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RIC_WX

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Posts posted by RIC_WX

  1. 2 hours ago, katabatic said:

    Yeah the forecast, with the exception of a couple nights next week, looks foreboding for folks at Wisp. It was packed today and my husband was on Lift 3 working...they all said the same thing. At least last season we had some cold air in March which allowed them to stay open until late March (barely), but that looks completely absent this year. I got 2.4" today so far in MLP which was a pleasant surprise, so maybe we'll have more surprises down the line. 

    Taking my son to WISP tomorrow and telling him to expect his last turns of the year.  Shame the high expectations for this season didn’t entirely pan out.

    • Sad 1
  2. 1 hour ago, nj2va said:

    Really great winter day here.  Upslope snow most of the morning/early afternoon before the sun broke through in the mid afternoon for a bit.  But there’s been bouts of moderate to heavy snow showers for the last several hours where we’ve picked up 1.5” of new snow.  

    Currently 15 degrees with gusty winds and light snow. 

    All things considered, we’ve actually done pretty well this year given how warm it’s been.  We’ve basically scored every single time it got cold.  Only problem is it hasn’t been cold much.  It’s rotten compared to our expectations but unless March-April is wall to wall torch we should be within striking distance of climo, or at least a respectable season.

    • Like 1
  3. 1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:

     

    Look, right now it looks like I was very wrong.  I might end up giving myself an F for this winter if things do not turn around.  

    Very, very very few forecasters earned anything close to a passing grade this season and I would bet many of the ones who did were contrarian just to bet the long odds, not to have any scientific reasoning behind it.  The reasoning was sound but the outcome ultimately, was wrong.

  4. 34 minutes ago, Ji said:

    i think it was more for snow than cold. You can have warm winters with alot of snow

    But you can't have a lot of snow without days that feature some cold air.  At Dulles, 57 days have been AN and 17 days have been BN since 12.1.  And that is against the 1991+ normals which are way warmer than recent past decades.  Its been an overwhelmingly warm and wet winter, blame it on whatever you want but we have seen Nino's like this in the past and should only expect them to be even worse today given the overwhelming warm bias to begin with.

    • Like 2
  5. 1 minute ago, nj2va said:

    Colorado powder with these ratios. Should hit a foot+.

     

    Enjoying the last weekend of deep winter up here before we relax the pattern.  Its been ramping up all day long, the last couple squalls being the best to watch.  When the wind eases up, its eerily quiet outside with all the snowcover

    • Like 2
  6. 3 minutes ago, Ji said:


    Haven’t even seen moderate snow since I woke up. Disappointing

    It was ripping at 5A and probably a while before.  Sorry you missed it.  Cleared my truck off and it was covered before I could get out of the driveway.

  7. 15 minutes ago, nj2va said:

    Temp down to 21. Sitting on the porch with a hot toddy watching the snow fall. My partner said I’m crazy - I told him just wait til I stay up til 1a tonight to track 1” of snow at home Tuesday.

    Short video from the porch:
     

    Just in from 3 hours of crust busting shoveling.  Haven’t touched the deck yet, may save it for tomorrow as I am beat.  The driveway and ingress/egress to cabin however are open for business.

    22/12 with wind gusts to about 40 and steady upslope snow showers.  This is about as wintery as I have seen it up here since the arctic front on 12.23.2022

    • Like 3
  8. 11 minutes ago, katabatic said:

    Saw another post that higher up towards the lake, it's snow, but here in MLP, it's still 100% ZR. Just went outside and as would be expected, if the road isn't treated like mine (I live on a street with only one other house), it's a skating rink. If you venture out, hoping for safe, safe travels for you/family. 

    25/21 and rain here, but mixing back with snow during the heavier returns 

    • Like 1
  9. 41 minutes ago, MN Transplant said:

    Does anyone just buy a lot and plop down a pre-fab house?

    It’s arguably what I did - pre cast superior wall foundation and ordered modular construction unfinished.  At the time, this was actually the fastest of the available alternatives.  It actually got a lot harder in 2021-22 because of the Covid and supply chain backlogs.  I finalized my design and order in September 2020 and the box sections were delivered in April of 2021.  People ordering a few weeks after me waited 12-24 months.

