powderfreak

I’m all set with the cold when it’s dipping below zero by 6pm.

What’s really interesting is how massive the variance looks on there the past 2-3 decades. Some huge winters and some huge ratters. A lot more spread recently it seems. Going back to the 90s that looks like 6 winters above 75” and 6 winters below 25”?

One of the bigger busts I can remember up here. About 1.75" total snow with a glaze of ice underneath at the mountain. 3/4ths to an inch at home maybe? We can usually rely on orographic lift to produce snow but in this case there was plenty of low level lift but no ice crystals to be found. The freezing rain was the craziest part. It was freezing drizzle and at times just legit straight freezing rain. In a column completely below freezing. Low level lift with no nuclei in for the super-cooled drops to freeze to. Fascinating event and I actually enjoyed it. From a met standpoint a bust is a good learning experience when it's an anomaly.

Beautiful dog. I've obviously got a soft spot for black labs.

The odd thing about cold rain in London is that it feels right. When I was in London and Manchester (my sister studied at U of Manchester for a while), it added to the vibe to have it like 48F with -RN. It fits all your preconceived notions of what English life is, haha. Like being in a movie, walking down a narrow cobblestone street and ducking into a small pub for a pint to get out of the rain.

Happy for the SNE crew that saw some snow. Good pics of a quick burst last night from some of you guys! Really small flakes, only a dusting overnight. This thing fractured in half pretty fast... really decent banding north of here from NNY into S.QC but then large dry slot with little forcing and terrible snow growth temps in between.

Nice! Only a half inch at home and 1-2” at the Mtn.

Yeah our long term average up at 3,000ft and higher is right around 300” (304” I think) and down in town the average is like 115-120”. There’s a good 75” annual difference just between the base at 1500ft and where I live at 750ft.

Models still showing this ribbon of better lift to the north. Almost like there could be a gap somewhere between two areas of better forcing. EURO NAM

Yeah man! I meant to comment on your ski thread post.... you timed it with the best snow conditions of the year. Seriously, if you are going to visit that was the time so far this season... hit it just right. So many times the difference between where I live 5-6 miles away in town is a completely different world. 33-34F light drizzle in the village and a snowstorm up the road. And that’s only half the town, there’s a whole other half towards the Worcester Range to the east. Its why I chuckle when folks talk about a difference of a couple inches in their town (like “I got 6 while west side of town got 8”).... we have like a 150” annual average variance in our town lol.

Yeah the snow map is a QPF map...just move the decimal

We got lucky and got smoked with a pretty heavy band for a couple hours picking up a quick 2" of paste.

Only in the last few days have we gotten deep winter too. You had more snow than me for December. It’s like in 2011-12 folks thought it was deep winter up here because we got at least some snow, but it was still the 2nd worst in the last 20 years. When you have zero snow though, I guess even consistent ground cover and just flakes flying is deep winter. Relative to normal though neither of us can touch what the full ratter folks have amassed in positive snow departures since 2012. But in warm shitty winters we should have more serviceable winter weather. Anyway, time for the panic thread. Back to the upcoming storm discussion....

NNE can afford to have the warm winters though and still snow. Up here it was +7 in January at MVL but the average high temp was still below freezing. We do start to lose that luxury soon though as climo normals start ticking upward. Warmer temps often mean a storm track nearby too in NNE as the seasonal baroclinic zone that normally pushes south into the mid-Atlantic ends up staying more like over SNE. There has literally been like no suppression depression storms for us, when usually there’s at least a few that we smoke dim sum cirrus...or even just have a sunny day while it snows in NYC.

Yeah I don’t remember this bad of a division in other poor winters for whatever reason. 11-12 and 15-16 didn’t have this type of total forum melt down. Maybe expectations are just higher?

lol there is such a dripping animosity as you head south in latitude towards those north of them...except for Ginxy, haven’t seen a salty post out of him and probably never will.

You are assuming all 10:1 ratios even across the board. There are signs that some SSW to ENE type axis up in far NNE that takes 0.3-0.4” of QPF and piles up 6-7” while you are getting 8:1 ratios on 0.7-0.8” QPF. I’m not big on banking on ratios but the GFS has some decent UVVs in that H7-H5 mid-level magic zone where the DGZ is.

Just started dumping up here. Huge silver dollars like Pacific NW style snow. A quick inch already at the mountain in under an hour from these huge flakes. Can't make this stuff up. Some convergence zone right into the mountain.

The joke for like 6 straight winters was what will everyone do when the 80s return.... The numbers Will used to throw out about praying for even a 4-7” snowfall seemed hard to imagine when it seemed 12+ was a once a month occurrence. I still hold out hope you guys get smoked with a big storm, even if it’s rogue in a shitty pattern.

Oh the horrors!

The odd thing is having Rutland be one of the indicators of winter in VT... and they don’t do any snow measurements there. So not sure how they are calculating it then? There’s no snowfall or snowpack data from KRUT, yet that’s the station they choose? “At the very least, the severity of a winter is related to the intensity and persistence of cold weather, the amount of snow, and the amount and persistence of snow on the ground. The Accumulated Winter Season Index (AWSSI) was developed to objectively quantify and describe the relative severity of the winter season.”

Can’t hate that look...

Big gradient in Stowe. 1.7” at home and almost 5” up at the ski area.

I like the mid level look up here for snows that want to linger. Probably do a bit better than 10:1.