nail on the head, and even not skiers/boarders... if you just ask random people who know nothing about climo they think this was a good winter because there was a decent snowpack for so long and it didn't rain often, ha.

Yeah March is going to kill it. It was on pace for above normal here even into like late February I think. BTV was pacing on normal or above normal until March 1st. Still out of the last decade it's better than 2011-12 and 15-16 for sure.... and had one of the longest durations without a thaw/rain for skiing than I can remember, with decent snowfall where people live around here.

Snow depth or snow total? The Mansfield stake doesn't have snow total information, just depth data. The previous snow total data is very inaccurate due to collection methods. As I think J.Spin and I have said plenty of times though the higher summits have taken the brunt of it... down where people live the totals aren't that bad or that far off. This has been the best skiing on record for those snow depths at the stake. Everyone commenting this season how 48" was skiing like 80". The low elevation snowpack is what does that.... it was pretty solid down low. I figure I'll end up around 100" on the season off an average of 120"... probably within 1 S.D. (so normal).

11F with a wind chill of -10F as I walked into the office at 5am. Going to pass on this weather right now. 5F with 40-50mph winds up at the picnic tables, ha. Those tables frozen solid into the snowpack like they are stuck in a concrete foundation.

I agree. May to September for the warm season. The rest lean towards cold season characteristics.

Holy crap, lol. I love the wildlife you see in your yard. I thought 3 deer outside this morning here was interesting... you’ve got a whole herd, ha.

Only an inch up here above 2500ft. Just not enough QPF.

Last year was by far the largest whiplash on record... snowed here May 9th and then May 11th to the valley floors, then a week later a bunch of NNE sites set their hottest May temp on record (some even set their hottest temp period). Snow to 90-95F in like a week. And it stayed like an absolute torch up in NNE in June too.

That one storm was heavy heavy jealousy. I might punt a winter to get a 30”+ in 12 hours.

“Any shifts north and we would end up with even more precipitation” is another way to look at it... but from what you share of his posts the fear is *always* less.

The flip side would be if we removed the Grinch storm, this is probably close to an all-time winter for consistently deep snowpack. However I always struggle with the logic of “wiping away” events or removing them to then compare a new set of parameters... because they did happen and every single season (be it summer, fall, spring, winter) or every month can look very different when we start cherry picking events to add or delete, ha. Sort of like, if we get rid of a few of the 90 degree days, summer wasn’t very hot.

Yes, good way to put it. Some years we have more snowstorms and worse retention or more rainstorms so it’s a trade off.