powderfreak

I'm about to head out skiing for the afternoon... buddy Dylan from the skivt-l days reporting that its skiing deeper than it seems. Nice dense snow, that stuff skis so well when you can power the turns with no regrets.

See I disagree... we have plenty of posters who post things just to get a response. Like when the Euro shows 0.25” of QPF as snow and someone says “Euro now onboard for 6+ back to NY state!” We give a lot more latitude if it’s the weather we want. He occasionally does have a sound post and at least he’s consistent in warmth posts year round, doesn’t flip flop with seasons.

I’m surprised how many of you get tweaked by the guy, lol. He just cracks me up more than anything. Nice to have a warm ying to the forum’s cold yang. Folks posting H5 progs weeks out that looks cold, fine, but he posts one looking warm and everyone loses their shit . But I guess in a terrible winter no one wants to hear it down there.

Some rowdy skiing today at Stowe by two friends who wanted to try this shot... the entrance was a bit too sporty for me and this photo doesn't do it justice... it's basically like a cliff that holds some snow, a fall here could be real bad.

Still finding fresh untracked lines at Stowe despite the holiday week crowds. Anyone telling you that you can't find fresh lines hasn't looked hard enough

Nice! I've always wanted to go there. A 4.5 mile loop sounds awesome and I've seen a lot of friends post photos from there over the past few years. One thing I notice there is despite the very warm departures at times this winter, the NNE climate still supports winter. Lakes are frozen solid, with snow on the ground even with a +5.9F to +7.4F month of January in the northern half of Vermont. What we have had is a good supply of very cold nights this past month though. Days have warmed nicely but some of these nights are pretty high end cold.

Could be at Alyeska, Alaska.... 50" storm total and 613" so far this season.

Wind-blown chalky snow up here. Base is solid and snow is fun but those 80-100mph winds did some wind-packing for sure. Blew a lot of the snow out of the trees too. From looking at the Mansfield Chin, the wind really scoured things and moved that snow down into the snowfields. Nice lower elevation transport in this wind.

Ahh missed it. Will have to search. I went down the rabbit hole reading up on it this morning.

Speaking of fake cold, this place in Utah called Peter Sinks records some ridiculous cold temperatures. I saw they are -46F this morning. In October (2019) they set the United States record (including Alaska) for coldest temperature ever for that month at -45.5F. Back in 1969 they hit -69F.

Only 2" for this event at the ski resort.... a very light crust too from some freezing mist of about a couple tenths of an inch on the top of the snow surface.

Cold and clear the past two days until this evening when high clouds rolled in. A 46-degree diurnal spread today in the valley... -23F to +23F. February looking like February should.

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

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

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?

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.”

Put together this latest storm's snowfall readings on Mansfield at the High Road Plot. 19" total and I'd wager there was close to 2.0" of water when all was said and done. 155" on the season so far, tracking below the 20 year average but we have now hit the same amount of snow we had in the entire 2015-16 season, ha.

From Banter thread but will live on in here: What a Sunday out there. -22F this morning on the full moon clear skies, fresh deep pack...it looked like the surface of the moon this morning at -20s. Sun is out and temps are rising fast. 16" of snow depth in the yard. There's still a pretty good glaze from the ZR before the snow on the pines...they are feeling it after acouple days of solid weight.

What a Sunday out there. -22F this morning on the full moon clear skies, fresh deep pack...it looked like the surface of the moon this morning at -20s. Sun is out and temps are rising fast. 16" of snow depth in the yard. There's still a pretty good glaze from the ZR before the snow on the pines...they are feeling it after acouple days of solid weight.

Clear, calm and cold this evening. Fresh snowpack, crystal clear skis and crazy bright moonlight...

The landscape is lit right now. Another shot from a friend driving through Stowe today that's worth sharing...

-SN moving through with the CAA and winds picking up from the NW. 26F at MVL.

Yeah I think JSpin and I have spitballed this many times, but sort of settled on +3 to +4 up here as where we can still be above normal snow at those temps. But even we see below normal snow at +7. Its just hard to build a pack at those departures, despite having snow on the ground the whole month, it’s rotted in that 4-8” range for a long time under 1000ft.

The pattern has been so incredibly hostile towards snow, when you look at it all together, it’s not just bad luck it hasn’t snowed. It’s a bad pattern. Cant run these departures for 45 days and expect much winter. +2 to +3 can be worked with but +7 to +9?