powderfreak

Our totals are pretty bad but we’ve had a decent number of days of snow cover. Had a 10-inch warning criteria upslope storm and plenty of days of snowfall. Really was just this last event where it really stands out. When we snow, no one else does...and when everyone else snows, we don’t lol. The snow cover for this time of year though is the real story though.

That’s awesome, what a pack.

About an inch of new snow from last evening.

It's a fun climate when you get a lot of mood snows. Can't under-estimate the vibe of steady light snowfall, snow covered roads, and whitened trees.

Wow, what a view.

Eyeballing 0.75-1.0" this evening at home. Up at the hill it was also snowing pretty decently on the way home. Such a contrast in energy from the hustle & bustle of the midday weekend environment, to this peaceful & quiet scene this evening.

Nice find. I feel like October 2011 crushed that minimum zone from western SNE into central NNE up at least to Dendrite. That was another storm with a band of 18-24"+. That map does show the mean storm vector though, ha. New England is swaths of SSW to NNE direction bands of big totals. This storm sort of bucked that trend with a strong block and oriented almost due west to east at one point in CNE.

That 12z GFS run was slightly better, a rain to snow situation up here in the NW.

Oh fully agree. This is all in jest BTW. Been one of those years. Wonder if we achieve what 2015 did, first 0” Mansfield stake reading on Xmas Day in 70 years? I don’t think we do but it’ll be close, probably 3-6” range.

Oh I know, it was more of a sarcastic comment. I remember one storm I think it was DIT, pounding like 1-2”/hr and posted mid-storm he couldn’t enjoy it because there was a rainer on the models 72 hours later. Its definitely true in an almost funny way when you break it down... our happiness is controlled by a massive computer sitting in a basement pumping out weather progs. Humans, what can you do?

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.