katabatic

Light snow with round 2 has begun. Picked up 1.4" yesterday/last night. Currently 32.3.

Exactly - they are midcity/downtown prices in McHenry/DCL without any business or industry to support it. It is exclusively DC and Pittsburgh money that comes in during the weekend and holidays. Mountain Lake Park and Oakland might as well be on the other side of the moon as it relates to DCL. But, you can say that about most resort locales across the country. I love it here overall, but since this post was about buying a home for a snow town, I was playing the pity party part. As a point of reference, in Alpine Lake, for $300,000, you can still get quite a bit of house. A small condo in McHenry starts at a half-million and since this is/will be my permanent home, I do not want to live beside an Airbnb. You can still Airbnb in Alpine Lake, but at least they are all single family homes and you won't hear the other person's toilet flush.

I chose Garrett County area to move to permanently because (at least for now) I can work remotely and am obsessed with winter weather. Deep Creek has absolutely zero long term rentals so I ended up south, in Mountain Lake Park. I know you are looking to buy, but that's the real estate world here as prices literally doubled over Covid. A word of caution though - this is my second winter and TBH it has failed literally every expectation I had in terms of winter weather. My expectations, apparently, were wayyyyy too lofty. Almost without exception, the upslope events are 1-2, maybe 3 inches tops and then within a day or two, melts into a giant muddy mess and everything - everything - is just filthy from the road crap to the muddy yard. I know I haven't been here for very long but for you to invest that kind of money in a snow town, this pales in comparison to Davis/Canaan. I'm sure you follow the Davis 3SE weather report and he already has 37 or so inches. IMBY I have had a little over 15...and Wisp reports 19. The county could be drawn in half - the northern half are the million dollar vacation homes, the south (where I am) is small town America with much more reasonable housing prices. If you are in it for the snow, Davis/Canaan without a doubt. As others have said, if you yearn for activities, Deep Creek is it. The other area you might consider is Alpine Lake. I call it a poor man's Deep Creek just over the border in WV. Houses are half (or less) of Deep Creek/Davis areas and if I am going to end up staying here long term, that is most likely where I will buy to put down roots. Alpine Lake is mega quiet, however...more quiet than Davis/Canaan but as @Bob Chill wrote, I, too, am looking for quiet and solitude and that fits the bill for me personally. My guess is Alpine Lake gets 30% more snow on an annual basis than MBY as it is a bit higher and gets the first dose of the GL moisture.

Today's high of 46 felt colder w/the thick midlevel overcast most of the day. Before the clouds rolled in, another chilly morning where we bottomed out at 13.8.

I do well when there is an inversion/decoupling because MLP is in a bit of a bowl relative to the surrounding topography.

Drove through Davis to Canaan yesterday afternoon. Beautiful. Hope this scene replays for all of us soon.

10.8 here. Second coldest thus far. Kinda sad I’m already looking past Christmas (my fave holiday) because of the possibility (probability?) of a really good stretch coming up, but hey, it’s who we are.

Kinda cool what the wind did with the snow overnight on my porch. Ended up with 5.1”. Still chilly (24.8) with a few lonely flurries dancing about.

Hmm. Just a dusting so far. Stars are out (had a beautiful sunset too). Wonder if we will end up busting low on this one.

30.4 with a few off and on flakes in Southern GC. Some convective returns west of here so hopefully the show is about to begin.

0.44" in the bucket. 34.2 (falling from 39.0 at midnight) and as @nj2va mentions above, it is the post-intermission part of this storm out here that'll count.

Keep it going! Success begets success. I am down 293 pounds since 2014 and have kept it off. No surgery or anything - just a true lifestyle change. I love hiking… it’s obviously excellent exercise but it’s so refreshing that it often doesn’t feel like real work.

It could be colored by Lindsay Lohan after a week long bender as long as it verifies.

Looks to get interesting here in the Boonies once this puppy lifts north of our latitude.

CPCs 3-4 week outlook was equally sobering. Takes us through 50% of met winter with no sustained cold in sight.

This is well written. Meteorology - at its core - is about the study of heat transfer. I am in banking for my 'real job' and at our core all we do is buy and sell money. That's it. Now with both professions, there are spider legs that extend far beyond our core study to make them both endlessly complex. An important part of that complexity is when you inject as much heat as we have into the world over the last 30 years and especially the last 5-10, the physics of how heat is transferred throughout the oceans and atmosphere must change in response. Oceans have absorbed what, 90% of the heat added in that time? And they are acting funny. I do not think anyone can decipher what and how this will exactly impact our local climate this winter and the years following, but what was said above hits the nail on the head. It is simply too warm and when you are in/on the margins as we are here in the MA, it doesn't take a whole lot to knock us off our rocker. Nobody knows with any level of certainty what will happen more than 2 weeks out and we may still get lucky with aligning stars as the winter progresses - hell, I moved to Oakland primarily for the snow - so, I hope we do. But when you add so much heat to an already delicately balanced world, the atmospheric response we've seen in the past decade will likely be an ever-intensifying mirror of what is reflecting back on us now.

19.4 this morning allowing the Wisp snow guns to fire all night long. My husband is a ski lift operator there (yep, same guy who is from the equator...gah, the irony). It opens for the season tomorrow. The short-mid range forecast seems to be marginally serviceable(!?) for them to not turn into an ankle deep mud puddle over the next few weeks before we (god, I hope) get some opportunities for real help from Mother Nature.

2.4" with a surprising (and not inconsequential) amount of -ZR this morning. There was enough so that even on paved surfaces that weren't treated, you were slipping and sliding. A pretty side effect was it encased the snow on the trees so even with a bit of a breeze, the scenery was still quite beautiful.

The drive to/from Davis was just awesome. Roads there were totally snow covered and it was easily moderate, if not heavy, snowfall. Back here in the Boonies, roads are just starting to cave with maybe 1/2 inch so far and snowing moderately. 31.5 currently. My husband is from Ecuador (Quito) and had never seen snow until coming here in 2018 (his condo is in the Southern Hemisphere while his job was in the Northern Hemisphere). It is 72/48 there every single day. To say he doesn't get my snow obsession is an understatement but he was a trooper...came with me in the truck. Tootling around in the snow listening to Christmas music was a good time.

All snow, 32.7. Since it's only about 25 minutes away and I am obsessed with this sh*t, going to take a little drive to Davis and Canaan and see how they are faring. Just bought a new 4x4 (and my deductible is reasonable) so let's test it out.

The changeover in Garrett County has begun. One observation of note: the temperature drop, while steady, has hardly been precipitous. I averaged ~2 degrees per hour over the last ~10 hours (54.3 to 36.3 now). Hoping for folks still in the 50s, the gradient sharpens east of the BR so the cold air overlaps with the moisture for as long as possible.

I wasn't paying attention this morning and surprised that my temp has gone from 54.3 early this morning to 44.4 currently. It'll be interesting to see how this pans out here in southern Garrett County. 0.30" in the bucket so far.

Pretty scene this morning. 2.4” with occasional very light snow continuing. 7.7” for the year so far.

SN- continues. 0.8" so far. 31.8/30.8. What's unusual is not a breath of wind. Makes it really nice to take a walk.

^^He ain't kidding. Late fall and early winter are pretty gloomy here in the Boonies. But, at least for today the clouds have begun to produce some light snow. 33.8.