powderfreak

Yeah it’s trying to develop here too. The station near me at the bottom of the golf course (general course slope is NW to SE) is 11 degrees cooler than the spots 100-200ft higher.

No but she’s a nurse, they seem to assume it was from the hospital. Who knows, could be the kids from preschool and childcare?

Sister, brother in law and their two kids are positive with COVID 19. The kids just have runny noses, my sister has a bad head cold and no sense of taste... coffee tastes like water. That’s why they got tested. Test results in New York took her 6 days to get a result, beating my 5 days in VT to get a result. They’ve not left their house since last weekend and have another week to go at least. Now both of my sisters have had it. Both work in healthcare so not surprising.

There's always 2014-2015... trash until late January. People trying to sled, coming home muddy when it's 2" of glop on top of dirt. Meltdowns, bickering and blaming. Then the stars align for 4-weeks.

My general take on it is that much of the interior northeast gets similar amounts of synoptic snowfall, regardless of local topography or lack of topography. Like if you removed all the meso-scale snow, the broader interior New England likely experiences fairly similar snowfall amounts with a general gradient from south to north. Say NNE snowfall would be a widespread 70-100" on synoptic snow. The snowfall differences really start to grow when you add in elevation and/or the mesoscale snow aspect. So a location gets say 90" synoptic and 60" meso-scale (the equivalent of 20 events of 3" each). I don't know why, I always look at it as synoptic snow vs. mesoscale and try to group events into those categories and see how it affects annual averages. It's a fun exercise, ha.

Take the view any day over the pack. You still get to see it snow, ha. Your spot reminds me of some of the homes up by the ski area at Spruce Peak at like 1700ft. They generally face south and are wide open to wind/sun... they’ll get 200” of snow and never build up a deep pack as it gets blown away. While the calm hardwood forest at 1500ft has 40-60” of depth in late March, those homes and the golf course will start to see the ground after like two sunny and mild days. Also, this far north you take the southern exposure when you can... both for mental reasons (sun!) and for heating your house during the daytime.

Yeah maybe longer! This stretch may not have built the snowpack, but we got to watch snow showers roll through and talk snow shop for 3 days. In the absence of a real storm it’s at least had that wintry appeal. Cold and dry isn’t as enjoyable.

Yeah I wasn’t talking about a comparison per se (but great data sets), just that normal depth is different than that ratio of snowfall to depth in say areas that just get synoptic snow. I figured Phins area was 35-40” on average, looks like 42” on that sample size at about 1800ft or whatever exact number that site is. Compare that to someone like Tamarack who probably isn’t all that far off on max depths (?), but he does it with maybe a bit more than half the annual snowfall. Tamarack will get 90” of snowfall and still have two feet on the ground on May 1st lol. Snow globe zones with frequent flakes in the air will rack up measurable and high annual snowfall totals just based on the high number of days with precipitation I guess is what I was getting at, ha. Thats how the season total can be 10” but you don’t see a depth over 3” at any one time. A lot of light snowfall events add up real quickly in season totals if you get them every few days.

Yeah you are starting to see how the snowfall up here works. It doesn’t always translate to the ground in the sense that you see with coastal plain snowfall that has a defined beginning and end, and is usually much shorter duration. Like you can keep adding 0.7” or 1.6” or 1.3” every 12 hours and it all adds up in the cumulative sense, but you could always just have 1-1.5” on the ground the whole time despite a 36-48 hour total of 4”. Exactly like you say, you’ve got 10” on the annual total and never saw more than 3” on the ground at once. It’s a nickel and dime pattern built in among larger systems. But consider that if 200” cumulative falls there, the max depth is still usually like 35-40”, maybe briefly higher unless it’s a true QPF bomb. Meanwhile in Maryland 2010 they get 40” on the ground out of 70” cumulative.

The sleeper 10” storm on the mountain in 48 hours plus some snowmaking... looks nice.

