powderfreak

Both. They have their own compressor on-board. By running them they don't impact the capacity of your snow plant unless you are maxed out on water (which is rare but happens in very cold outbreaks with a lot of guns running). Normally the limiting factor is compressed air for the reason why a ski area can't fire up more guns. But by running those, you don't suck air capacity from your plant and it can be sent to other guns... so you'll often see those things run all the time if you have the temps. They also pump out up to 10 times the amount of water at full throttle. You'll get like 300 gallons per minute out of one of those vs. 30-50 gallons a minute out of a tower gun. Which is why they are great in the base areas, high traffic spots, wide areas with a lot of terrain to cover.... spots where you just want to dump a sh*t ton of cubic feet of frozen water. The more expensive versions are the fan guns on towers... a fan gun that's mobile (wheels or can be dragged around) and ground based will be the lower end of the spectrum. Installing one of those on a tower 30 feet in the air with 360 degree automated motion is where you get into that $50k range.

Yeah it’s a lot. A giant fan gun (looks like a snow canon) can run $30-$50K a piece. That’s before the cost of electricity and pumping. When you see like 10 of those fan guns lined up it’s a cool half mill just before you fire it up. The tower guns that are more plentiful run $5-7K. You’ll often get a bulk buy discount if you get a bunch of them lol.

Yeah the plows are out at that height over this way, and this is our bread and butter ripping out a few inches when there’s no synoptic system. Also closer to the Great Lakes moisture. I can’t believe JSpin at 500ft pulled 2” in 30 minutes. My yard is white at 750ft but it’s more like a wet half inch coating with grass still visible.

Finding around 3-4” on the ground leaving work. Its a special world up at 1,500ft.

Ha that’s awesome. Love squalls... from yard work to whiteouts.

Snowy day up here in the mountains. About 3" new snow at 1,500ft. Heated sidewalk rage has me searching out the islands of snow among the pavers.

Been snowing pretty much all day but visibility is mostly in the 1-4 mile range -SN type stuff. Occasionally it'll dip to a mile or less very briefly. Estimate 2.5" or so now out of the wind... grass blades have finally been fully covered up. This is a classic snow globe style day.

I can safely say without the Gov't shutting them down, that Stowe will be open. Too much money has been put into it already in planning, hiring, protocols, buying PPE and making infrastructure changes to help social distancing, etc that there's no way the company will just close it. Too many season passes sold, etc. But again, it's all geared towards like 30-50% normal business... these ski areas cannot operate within COVID procedure parameters and get 75% or more of their normal visitations... the guest experience would be absolutely horrible. That's why reservations and such will work to control crowd levels so as to not degrade the experience to just waiting in lines to do everything from using the lift to getting inside to go to the bathrooms. I mean you're still waiting in lines everywhere, but hopefully not like 30 minutes or longer lines. Personally I still think weather is going to dictate this to start a lot more than COVID. Pattern is not very favorable into December.

I get the sense the competitive spirit is coming out, lol. All snow goes towards climo... but I find synoptic storms are fluky on the whole, you are at the whims of mid-level forcing and stuff like that... like that early season storm. Those storms are when it’s anyone’s game, even Whitefields lol. If you get a mid level band in the right place the mountains don’t matter, it can crush more right in the valley bottoms. Coastal storms and synoptic events are definitely bigger wildcards to me, depending on where the mid-level stuff ends up. Low climo snow places can get 36” while a “snow zone” spot gets 14”.

Ahh they are turning on the heated pavers. It’s melting, lol.

When was the last time they didn't open by tday? Hmm 2011? 2006 wasn’t until December sometime. 2015 was actually a good opening after a cold snap but then it went downhill fast. Several years have gone to the Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving. We do think we can get next Wednesday.

Stowe just delayed opening until at least the 25th. Will get a good 48-hour run now but the extended doesn’t inspire confidence.

1.5" of cruchy snow at ski area base. Snow globe snowing pretty good at the moment. I bet there was some decent QPF in the 1.5" as it seems like an inch of just graupel balls and then some flakes on top. Big fluffers falling up here now. Definitely another world in the upslope zone at 1,500ft.

Winter. 1300+ feet is the magic zone.

Healthy dusting of a few tenths. Nice to see some white again.

I bet you’ll see some snow soon. We went from graupel over to fluffy flakes and ground has whitened up with this squall line. Looks like it may be redeveloping south towards MPV area with some of those cores south of 89.

33F now and grass whitening up. Went from graupel over to nickel sized flakes. Looks like 1500ft is seeing winter this evening.

Some decent graupel squalls. A tenth or so of dippin’ dots now whitening the deck and garden. I’m seeing 1-2” on the cams up high and looks like 1500ft is white now with accumulation. This squall strengthened nicely as it hit the spine. Best snow/graupel of the day so far.

Plenty of snow showers out there this evening but not seeing any accumulation, still too warm here in town for anything more than flakes flying. Looks like Jay Peak area has had a steadier stream of moisture past couple hours and it’s building up a bit to the north in Franklin County.

Looks similar here. Another 122 in VT which I think is the daily record.

We might have over-sold it, but despite the snowfall averages we still see plenty of crap weather. It’s not all candy canes and snow pillow gum drops from October to May. You’ll see this even in mid-winter in a bad pattern where it’s a 2,500ft snow level spitting mixed crap and windy. Looks like we have plenty of chances over the next ten days to straddle the line between puke and snow showers lol.

Been getting rounds of snow showers and graupel here at 1,500ft. No accumulation except the last graupel shower was enough to whiten the mulch beds lol. It still isn’t that cold out.

No bueno.

Some white up there this morning.

Not to take away from the high-wind disco, but that is extremely cool to step outside your house and see a group of humans shot into space.