    The problem is it still took 2 years to finish it and by the time it was all set up I was already a year in.

    I suspect it could be easier today because of interest rates throttling some of the demand both for local labor and the factory built box sections.  But it’s pretty difficult to find contractors that want to work on any projects less than seven figures anymore.  At least here.

    I learned a ton doing this and would do it again in a heartbeat, just not in a location quite so isolated as this.

    • Like 2
  10. 36 minutes ago, nj2va said:

    Holy moly, $46k?  We replaced our existing wooden deck (that was part of the original build of the house in 2006) with a Trex deck this summer for ~$30k and it took 4 weeks to finish.  We used a local contractor that came recommended to us from other contractors we’ve used for projects on our house.

    I think real estate is wildly overpriced here but its all driven by demand of the lake, Wisp, and four season activities.  As long as rental demand continues to be high, prices won’t budge much.  This is a pendulum so I do think eventually the market will saturate and/or a recession will hit that cuts back on second home/investment property activity and vacations.  Even with the improvements we’ve made, we’d still make a hefty profit from what we bought at in 2016 with how high prices have ballooned.  

    And its not just here - even Canaan has seen prices rise dramatically since covid.

    Timing is everything.  House across from me sold in 2019 and he believes he can sell for 2x the 2019 price.  And I think once interest rates level off a bit he probably will.

    Agreed the short term rental market is robust and definitely justifies the valuations.  Those $500K townhomes are examples of that.  I suspect plenty of homeowners there take 6-8 weekends a year, rent out as many of the rest as they can and still probably make money or at least break even.  
     

    I did go for cable rail around my deck, including 2 full length staircases and admittedly that was expensive just for the materials.  I did not do Trex however and will have to refinish every couple summers I suspect.  With any luck the cable railing will survive the climate up here and look good for a long time.

    • Thanks 1
  11. 2 minutes ago, jayyy said:


    Even more so for temps Ji. The OP GFS significantly busted high on my temps leading up to Christmas Called for mid 50s and my area was in the 42-45 range most days.

    It certainly busted low on temps for the Potomac Highlands this past entire week from a lead time of 3-4 days - it had snowshowers here starting 12.26 that in actuality will maybe occur on the 29th or 30th.

    I actually agree you are correct though, I do think areas in the eastern portion of the subforum did see perhaps legitamately colder temperatures at times during December than you might have reasonably anticipated, blunting recognition of just how disasterous the pattern evolution actually was the final 10 days of the month.

    • Like 1
  12. 2 hours ago, Terpeast said:

    Great post. I visited Deep Creek last year for my snow fix and it was really fun and nice. We loved it. So we looked at real estate prices, and I'm sorry, but those houses are waaaaaay overpriced. Even more stupidly priced than closer into the DMV area (which is high priced for valid reasons).

    Not really overpriced.  I doubt I could sell my place for a whole lot more than what I put in it.  And this is not accounting for my sweat equity, which was substantial.  I did 100% of the HVAC, floorcovering, painting and trim installation, 50% of the drywall install and finishing, at least 50% of the electrical / plumbing rough in and finishing.  I rented heavy equipment and cleared 90% of the lot - because it was covid, because I had the time, because there was no one else to do it and I wanted it done!  The big outsourced projects were things like well and septic, roofing and gutters, exterior siding and soffits, etc.

    Eventually, frustrated with our pace of progress my wife convinced me to outsource having a deck built around the cabin perimeter (like almost every other place up here has).  It cost $46K and took almost 9 months to complete.  No doubt this could have been completed for maybe 50%-70% of this cost in Leesburg and maybe taken a month.  Because there are contractors everywhere, there is immigrant labor, there are building materials available on demand, the weather is benign, makeup any excuse you want.

    Go drive through basecamp, or even the comparatively cheaper properties irrespective if they have lake access or not.  There are empty lots everywhere ready to build.  Now ask the realtor trying to sell you these lots why.  They won't tell you.  Because if you heard the honest answer, most people would conclude they could never pull it off, because...most can't.  Either because they don't have the time, or the patience, or the capital, or the expertise, or whatever.  And that's why, when you find a property for sale, it appears overpriced.