Best air mass of the next two weeks happening today?

12z GFS has some front end snow on Sunday evening... like an inch in Vermont but this is Phin's time to shine as it looks like he'd pick up 2-3" on the front side on this output before the warmth over-rides it.

At least there’s snow on the ground for this cold, even if it’s just 2” at home vs the 6-7” up at 1500ft. Its frigid. 22F at MVL, 18F at base of ski area, 8F at the picnic tables. Winter vibe today from the ASOS... snow globe conditions where it's just non-stop flakes but nothing overly heavy.

Yeah a little gnome may have access to a stake camera up there, and he told me there’s 9” at that stake right now . Today’s report should double yesterday’s depth. Still snowing, ha.

Another 1.5” since 8am at 1500ft. Still snowing. This will end up being like 8” of fluff up here. Wild.

Ha several people at Stowe that also go to Okemo for regional work have been stopped there for barely going over 30mph. There was even an email last year warning people traveling for business to Okemo on RT 100 that you will be stopped in Plymouth for next to nothing so be on your game. They average almost 7 traffic tickets a day in a town with 600 people in it... it’s a pure bilking of ski resort visitors. Population: 619 Tickets issued: 2,352+ Total issued in traffic ticket fines: $415,620+

Still snowing surprisingly well. About 4-6" depending on wind around the base area. It is frigid though at 16F and windy.

6" on the snow cam at the mountain before it flipped this morning at 6am. Looks like another inch since then. Mansfield should be around 9" total for this event just by that board that usually is a little lower in total than the ground based board.

Pencil in 8-12" there for every SWFE and call it a day. Like once you see it on the models at day 3, you can just stop watching and go with climo there. And then once it goes below freezing it'll never warm above freezing again until April, lol.

Absolutely amazing! Nice work on this, ha. Just got back in from the headlamp walk with the dog and since I got home at 5pm, there's an inch of fluff on my car in that 5-8pm range. 1" in 3 hours snow shower rate... and it is fluffy. We are in 30:1 fluffernutter land now.

I love those photos, think I am or was friends on FB just to see his 30 foot piles in his front yard while the rest of the neighborhood is green lol. Some of the shots are ridiculous, in an awesome way.

Ha yup. On the old list serve archives. I’ve known J.Spin online since like the late ‘90s through the old UVM List-Serve called SkiVT-L. It was an Email list serve skiing group as I started reading it before I went to UVM. The archives go way back into the early ‘90s I think with ski/weather discussion. J.Spin used to produce these ski videos on VHS too (I think I bought one a couple decades ago), before DVDs became a thing. But that was a great community when the internet was just starting to really reach people and AOL was in its full glory. Most of my usual ski buddies (and great friends in general, like we’ve been in each other’s weddings and stuff) were met on that list-serve and we started skiing together back in like the early/mid 2000s when I went to UVM. So the internet isn’t all bad I guess.

The best part is he had no idea about it when he bought his place, IIRC. Like we just happened to find a very dedicated observer who happened to purchase a spot in like a 3-mile wide band of absurdity for the low elevation. He lives like 5 miles away in any direction and we'd never know the reality except when you drive through and are like, hmmm it always seems to be dumping in this section of I-89.

It's that whole zone... like 1,500ft at Stowe is the same as J.Spin except 1,000ft higher but the lift aloft is likely very similar. He's not going to lose much to evaporation in that final 1,000ft but his precipitation is getting maximized. So if the profile is cold enough, he's going to rack up the inches. Like if someone burrowed a hole in Pinkham Notch so the elevation at the top of the pass was only 500ft but smack between some big terrain with no ability to get downsloped from any direction because of the terrain. Every direction is just lifting air over head. His only negative is temps if its marginal but if it's cold enough, he's going to snow with maximum lift, which also often feedsback into lower snow levels right around him too due to precipitation intensity.

So good to see the snow globe shaken up. Now keep shaking it.