powderfreak

Getting snow on the ground is what matters. Don’t care what type it is. 3” is what we need to cover the grass and look out at white. It’s New England, set expectations at white, ha. I really miss the constant periods of snow... where you look outside and it’s always snowing, even flurries. The like 3-4 days of flakes flying and a white ground. That’s all we need for Norman Rockwell.

This was impressive. Just eviscerating up to 2”+ liquid equiv snowpack in spots. The duration of warmth and dews is top tier everywhere.

There's some COOP data for Jay Peak for a period in the 90s and 2000s, but it was stopped at some point. I haven't seen it graphed. But there are some fun Decembers in there. Love some of these observations during the good times. 38" in 24 hours with 67" on the ground for December 15, 2003. These are from 2,200ft I think, around the base area. Jay does get a lot of inches of snowfall, snow depth is another thing but inch for inch out of the sky, I think they take the top slot in New England on average.

And this summer too. Been a lot of heat records in NNE between the obscene summer heat and then this start to winter.

Nope not at all. They are completely removed from snowmaking. We have a live cam on one and then we also have a ground based board. Sugarbush has live cams on their snow board too. It's very easy to keep totally separate. Social media has kept the ski areas pretty damn honest in the past decade and most places now have some sort of public facing way to see accumulations. I always try to post the High Road snow totals and take photos of most of the snowfalls for social media. These places average 250-300" a year, that's how you get 6-10 foot natural snowpacks common place. My highest personally measuring almost every inch was 375" in 2017-18. The best part was the last storm in April was a surprise 13" of dense snow at the High Road snow plot to bring it to an even 375".

It does the ol' back in where it starts colder and then advects warmer air in aloft from the east.

lol, hard to believe.

A very 2011-12 type winter so far. Temps are almost identical to December 2011 in the mountains (this year might be a tad warmer). Snow depth on the cam is hard to read due to a foggy lens but seems to be around 5” down from 13” yesterday. So now under 2011 too.

That one storm will be a difference maker most of this season lol. Okemo with 51” so far this season... and 44 of them came in a 24 hour period, ha.

Yeah agreed but that’s a pretty bleak look right now. Head up into the mountains and it’s yikes. I feel like valley snow is well ahead of mountain totals relative to normal right now. Mansfield at 55” at 3,000ft and Jay Peak only 67”. Sugarbush at 39” up top. Smuggs at 44”. Those might be only be 50-60% of normal heading into the New Year with zero natural snowpack. It’s sneakily been one of the worst December snowfall totals I’ve seen but will check some numbers in coming days as we approach January 1st. Mansfield is running +5.5 for temps in December before this torch. It’ll go down as a 2011 type December (this will likely be warmer this year actually).

It's really hard to go 16 days of model fantasy in mid-winter and actually have a part of NNE where there is literally not even a tenth of snow printed over a two week period. And 1-6" max in most of the mountains during a 16-day period too.

Well if the Euro is right we do it again in a week. Going to be real impressive if we go a week or two in NNE mtns in heart of winter with bare ground. I don’t even see much snow shower chances. Then a warm heavy rainer again.

Wow, Tannersville, NY (near Hunter Mountain) came in with 5.70" on CoCoRAHS so far. They get incredible upslope though into the 4,000ft Catskill summits on south/east flow.

Yup, same over this way. Still some natural cover but it's patchy on the hill with the waterbars showing across trails now. Snowmaking takes a lot more energy than this to melt though.

Better to have loved and lost, than not loved at all right? Flood warnings flying across central New England.

Same to you Ginxy! Merry Christmas all!

In Mountain Operations Center alone on Christmas morning (first one in at 5:15am) and the roof sounds like it’s about to lift off. The whole building is creaking in the wind as rain slams the windows sideways. 52F at 1500ft and 47F at the summit (tied record high so far). Winds gusting up to 50mph in the base and 80mph on the upper mountain. Torrential rain. “Merry Christmas, don’t go outside” is the report from up here.

Same depth as the top of Mount Mansfield probably, ha!

It was really inverted here for a while, the upper mountain was ripping south winds. Even at 7am recorded wind gusts of 58mph and 53mph were seen by the Quad top and Gondola top stations. Down below 2,500ft it was pretty much calm as the wind stayed up high. This afternoon though it started breaking the inversion with a few gusts developing between periods of calm at 4pm down low at 1500ft. All day has basically been 30G50+ at the MMNV1 station. Well modeled though as it increases to near 70kts+ tomorrow morning.

It takes a lot of energy to melt a good frozen mass. I think some are under-estimating the staying power of 1-2” of water equiv. This is a legit torch storm, but many areas have some respectable frozen water for their climo areas in December.

The crazy thing is how little river ice there is, even in NNE. It's been warm. There's some ice but nothing like most years even for Christmas. Rivers in the mountains by this time can have some pretty thick ice with just a narrow channel of moving water visible. No real threat of ice jams with this one it seems.

And the rain has started. Happy Holiday's to the weather crew here.

Yeah you guys actually get surrounded by water and have it come inside. Living along a flashy waterway can be interesting.

8-10” for MWN? Models love to jack up the low level moisture over the peaks.

Horse drawn sled... so Norman Rockwell and also so Vermont.