  13. 1 hour ago, stormy said:

    The historic Jan. 66 blast didn't begin until Jan. 22.    During the next 2 weeks we had nearly 40 inches of snow.  Everybody needs to settle down and be patient!

    Being conscious of my tone, we should probably be very cautious when referencing analogs from what was objectively the coldest decade of the entire 20th century and attempting to apply them to modern times.  

    • Like 5
    • Haha 1
  14. 42 minutes ago, IronTy said:

    I've been saying this for years but I might as well be howling at the moon.  The warming ocean WILL help produce monster snowstorms...up until a point.  And then it'll be just too warm to snow at all and we'll only end up as rain.  We had a blowout season in 09-10 and the NE had one five years later like I expected.  And it's generally sucked since then.  Now we're in the rain-only phase.   Might as well embrace it and welcome the arrival of anoles and geckos followed by larger and ever more dangerous reptiles as the years go by.  

    The consensus in the 1970s was we were heading into another ice age and not much would stop it.  50 years later now look at us.

    If it was about to turn hard in another direction again how would anyone know?  And if it’s cold again in 50 years but we’re all dead anyway does it even matter?  Probably not

  15. 1 hour ago, mdhokie said:

    Not gonna deb the LR thread, but so far this is actually a worse ski season than last year. It is becoming apparent that this coming weekend will be cooler but not enough to repair the machine made snowpack. 

    It doesn’t really look like it will be cold enough to fire the snow guns before Sunday night either.  I am sure they are going to try and stay open this weekend at wisp but this fog and mid 40s temps is for sure going to eat the snowpack alive, whatever is remaining over there.  A sad reprisal of 2021 it appears for new years.

    • Like 2
  16. 1 hour ago, EastCoast NPZ said:

    I don't think you can count on Deep Creek having snow either.

    Deep creek hasn’t even been below freezing since Saturday morning.

    They are also on track to finish December at 50%-75% of normal precip which is only noteworthy because of the positive anomaly 100 miles east.

    There are many ways to score but and east storm track and a generalized torching of the source region north and west isn’t one of them.

    • Like 1
  17. 2 hours ago, Bob Chill said:

    My only problem with deep creek is traffic/people.

    It's really only bad like that a handful of weeks a year, and very predictable.  Most of the time there is hardly anybody around.  Once away from the lake its even sparser.

    But yes, on a 3 day holiday weekend in the summertime, you can't even get cell service.  And boy do the city dwellers get mad when they show up and can't find anywhere to charge up their toy cars.

    • Haha 2
  18. If you decide to build at Deep Creek, recognize that it’s a 3 year process that is difficult to expedite under almost any circumstances.  The contractors here are a very tight and closed network, and care more about steady work than starting or finishing anything on time.  And there is an acute labor shortage here unlike anything you have observed in the city or suburbs/exurbs.  Anything already finished and for sale usually will require significant renovations, especially if it was previously rented, and often carry significant price premiums making new construction appear competitive (until you actually try and build something).

    We bought our lot in summer 2020, and had provisional occupancy (read: unfinished) in Summer of 2021.  I was an active participant in construction and did about 40% of the work myself and subcontracted as much as I could.  That said, there are still significant areas of my project that remain unfinished to this day which I think is typical for up here.  The pace of work has slowed considerably, mostly just due to demands on my time and the fatigue of a multi year build.  I still think many who I talk to would argue my outcome is on the better side of average balancing what I have invested and what we’ve managed to get finished thus far.

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 4
  19. 10 minutes ago, jayyy said:

    This window (2nd-8th) has looked like the first serviceable window for quite some time now if you’re looking for a legitimate snow threat outside of the western highlands. 

    Its not snowing in the western highlands.  It hasn't snowed in the western highlands for a week.  It's no longer forecasted to snow in the western highlands before Friday or Saturday or Sunday or Monday.  In fact, it's the same temperature in the highlands as it is in the lowlands nearly this entire week, which lends itself to +15 or greater departures out here.

    Go back and look at the models from December 10 / 15 / 20-/ 24th for the highlands and tell me the can hasn't been kicked.  It's kicked out of the medium range every time this season except for maybe the underperforming event December 18-19.  

    I am sorry that ground truth is defeating the modeled predictions for more favorable conditions in the medium range.

    • Thanks 1
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