powderfreak

Ha! That was the dude. I thought for a moment maybe RUGGIE or something, so many older names bring back memories of that era.

Didn't he actually have the ruler upside down one time or something like that? I remember someone really doing that from back in the day. That was like the WrightWeather BB days. Edit... maybe it was RUGGIE?

Really? That seems awful early. How can you know what's going to happen in Jan/Feb/Mar... as you guys well know, all you need is a great 6 week period to epic town. 2014-15 would've been a ratter without that blitz. What was the verdict in November going into that?

Yeah we are adding ranks to NNE posters in this general climate zone along the N/NW flank... need more still. It’s nice slowly getting away from the super small circle jerk of like me, J.Spin, and mreaves chatting with each other before we got Alex. Now we get Phin. We are getting more mainstream, ha.

What will you know in two months?

Can't wait for these days... temps in the 30s this morning got me stoked.

That's how they do it out west... don't get much if any rain all summer, then hammer out 25-40" of QPF as snow in the winter months. That's the ideal way to run it.

Lol, so foggy the ASOS is spitting out snow obs at MPV? METAR KMPV 121100Z AUTO 10003KT M1/4SM -SN FG VV001 03/03 A3042

38F here

I think technically hail is a trace of frozen but I generally look at early season traces as a heavy graupel/mixed shower that can pool or be visible briefly on a car windshield or a mulch bed, dirt type of thing. You'll see this fall, that stuff can fall fast and furious as these little dippin' dots that add up very briefly and then melt away, sometimes before the squall is over, ha. It'll get windy and start dumping something frozen and white.

Now that I'm looking at those records, that is an impressive cold shot. Must've been a fun day with WINDEX stuff flying down there. Looks like Mansfield COOP for that cold shot had back-to-back ridiculous cold days for that time of year. The precip records look about the same amounts as down south, so definitely a scattered squally pattern up here too. Would’ve been crazy to combine those temps with more sustained lift and stratiform precip. September 30...29/21 October 1... 25/21 Snow Depth 1" Those average out to -20.4 departure from normal, solid 48 hour run.

Early season traces like that to me are usually graupel, but who knows. It's usually a non-accumulating trace of graupel or mangled stuff... as I think just the presence of frozen falling triggers a trace. We've had convective graupel but legit snow is hard to come by. I know Mansfield has snowed in late August though in the historical annals, but that's just hard to comprehend. Then again, I have a video of it snowing in mid-June up there (non-accumulating) like a week before the solstice.

Holy crap. Really strong mid-level band or deep ULL overhead?

We'll see... I got two of them for this Friday night. Usually once the buzz of the first one hits, the second one sounds like a pretty good idea regardless of taste, ha. Then its usually a good idea that there isn't a third. Anyway, its cold! I've got 47F at home at 8:10pm.

That may be pushing it... but if it can snow on Memorial Day weekend for Dendrite then I'm sure it's possible. In my 15 years spending a lot of time on Mansfield I can only remember one time where it snowed way up high on the last day of September (the year is escaping me right now, but maybe 2011?) but in reality the "snowy" day of that was the morning of October 1st. I have seen freezing rain in September though at the top of the Gondola. Oddly enough it seems freezing rain/mist/drizzle and icing is easier to achieve in late September up high... mainly because those happen with marginal cold and the moist NW flow triggers orographic lift that resides well below the dendrite snow growth zone. I've seen a decent amount of supercooled water droplets in September because the orographic lift doesn't punch high enough in the atmosphere to form ice crystals. Then in October the slightly deeper cold seems to introduce ice crystals into that orographic lift zone.

Not yet, bout to crack open a Sip of Sunshine. It’s not the favorite by any means but a buddy left me a couple from last weekend’s festivities...and we don’t discriminate if there are soldiers in the fridge.

Was looking at the map upside down, good call.

Ahh I gotcha. I guess I never really looked at it that close on a map, you are decently East of them.

Not being an ass but I have a hard time conceptualizing how you’d do better on strong CAA? You are south of them and they are at least as high as you. Was it CAA from the SW, like wrapping around an upper low? I’d honestly think you guys are pretty similar in all set ups, regardless of the ribbing on here.

48.3F at KTOLLA?

Yeah I’d be shocked if he doesn’t get at least one squall worth a transient inch in October. There’s always a cold pool that brings like a 0.14” QPF to 1.0” snow/graupel mix to the hills on the NW flank of New England, even if it melts like an hour later when the sun comes back out and you lose the wet-bulb process with temps going back from 33F to 43F again.

Yeah that month was nuts. Thanksgiving 2018 was a better winter holiday than half the Christmas’ this decade. Down under 1,000ft up here it’s very rare to go full cover starting like the 10th of Nov and never relenting. I think even the end of October was real cold... I met up with Oceanstwx for a beer and it was whatever day those SNE tornados happened near BOS... but like that next day it was snowing steadily in October even down low. The SPC guys in town from Oklahoma for that severe conference we’re loving it.

I think you are pretty much a lock for that. I think every October I can remember at least has had a light accum at 1500ft base of the ski resort here. Sometimes in town but 1500ft seems annual...it might just be a coating that melts by 9am but it happens. It’s really hard to get strong CAA that time of year and not have some upslope response. From looking at the Randolph data, I think your climo is very similar to 1500ft at my office. My daytime obs are likely going to be very similar with you. At night once home it’ll be different, ha.

Yeah we got a bunch of dense high QPF snows, and it wasn’t just like 2,500ft and higher like some November’s. Like the Randolph data, there was a very significant snowpack down to 1,500ft... people were skiing the glades to the parking lots in November. I’ve never seen that before, like instant mid-winter. The snow year gets very, very long when that happens... I think even at 750ft my continuous snow cover started like Nov 10th or 12th time frame that year. When the grass disappears that early in the valleys and you don’t see it again until Spring... it’s a long winter.

Anecdotally that sounds correct here. September has seemed like a summer month with warmth every year, and November has been like a winter month with even sub-zero cold shots up here within the past few years. It seems like it goes from mild 80s in September to mid-winter cold with highs in the teens at some point in November. It’s been a very favorable snowmaking month lately. Add in 2018 was the snowiest November on record up here with the Mansfield stake hitting 40” of snow depth for the first time in Nov in its period of record back to 1954.