powderfreak

Yup. Like even Mammoth is wind swept rock up top of the ridge but where they ski and then measure down lower in the trees gets 400-500”. I bet MWN averages a LOT more than their reported snowfall, they just can’t collect it. But a lot of flakes fall up there. Johns Weather in NNH gets almost as much as MWN at times and he’s at what 2kft? No, MWN gets A LOT more snow to fall they just can’t measure it. Mansfield COOPs best samples were either heavy wet snow (they would get pretty accurate snow totals in summit blue bombs) or the rare calm snowfall. As soon as ratios went up or wind went up the snowfall amounts were no where close to what the rest of that upper elevation band would see. Measuring snow in elevated precip cans on summits will drastically under report, IMO from what I’ve seen. Whether it all piles up on only one side of the can, or the flakes get shattered hitting the can and trying to fall in, it’s certainly the least accurate way (but only way) to do it in those environments. It’s like if Scooter put an 8-inch diameter by 2-feet deep narrow bucket on the top of his roof in a blizzard and then compared the flakes that made it into that thing with the snow depth in his yard. My bet is the can would have about 60% of what his yard has.

The Mansfield COOP data is no MWN either. It was a once a day reading of what found its way into an 8-inch diameter precip can. The worst time possible at 4pm after any day time heating... it drastically under reported early/late season snows sometimes because of that. There’s also settling. At the ski area we do ground based snow board in a protected spot and twice a day. Twice a day vs once a day makes a decent difference even at airports, it does on mtns too. Also upslope snow seems to come in best at night...not sure if it’s the nocturnal inversion or what, but solar seems to disrupt it. Morning measurements are maximizing upslope snow vs late afternoon in my experience. MWN does 4 readings for every 1 that was done on Mansfield in the COOP data. That plays a decent role. Its not all apples to apples. And I have no doubt if I showed any of you around and the differences, it would become obvious very quickly. That’s how I gathered trust with BTV...you send them photos of the study plot and snow board set up enough, and they see it too.

I don’t have time right now but I can show the last 20 years or so of snowfall at Stowe....it’s right around 300”. I mean folks can take it or leave it but I measured it for a solid decade now after another dedicated ski area personnel did it prior to that for about the same number of years. The Mansfield COOP snowfall is an absolute joke. It’s collection method is similar to MWN if not worse...the elevated precip can under-catches on the ridge significantly and flakes get pulverized so the COOP ratios were often 10:1 even in huge fluff events. Often times the can would be in error so they would use the 24 hour snow depth change too. If the low elevations at 500ft like JSpin can get 150-200” fairly regularly, it’s not hard to imagine 3-4000ft belt getting 300”+. I’m sorry but you don’t get 100” snow depth with rain events and melts and such on the snowfall amounts of the COOP. The depth to snowfall ratio makes no sense in the longer record given a lot of fluffy snow. Once family leaves and holidays are done I can put together a pretty damn good compelling argument with photos and stuff of collection sites and differences. We measured at 3000ft because it’s a much calmer environment and it can fart 4” of almost air overnight there while the ridge precip can gets 1” of pulverized flakes. Measuring snow on a rocky wind swept ridge is an effort in futility. The rocks are bare all winter long, no wonder the snow amount is low. Go measure snow on the terrain that builds depths to 6-10 feet where people ski and snow actually falls straight down.

It seems crazy when it happens, but it happens. January 2014 comes to mind here with BN temps, way AN precip and BN snow. More inches of rain than inches of snow at one point up here in a below normal month during the climo coldest time of year. I think Philly had like 5 warning events that season while we went rainer, suppression, rainer, suppression, etc. That might have been the start of Reindeer Sweaters.

We’ve had rime ice on the trees in the valley with freezing fog the past two nights. The inversion going on has been insane! Day two of stout inversion. Yesterday the highs at the ASOS were all 13F to 15F....the high at Mansfield was 28F. The summit was beautiful near 30F while it was an icebox in town. Last night it dropped only to 16F at the summit, but -8F here at home. Here’s a photo from yesterday from my coworker above the frigid cold:

A ton? I don’t know much about that climo but I also don’t feel like they are ripping out 4-8” lake effect and upslope events with regularity....or maybe just no one mentions it. I could see more 1-3” type squalls but I’ll definitely start to pay more attention if they get a ton of snow from that.

The bolded seems to have some red flags for me. How do you go from a 50-year average of 100” to getting only one winter of 100” in the next 20 years?

I remember 12-14” near ALB on that New Years Eve storm in 2000. Not huge but for New Years Eve pretty fun. For holiday snow I’ll never beat the 12/25/2002 in my lifetime...no matter where I live I think getting two feet on Xmas Day will be hard to top. Grass blades showing that morning turned into 4 foot snowbanks at 10pm along the driveway.

I’d hit another 2010-11 winter so hard, haha. We had 150”+ in Stowe Village (JSpin there with 197”).... it snowed all winter. Thundersnow, a couple 20-36” upslope events, massive synoptic storms. This is a truly underrated winter...deep snowpack all year, peaking at 40” even in the mountain valleys. The 2010-11 total snow map just looks like an upslope prog. Every event over-produced it seemed. Even the SNE storms in Jan brought 8-12” each it seemed.

That looks like Christmas should, nice. IMO the depth is largely irrelevant once you can’t see the grass.

Looks like the ASOS up here outside the Champlain Valley all had highs in the single digits (7-8F). Currently 3F down in town with winds still hitting 10mph or higher. It was a truly brutal day to be outside.

Mansfield sensor just above the top of the chairlift is showing -16F, gusts to 75mph and a wind chill of -57F right now. Hard pass on skiing today.

Walking the dog by headlamp tonight...certainly a wintry vibe with a couple inches of fresh this afternoon and evening. About a half a foot from the past two days.

Snow ending and the time. So you get a beginning and an end time, with minutes after :00 top of hour.

Haha, good point, you asked. Is it followed by a number? If so then it's snow beginning and the minute of the hour it did. Like SNB38 should be snow beginning at 38 minutes after the hour.

Is that snow beginning?

Going to pow town on the mountain. Finally feels like NNE winter out there.

At the mountain when it hit we had to pretty much stop skiing. Pure whiteout in all senses of the word.

Good 3” so far in the Stowe Base area this afternoon.

Some incredible snow growth with these blossoming snow showers. Like 1” diameter fluff flakes. Stacking up like potato chips in a bag...half air.

Best totals are in NVT near Canada... Morgan...9.5” Derby... 7.8” Westfield...7.0”

Just beautiful snow globe out there this morning. Looks like a healthy 4” or so. Sparkling pow. All models continue to show high end snow squalls this afternoon up here.

This was at 3.25-3.5" a little while ago (maybe 30-45 min ago)... the latest burst probably has it pushing 4". Not big snow for Dec 17th up here, but it does look like this will lock in a white Christmas. We'll see what the squalls tomorrow bring.

In a hurricane it’s usually warm out and you have a lot more hours of daylight. Losing power in mid winter, no thanks. That’s a much different animal than in August.

Yeah I saw BTV had some reports of 4-5” earlier in that band. Nice event. 3” here so far and 4” snow depth. At least it’s looking like winter out.