powderfreak

I have no idea how you’d tell. We have 3-5 foot drifts and then nothing. Like this Smuggs photo… 2” overnight and this haha.

Just continues to blow and snow. 2” at the plots and 3 foot drifts.

High Road at midday. Wind just filling everything in between the trees. The board starts 2” off the ground, so when the whole thing fills in, it tries to capture the real snowfall. If this stake started at the packed out snow level, it would be 2” higher over most readings.

Nice, that looks like a healthy snow plot 4-6” of new snow. Scour 0” over old pack and 12” in the drifts.

It does show in the means.

You guys can clean up on the real biggies, but it can be a while between them. That’s how I look at your snow climo. Very low floor but decently high ceiling climo.

No mercy.

That’s pretty impressive to be honest. Last four years aren’t even close to normal.

Drifts and scour. Upper mountain snow plots showing 3”, Midway parking lot filling in. Who knows how much is out there.

Some truly gnarly conditions out on the hill today. 50-60mph gusts even in the base area. White out conditions and single digit temps in the parking lots. Upper mountain was just crushed by wind, no idea on actual snow accumulations because everywhere is wind affected. Wind shredding the Lift Closed banner.

I was thinking your home base must be doing well? Earlier I saw 7.6” in Jericho and 8.0” in Waterville with snow continuing. This should pack into Smuggs’ NW facing topographic bowl if the wind can stay down on that side. Meanwhile the Stowe SE facing topographic bowl and down the West Branch has been getting crushed with wind. Really hindering actual accumulations despite snowing consistently the whole time with low visibility. Even at home the flags are straight out. Like rocks in a river, the lee side is in the backside "churn" of the barrier.

I think there’s actually a decrease in “snowfall” with height because of wind and lower ratios… but doesn’t mean there’s less SWE. I saw someone say Smuggs has more snow at the base than the top, and I’m talking it through… upper elevations could be seeing wind packing that QPF into 10:1 3-4” while calm spots down lower are doing 20-30:1 of fluff. Like if you get 0.30” QPF… 700ft in Jericho is calm and 8” at almost 25:1. Meanwhile high elevations could be 3” of 10:1 wind-packed stuff. Mansfield High Road checked in with 3” of dense wind packed snow, for comparison but felt like the QPF was in there.

Yeah I dunno, maybe I’m just off. Definitely seeing much higher winds east of the crest. Maybe that’s just skewing my perception on accumulations. Would need to see where the QPF is landing. This felt blocked to me, with 3-4” just west and 0.5-1.0” just east. Like even up by Jay… Alpine Haven (1500ft) at 3.5” while Westfield at (1,100ft) just 1.0”. Same around here. J.Spin sneaks through the Winnoski gap with 3.9”. That’s like a 0.7-0.9 type Froude to me.

I'll try to look but my guess is this is closer to 0.5-0.75 for Froude. A 1.0 usually dumps more than what's happening now on the Spine itself. I think because of the Winooski River gap there you do well at a wider range of Froude numbers. This looks really blocked up to me. Edit: Looking at the NAM and GFS Froude, you're right, it's unblocking a bit throughout the day up to 1.0 or even just above later this afternoon. It was at 0.50 last night and early this morning. Then tonight it goes back down to 0.5 - 0.7 on GFS with the less mixing (overnight).... before daylight starts to mix it out and rise it back up to 1.25 at max afternoon mixing.

After the debacle that was 2014 when January had more rain than snow despite brutal cold… hanging on by a sweater in 2015. Then 2015-16… We are in a much better place these days haha.

We are getting severe downslope winds on the east side of the blocked flow. Gusts to 60mph and almost the entire ski area is shut down. Even in town, ripping 30-40mph gusts. Light snow but it’s a lot of wind.

Thats encouraging. Cars white here but still small flake size.

Old school thread start. Well done Tip.

Yeah that wouldn’t be surprising. The long duration totals into Friday will probably get there. 2-4” every period (12-24 hours)? Personally I think the GFS is way overdone on scope and total. That QPF would require a great maritime moisture feed or be on the backside of a synoptic storm. I’ve just seen these set-ups, and it’s largely just moisture slowly lapping up against the Greens. But it’s not deep moisture… so shallow low level snow will favor the west slopes and nooks and crannies through the Spine IMO. The Upper East Side will do fine but probably a strong gradient as one drops in elevation on the east slope.

The ASOS’s are registering it as haze (HZ) or mist (BR). Arctic cold just squeezing out low level moisture, of which there isn’t much but just enough? METAR KMPV 070200Z AUTO 31005KT 2 1/2SM BR OVC011 M16/M18 A2970 METAR KMPV 070155Z AUTO 32005KT 2SM HZ OVC011 M15/M18 A2970

Same here. Looks like a fog or mist. Flow is quite blocked and looks to be during this event. I’m not super high on this one… think it’s going to be small dense Arctic flakes east of the crest. We just drove back from BTV and the snowiest place on the drive was Williston on French Hill (I-89) from the rest area until you drop down into Richmond. Flakes were a bit bigger and road was covered. Everywhere else was a fine mist like visibility. Radar confirms too, the best lift is occurring like 10 miles west of the actual barrier.

This is a wild 6-hour panel.

Good point. Cant make this stuff up. Precip pattern is NW flow. When it goes prolonged SE flow, the precip pattern flips.

Hopefully one of these lifts north. Going cold and dry in SNE after the past few years, would be brutal.

Almost like a teabag up north here. Should keep flakes in the air for several days up this way.