powderfreak

Ha, interesting you say that because I was like that in Burlington during college and then the two years after UVM that I lived there. After a while you realize how it works the more frustrating part is not being involved *at all*. I actually enjoy the difference between mountain and town. I mean, it is just as close as a lot of people are to their nearest major supermarket in any suburb. As a meteorology weenie, there really is so much small micro-scale stuff that is absolutely fascinating. I think what also helps is although the snow is significantly less than it is just up the road...you are still on the higher end of snowfall for a large portion of the population. BTV to me was much more frustrating because there you weren't getting anything. Forget 2sm -SN with dim moon all night long leading to 2" on the car in the morning and 4-6" at the mountain from some weak-sauce shortwave, at BTV you had 10sm bright moon....and I gotta say, growing up in the Hudson Valley where Logan11 crushed me in every event, you appreciate the number of flakes that fall from the sky. Like you said, I also spend so much time up there... at least 6 days per week during daylight hours during the winter...that it is essentially home as well. There's also something appealing about knowing the mountain is getting more snow. As a hardcore skier (130-150 days per season I have skis on my feet), the snow at the mountain is more important anyway. For a non-skier, I bet it would be a bit more of an issue to be so close to big snows, haha. I can enjoy watching it fall and shoveling it, but I can't enjoy it in my yard like I can on the mountain. There are a couple rare times when home gets more snow due to some weird flow/inversion level and I find myself more annoyed by that. I can't ski that, haha.

Sort of reminds me of a stretch this past winter that brought snow to the mountain on 21 of 23 days...with 80" at 1,500ft and 108" at 3,000ft during those three weeks. At the end of it we just needed a break, haha. My wife hated me...every 5 minutes looking outside because even if it was just 3sm -SN at home it would be 1-2"/hr up at the office. Highly localized period of crush. I still can't believe I had 375" at the 3,000ft board when the winter before I only had 153".

That's the way to run a snowstorm...love when you spend a while tracking a big one but once you get that post storm depression, you realize there's one right behind it.

Wasn't there a decent 6-12" event like 4 days after the early March 2001 biggie? I have a lot of AFDs from BTV that month and it's insane how everything trended snowier leading up to events...starting with 3/5/2001 which was going smoke cirrus in a lot of VT even 48-72 hours prior. In reality all of VT got like 20-40". Then there were two more big bombs that had over 24" each for the mountains I think on 3/22 and 3/30. Both of those looked like rain or something other than snow based on reading the AFDs a few days out.

Similar ratio here, lol. 2.8" frozen on 1.40" liquid. I think we had mostly freezing rain in that that then switched over to a mix of very wet snow and sleet. I lost some branches around the yard from the ice.

This is awesome! Been a while since I've seen a sight like that at home with wet snow that isn't like 3-5" but 8"+. It's not a true blue bomb until the windward side of the trees have 6" of paste going up and down the trunks. I get to see that on the mountain all the time (not that hard when you have the ability to search up to 4,000ft in elevation to find the rain/snow line) but haven't had one in the valley at home in a while. I love going just like 300-500ft higher in elevation from the actual rain/snow line and its just pure paste on everything. By the time you are 1,000ft above the rain/snow line its back over to pretty much powder. Would love to see a good blue bomb at home one of these seasons. Like a solid 8-12" of pure cake.

Ahhh the March storm named Stella...that's remembered around here by skiers like Nemo in 2013 in SNE. I recorded 37" at 1,500ft and 52" at 3,000ft in 48 hours. BTV was over 30" too. We actually got a bit shafted in town with 20" as the best banding was in the Champlain Valley down to BGM. Huge gradient in the few miles from here to the base of the mountain. That storm even went a bit too far NW for areas east of the crest lol....though 20" in my yard was still the biggest storm here since March 2011 brought 27".

That period did really nothing for us up here, grasshoppers with patience are still waiting lol.We know the Sultan of Frigidair will sniff out any potential well in advance.

When are you ever down on a possible snowstorm?

If it was a deep uniformed easterly flow with no inversion as I think Will mentioned earlier, you'd definitely have an unblocked flow. Probably centering the heaviest QPF over the crest with equal amounts on east and west slopes, or maybe even favoring the lee side a little bit due to the strong wind causing drift. But then you'd see a very sharp QPF gradient as you got to the end of that spill over.

That thread is a good one with the amount of uncertainty even as it started. Those are always the fun ones to re-read. No one is really sure what's about to happen.

It's funny knowing your posting style now after the past three winters of big storms and snow, and posting back in 2011-2013 until Feb. like a complete reversal in the winter threads with confidence now. I'm going the exact other way, haha. I was confident after 2010-2011 winter, and even '11-'12 wasn't as bad here as elsewhere with a couple big events (upslope). The past few winters I've definitely been getting more and more jaded and antsy for a good run. January 2014 was the worst for me haha.

Fascinating. I don't know what the distances are around those parts, but very cool that the west slope of the ORH/Tolland Hills (eastern CT Valley) had that much more precip from spillover before the more severe effects of sinking air took over. Probably right on the gradient between 3-4" QPF and 1-2" in the valley bottom. Would've been awesome to see in modern days with the amount of CoCoRAHS observers, could plot a very good liquid equiv map.

