powderfreak

Will the Ocean do that this time of year in a torch pattern? Cold SSTs relative to surface temps?

Backyard is now 50-50 snow to grass ratio. Front yard is pretty much gone except in the shadows of the hedge rows.

Lake Tahoe just got 114” in 3 days as measured at Ski Homewood, and they normally get less snow than the bigger resorts like Squaw, Alpine and Kirkwood. Those other mtns aren’t reporting snowfall so as not to encourage use of the mountains. Crazy to have the largest storm of the year hit right when everyone closes from COVID-19.

Today was ok, but yeah it's getting to be everyone's favorite time of year.... useless 40s and 50s. Either be snowing (like today) or be 60+.

Ended up with 1.5” in Stowe Village.

Still fully snow covered up here .

Yeah two weeks up here is a long long time without snowfall. Then again we had some really low snowfall March's over the past 20 years. Was it 2005 and 2006 it couldn't snow in March for anything?

Snowy day. Just 1.25" so far but it has been a remarkably long time without flakes accumulating up here. The last time it snowed was pretty much that surprise 10.7" lake effect/upslope event at home.

The world is white again. 1-3sm vis -SN the last few hours.

The ski resort has closed and the company is paying employees in full without having to dip into my PTO balances.

First day of paid leave for COVID-19, surreal in a way. Frigid sunny Sunday in mid-March with nothing to do. High of 27F so far here in the valley, finally a cold sub-freezing day now that no one wants it. Walking the dog on the backyard Rec path as the snow doesn’t melt today...but man time to rip the band aid and get rid of this crusty icy stuff.

Mud season in full effect now in NNE. Ahhh, March in Vermont. Abandon the bus kids, she ain't going anywhere.

J- I agree, it's been a weird winter in that regard. The lower elevations seem to be doing better relative to normal than the higher elevations. We've only had that 214" at 3,000ft High Road area, compared with say 2016-17 when we measured 375" by closing day at that location. I think when I really look into the various winter's on the mountain, it all revolves around the "bread and butter" events. The 2-4"/3-6" per day type stuff. And not just for a week, but like months of that stuff every couple days. In that 375" winter, we did like 100" in 3 weeks without any huge events that January into early February. It just snowed 1" or more like 21 out of 24 days. Those to me, are how we get our averages in the mountain sites while down in the valleys we rely on more synoptic events and supplement with upslope nickles. Your location is different and more tied to the mountain orographics, but this season I feel like we have certainly been missing a large amount of "refresher" events for the ski area. The two week long periods of flakes, or the 5-day cycles of moist NW flow. Not huge events but just days where it's like 2", 4", 1", 6", 3", etc. We really need that stuff as I've always thought of the average snow up here as 2" per day. Anything below that (14" per week or lower) is below average. The Mansfield COOP reported less snow but still had an average daily snowfall of like 1.5-2.0" per day for the heart of winter. This year has had a ton of 7-day totals in the 5-10" range.... weeks of it. Even some weeks below 5". We lucked out in the valleys with synoptic events but I think the prevailing pattern of primary upper level lows going northwest of us is a poor pattern for the northern Greens because you don't get that cyclonic backside flow. We can work with cold air damming or synoptic snow to mix then dry slot type storms, but most of those events don't have much difference from valleys to peaks because it's mid-level warm air lift. But without those higher variance NW flow events on the backside where the mountains gets 6-8" more while town sees 1-2", I think we haven't had that huge snowfall variance we usually see. A lot of it has to do with the orographic snows, IMO, and the prevailing pattern this winter of upper level lows staying back west.

Yup, this weekend looks cold enough up north to keep it icy and firm. Today may have been the worst day of the season with the solidly below freezing temps after rain and warmth. The top snow layer has melted back to the glacial base (still very deep, but it's packed ice essentially) and there isn't much groomers can do with that when its 15-25F. This weekend with more rain coming Friday and then colder weather Saturday/Sunday that won't break freezing in the Northern Greens will lead to some real rugged skiing. We are at the point where the temperature needs to be above freezing for it to be worth skiing, unless it snows, which doesn't look likely anytime soon.

High of 31F today in the valley absolutely sucks. It needs to be warm now, ha. It’s the time of year where the south side of the driveway is grass while the north side still has 6-8” of icepack you can walk on.

It would be hard to challenge Will in any temperature statistical argument to be honest. Must be really confident with a strong understanding of how hard it gets to change departures the deeper you get into a month.

Perfect football weather.... oh wait, wrong season.

Jealous. 40s and rain here. Nearest PWS on the golf course is 41/40 with thick fog out the window. Crazy how 60/20 didn’t melt much snow but dews of 40F or higher today are slurping the snow away in town. Down to 4-6” of waterlogged snow in the yard.

I mean, temperatures from one station at that level and it might be an outlier...but top #1 and #2 warmest so far in 2020 at the big 4, that’s unanimous. Warm winter. It has felt like it.

That is pretty impressive. I think that would fall into the winter torch category.

Yeah it plummeted with sun down. As soon as the sun went below the horizon it went from 62F to 36F currently and the snowpack is already firming up from underneath. Low dew points helping with that dramatic drop. You can tell the exact minute that the sun faded from the MVL ASOS... 6:10pm it was 54F and 5 minutes later it was 48F. 6 degrees in 5 minutes with the shadow moving in. Snowpack at the condos here in Stowe Village still holding strong but once the dew points rise it should really start to melt.

Really hard to be depressed on a day like this in the mountains. Might be melting snow but it is some real nice weather.

60F and what an afternoon! Great spring skiing, now T-shirt or hoodie weather walking the dog in town.

Oh man is it glorious. 57/24 and full sunshine. Snowpack slowly going. The dryness seems to keep it from going full mush right now as it has been freezing up hard at night. Yesterday we did 46/11. That's prime spring right there. Very cold lows near 10F and a high of 45-50F.

Going full send. But if it hits the elderly population hard it could get pretty high.