powderfreak

Normality has been restored with heavier snowfall at the mountain than down in town. Day off today with a lot to get done so haven’t been paying much attention but general flurries and light snow in town has the mountain behind a solid curtain of white. I must say, Stowe Village is living up to the currier and ives look after yesterday’s 4-5”. It’s stacked up on everything like it was placed there on a movie set. It’s pure Hallmark movie going to the UPS store, post office and getting other holiday chores done. Did see the crazy gradient as we went and got a tree this morning on the Morrisville/Stowe town line and I have never seen anything like that... in literally a quarter mile it goes from winter to grass. The line is incredibly sharp. The tree we cut didn’t even have any snow on it, so we were able to bring it right inside when we drove back to the winter wonderland. My wife and I were joking about how perfect it was, no melting of snow off the tree and in a 10 minute trip we left winter and returned to winter. Next up is a trip to mreaves area to get snow tires put on my wife’s new 2021 Subaru at the dealership in Berlin, not far from MPV.

Its definitely a hot topic in the ski industry. I'm torn because as we discussed without really hashing it out again, it continues to add to the idea that skiing is a luxury sport that costs a decent penny (I mean, if you have to pay to walk yourself up the hill?)... my core skier instinct says if you want to earn your turns it should be free. But also seeing the business side of it and being in that environment, there are several reasons for a fee. You are still using snowmaking and grooming, etc. There is also liability involved and a purchase would of course include signing a waiver, and having some sort of legal contract. The popularity of uphill has exploded so it also moves into the supply/demand curve and might serve to limit uphill traffic a bit... though as I well know at Stowe, if you use a price to control demand, you inevitably start moving towards pricing some users out, no matter how small the cost may seem. And maybe that cost rises down the road. The flip side of paying for something is that the ski area owes you a product, so they can't just stop uphill when they want to. You bought it, they have to allow it as the terms of service. That's actually what's stopping a lot of places from charging for uphill.... they want the freedom to shut it down as they see fit. Snowmaking, grooming operations, certain storms, poor icy conditions. If they sell you it, they have to let you do it. If it's free, they can tell you no and not bat an eye.

Ha yeah I was thinking that would be a win if we see that same exact result from the weak system this week. Looks like maybe a quarter inch of water on that one.

Ran a rare water analysis of the snow today. Got 0.23” on 4-4.25” snow. So roughly just under 20:1 which feels about right. Fluffy but not the total air 30-40:1 stuff we sometimes see. Nearing a quarter inch of water is nice though when models had 0.0”, ha.

Ha! “Wow it’s snowing really hard in Stowe.” “I know honey, already seen photos of it.” “What? It’s 7am.” “I’ve got a guy.” Yeah I do think it’s Bolton Mountain peak that triggered that one. So there was one off Mansfield and one off Bolton. I might dig into the soundings and stuff a bit later to try and look into what happened. There’s a solid inversion aloft... to the point that Whiteface in NY and MWN were above the clouds this afternoon. I think the inversion height played into it somehow. Snowfall just picked up again at the house. I cleared the board finally so we’ll see if we get more accumulation. I do think if I cleared at 7am I could’ve added an inch or two more but I wanted to just track the depth.

Ha, yeah a buddy had like 3” right near Exit 10 near Stowe Street... the pictures looked fairly similar maybe a bit less than here. Everyone coming to work or the mountain had stories like yours. One guy was like there was a legit snowstorm going on at Ben and Jerry’s factory but nothing at all a mile north. Then the same thing happened in Stowe and drove out of it at the ski area. Like mini-pockets but stationary of 0.5-1”/hr snowfall. The localized weather from the mountains is incredible. This one takes the cake though. There was a FB thread with photos of people around Stowe and Waterbury... it was all over the map. One house has grass and a skiff of snow, then not far away someone posts a picture of plowing their driveway, lol. I want one of these to happen like in Boston. Some blocks get an Advisory snow mixed in with blocks of flurries.

I can honestly say I’ve never seen it like this. There’s just a dusting at 1500ft... 2” at 1,000ft by the Notchbrook store. Literally the snow vibe increased (trees became white and power lines had snow on them) as you went DOWN the hill. By the time at 750ft here there’s still 4” with fat flakes still lazily fall. Town looks like a Hallmark Christmas movie with like several inches even on the power lines. Every little twig is white and plow piles start to show up lol. What a trip to see snow increase as you go down in elevation. Its no big event but just the absurdity of it all. It’s the talk of town how there’s this in town and nothing at the ski area... because it just doesn’t happen. 4” in town is more often 8-12” on the hill.

One of the rare days that marketing uses a photo from down in town. Subtle “snow swirling in town, snow guns at the mountain.”

Now that is dedication. No way in hell I’d try that. But if she’s outside playing with the dog she can certainly take the stick over and see how much is on the table in the Garden lol.

Ha she goes out with the dog. I’ve got the yardstick by the door. Can see my little snow table in the garden with Stratus... wasn’t expecting snow so didn’t take out the inner tube on the Stratus, oops. Will try to get a liquid amount later. Still snowing at home but lightened up and it’s probably holding right at 4”. What a bizarre event, still only flurries at the mountain.