Jeez.... that's got caking damage written all over it.

Wow that's some moisture. How'd Moosup do?

Ahhh that is much different than what I was envisioning from MetHerb's post. Yeah that's definitely a downslope screw job then. I thought the valley had 2-3" of QPF. Disregard my previous post lol.

True, especially in such a tight rain/snow line. I'd be curious to see total QPF values plotted, but if what MetHerb said about getting 2.5" QPF and very little snow, that's still a huge QPF event for December. The down sloping probably did add 0.5-1.0F though to relative elevations in the valley compared with east of the ORH hills and that's all it takes when it's an already very marginal situation. But did eastern Mass have higher QPF, better forcing and dynamic effects? The CT valley definitely would've had some compressional warming, but it doesn't sound like they were dim sum while the hills were pounding if they still pulled 2"+ QPF. What did BDL have for liquid? Was CEF around back then?

Ahhh ok so it wasn't necessarily a downslope valley event but more a pure elevation event. I usually put downslope in the "it doesn't precipitate much" category while moisture gets wrung out on the slopes. Not sure what anyone classifies that storm as.So massive QPF event with a very tight rain/snow line. Obviously probably some upslope assist in dynamic cooling, and compressional warming on the downside, but I love those tight snow lines. We see those gradients on the mountain but it's much more dramatic when it happens in populated areas so close to the surface. Rain below 2,000ft and 30" of snow at 3,000ft isn't as dramatic as rain at sea level and 30" at 1,000ft. Reminds me of the April 2012 upslope event at Stowe where the office at 1,500ft had 3" of like white water, but it was 18"+ just 500ft higher at 2kft, and 30"+ above 2,500ft. Total QPF was almost 4" at the summit Coop. One of the highest QPF events I've ever seen from orographics. No thermal advection, just a steady state heavy precip event where heavy rates can only bring the snow level down so far.

That thing is still going? Never would've thought.

The Catskills and Helderbergs are underrated for snow as we don't hear much out of those areas, especially with Logan/Rick posting less. They have some huge events and may even be better at E/SE upslope flow than the Berkshires. There are a lot of inhabited towns at 1,500ft+ and even 2,000+ feet. Mountains are 3-4,000ft. They get crushed in a lot of the big synoptic storms, especially prolonged east flow.

What were total QPF amounts? Was it that no precip fell in the valleys or was it rain?I honestly can't really fathom that map. That's more obscene gradients than our upslope precipitation events in the Greens. Would've loved to see a radar loop of that entire storm. Like what would a vertical profile look like to have so much blocked air over the terrain to wring out that much snow, yet be able to downslope the valleys so much. That takes a very special set of circumstances (inversion levels or slight veering winds) more than just saying east flow upslope/downslope.

Yeah the thing with orographics and relatively small uplift (say 1,000ft of terrain change) is that you need to have a way for the air to "pile up" to reap the benefits. With such a small terrain change, it's not hard for air to flow freely over the "barrier." You need to block it up with an inversion and/or veering winds...like you said with a cap around 3,000ft. I would imagine the best effects are with ENE winds at the SFC up to 900mb, but veering SW to SE flow above that...to really get that air to "pile up" on the windward facing slopes. Up here I get screwed on the east side when the veering winds are too low in the atmosphere as its blocked on the west side. I want my inversion more at like 7,000ft...enough to pile up air but also let it get over the 4,000ft spine.

Yeah the thing with orographics and relatively small uplift (say 1,000ft of terrain change) is that you need to have a way for the air to "pile up" to reap the benefits. With such a small terrain change, it's not hard for air to flow freely over the "barrier." You need to block it up with an inversion and/or veering winds...like you said with a cap around 3,000ft. I would imagine the best effects are with ENE winds at the SFC up to 900mb, but veering SW to SE flow above that...to really get that air to "pile up" on the windward facing slopes. Up here I get screwed on the east side when the veering winds are too low in the atmosphere as its blocked on the west side. I want my inversion and wind shift more at like 7,000ft...enough to pile up air but also let it get over the 4,000ft spine. Often in a deep layer uniform flow the orographic effects are much less....I'm not sure what the profile looked like for March 2013 storm, but that set up didn't scream orographics to me. More like deep layer firehose and synoptic screw zones, not upslope/downslope.

Yeah you want that look of what is going on from ORH northward...uniform topographic rises that can force a whole bunch of air up and over. The barrier needs to be sufficiently long to stop air from just going around the barrier, too.Looking at where he is, on a more isolated bump at the edge of the chain, there's really nothing there that would indicate even on a southerly/SE/SW flow it would make much difference. There's still not a "wall" big enough to do anything appreciable in enhancing QPF in any way. You can see the "purple" areas on that map are probably the spots where any enhancement occurs.

This is what upslope looks like on a seasonal scale. Just look at Washington County...there's an over 100" spread in seasonal snow total from the western county line and eastern county line. And the ones on the western county line like J.Spin and Hanksville are actually at lower elevations than the spots to the east. Where else can you get 180-196" at 400-900ft elevation while 1,000+ft gets 80-100"...all in the same county? Even in Stowe we had a 100" spread over about 5 miles (actually 176" over 5 miles and 3kft difference), but that's the norm around these parts with orographics.