Right on the Randolph/Jefferson line at 1,600ft on RT 2 looks like it would be pretty darn snowy. You get a nice confluence and narrowing too. The terrain doesn't seem big enough to really downslope. What you say in actual Jefferson towards Santa's House or whatever it is makes sense, those are surprisingly big hills. Terrain wise, this is some elevation on RT 2 even above 1,600ft and I bet that nook gets hit well by both east and westerly flow, sneaking through the narrows there almost like a J.Spin type spot. Probably extent that west into Randolph there in the narrows. I wonder if Alex knows how that zone is on NW flow upslope. It has that look.

My wife just measured "about 4 inches" (take that with a grain of salt from her) at 750ft ha. Looks like at 7am the Lower Village came in with 2.9" on 0.18" water. Still nothing at 1,500ft.

Yeah makes sense. Was just mentioning it's not a matter of elevation. Most of NNH is at a pretty substantial elevation outside of the immediate river valley bottoms. Every town seems to have inhabited areas 1,500-2,000ft regardless up there.

My wife says its still snowing steadily at home and the driveway was just plowed, lol. Nothing happening here at 1,500ft. Miss the good event but get rewarded with a micro-sized advisory level event over like a few square miles. It is like a small streamer that the summit of Mansfield must be setting off because it is occurring directly downwind of the 4,395 peak. At least we'll enjoy some snow cover this week.

Yeah I don't think I've ever seen it this localized. It's probably like a 3 mile by 3 mile box getting near Advisory level snows and then nothing outside of that. Even going up the road by the time you get to Topnotch and Northern Lights the grass blades are showing. The businesses around me on Mountain Road were getting plowed and RT 108 was in pretty poor shape. Going to be some surprised skiers when they wake up to find 2.5-4" in parts of town... you assume the hill got 8". And then to just have it disappear all together. I saw it snowing at 3am and can't believe it was STILL just sitting there dropping near 1"/hr at 6am. Just a standing wave off Mansfield's chin it seems like hitting RT 108.

WTF is going on?! Gonna be pushing 3+ in town. Then you drive a few miles UP the hill and the snowstorm disappears. Nothing at the hill.

I mean this takes meso-scale snow to a WHOLE new level. This thing has sat as a standing wave downwind of Mansfield, redeveloping over and over, for almost 3 hours now. Not a flake at the mountain, and maybe 3” in my yard so far. It’s not even snowing at friend’s houses at other parts of town. Like Mother Nature just put a few pixels overhead and said hey, let’s rip you out some snow.

I got up at 3am to piss and it was dumping out. Went to bed with grass and woke up to this. Its still dumping as of 6:30am. Have almost 3” new snow so far. There’s been a standing wave since like 3am coming off the summit of Mansfield but maxing out right over us here on RT 108.

Yeah every town in the mountains has its spots that go both ways usually. I was surprised that RT 2 is around 1600ft there in Jefferson as it then drops to 1300-1400ft in Randolph before you start to rise up towards the Hill/Scates Corner or whatever it is. RT 2 has some impressive elevation for quite a while there. That’s pretty cool.

Jefferson looks pretty high up there, no? Looks like the town is just under 1,500ft? Not in this image but looks like there are some neighborhoods up near 2,000ft too. I was surprised but there doesn't seem to be any decrease in elevation from Randolph to Jefferson on RT 2. That place has to radiate like mad looking at a topo map.

Hilarious you mention that... when out in Utah we went to get some stuff from a Walmart situated on one of the SLC benches, and literally behind it was like 11,000ft peaks and one of the most dramatic elevation rises in a short distance I've ever seen. I remember I have a photo somewhere of it... the dichotomy of this bland corporate big business box store, set in a scene that's literally out of a postcard cracked me up big time.

It does work for sure.... even in SNE that last storm was said to be a 100 to 1 chance hail mary with the "better pattern coming up behind it" and people starting to worry a bit. There are definitely several cases of anxiety and worry then leading to a big event out of the blue. You'll get it... I always go with climo. Sooner or later it happens. But I also bet you've had snow cover (even if just 2") up there at Jay more than anyone else on the forum since like October if you were to tally it up. It just hasn't been able to stick around yet. Hopefully the GFS's two cutters don't come to pass in the longer term.

Jay Peak area. Either the base area village and nearby. There’s a neighborhood called Alpine Heaven near there that is easily one of the snowiest spots in New England inch for inch.

Ha, I picture you being insulted by a high Gorham number. Weather is so varied around the mountains...looks like there are some 1,200-1,700ft elevations in Gorham. It’s like in Stowe... the ski area vs the village... it all files under “Stowe, Vermont” in the PNS. One spot gets 250” a year and another could get 120” and it’s all listed as the same town. I bet regardless of what town you are in, if you got up to 1300ft or above it was 12-16” in your area pretty evenly. But that’s why it’s hard to just broad brush towns. No doubt there are parts of Gorham on the WNW side there that get the same snow or very similar.

I think that entire northern shelf of the Presidentials was getting good NE flow mid-level lift over top NW surface flow. That veering combo is why 10-15” fell in those areas. You can tell when it really started to crank and it coincided with a 7pm increase in NW surface winds at HIE/BML and a temp drop. Temps started gusting 20+ mph and temps fell with CAA, while they maxed out on mid-level lift/banding. I find that combo here in the Greens is what really crushes the ski areas. NW low level upslope flow underneath mid-level banding.