wxmanmitch

5 hours ago, Fozz said:

I'm planning to head up to Northern New England this weekend into early next week, and will most likely be at Wildcat and Mt Snow.

There's some very nice upslope on the latest 3k NAM, with up to 20" on Mt. Washington. But I have a question... in these upslope events, how much can I expect at Wildcat, which seems to be in the shadow of it?

Most of the snow you see on the 3 km NAM is bogus. If it were real, I'd be up around 350-400" for the season, lol. I'm where those dark blues are in eastern Bennington County.

Maybe the mountains up north including Mt. Washington see some snow showers with a few inches, but I don't think this will be a significant upslope weekend. Wildcat tends to get that NW flow upslope too, so a few inches (but not 20"+) is possible.

Edit: I see you'll be at Mt. Snow too. We don't normally get as much upslope as Wildcat down here, but there could be some light snow showers here too. Not expecting much, if any, accumulation though.

High of 47.8° F even with nearly full sunshine this afternoon, but we are starting to get some high cirrus now though. The valleys were in the upper 50s to near 60. It actually felt a little hot in the sun, since I was dressed for 40-42° F and overcast like it was prior to noon.

The roads are getting soft and muddy today. They were still hard this morning, but the sun and snowmelt has softened the roads to the point where you get those ruts. Therefore, I declare today the beginning of mud season.

Tentatively, I'd give this winter a C+. Novie was epic (especially with that 2 footer I had right after Turkey Day), but December was a ratter. January was decent, but nothing special. February and March have been disappointing with nothing over 6". We had no measurable snow for 2 weeks in early February, which must be a hard feat to pull off up here.

At least we've had a steady, uninterrupted snow pack and no mega February torches like the past two seasons. The hard snow pack has been good for snow mobiling, and the ski areas got a good base established early.

Totally envious of that Colorado storm! That is AWESOME! Put that beast over Cape Cod and Islands...

How come New England never gets storms like this anymore?

2.0" of surprise upslope fluff here this morning. Still flurrying even now. I really didn't think I'd get in on any of the action down here, but alas we did. 

Measuring was a pain due to the wind and fluffy nature of the snow, but 2.0" was the average with a range from 1" to 3.5".

4 hours ago, dendrite said:

Nice Mitch. If you're gonna go up you may as well go all the way like you did. 2200ft is a weenie place to live.

 

Are you signed up for CWOP yet? It'd be cool to see your obs on the meso sites.

Yes, FW4288 is my ID.

Snow pack depth average is around 30" with a range from 26-35". It is a solid glacier below the top 6-8" and you can walk on top of it without ever really sinking in. I have my Davis VP2 sensor suite 8' up and it is at about eye level. I'm 5' 8". The snow pack was about 4-4.5' deep last year at this time, but the pack was much softer and didn't have as much water in it. I've had at least 1" of snow OTG since November 9th, which is now 123 days straight.

The snow blower path to the propane tank is a little over 3' deep. Meanwhile, there's not much left in the valleys. Just a few inches of crap that will likely be completely gone by the end of the week with the impending warm up. No melting here today with a brief high of 33.3° F. Now 28.3° F with light upslope snow.

3.0" here, which is a little more than I thought last night. Snow never really transitioned completely to sleet. It mixed in at times, but it stayed pretty much all snow. Going back and forth between snizzle and freezing drizzle now, 25.8° F. 

35.4° F high on my Davis today off a low of 14.7° F, which is a decent diurnal variation for my mountainside location. 

The elevation difference in the snow pack is becoming more noticeable now as it typically does with my pack between 30-35" and the valleys at 4-8" with bare spots in the sunny areas. Although this year the gradient has been larger than normal between my spot and the valleys on the west slope. I don't think North Adams and Bennington have had more than about 40-45" of snow for the season (if that) while I've had 116.3". Pittsfield has had a little more from elevation and upslope (50-55"?) though.

A lot of this difference is attributable to the elevation storms in Novie and an upslope storm in January. Likely a little of it to the SWFEs but those have been more latitude dependent than elevation dependent.

I don't think I get more than an inch or two of junk tomorrow AM as the midlevels look sketchy and lift is limited. The high res NAM is hitting the mountains with upslope Monday and into Tuesday AM, but as usual, I'm not really buying it. Maybe I get a little bit, but the northern Greens and Whites could get a few inches though.

-1.4° F this morning.

Lets keep winter going please! I want 6 more weeks of cold and snow like last year so we can keep mud and black fly season to a minimum. 

Last April was like deep winter here with lots of chilly days in the 30s and nights well below freezing in the teens and 20s. Once the rubber band snapped at the start of May, spring came in a hurry going from deep snow pack to leaf out in about 2 weeks, which is how I'd like to do it every year. Long drawn out mud seasons suck.

116.3". 

4.5" of fluff on the board this morning. Not bad. Depth at my stake (in the shade) is 38-39". 

It was sunny an hour ago, but now we're cloudy with some light snow grains that aren't showing up on radar. This is probably a weak orographic response on the backside.

Congrats to the SNE crew! This was supposed to be our storm 2-3 days ago, but you took this one right out from under our feet. 

Solid moderate snow with dendrites, 25° F. Looks like around 2" new. Nice little 700 mb frontogenesis band FTW. 

25.9° F, moderate snow. Good snow growth. The high was 29.4° F and the 0.6" I had from last night didn't really melt at all.

The radar looks decent. That band running through BGM may translate up here, which would be good. I still don't think I get much more than 4-5" though.

5.0" of fluff from the clipper here. Depth ranges from 25-35", with an average around 30". Not bad, but not epic either.

Hopefully Sunday night produces. My one worry is that the Saturday system strengthens too much compressing the height field SE out ahead of the 2nd storm, keeping the best snows SE of us. 18z GFS depicts this. 12z Euro would be a nice hit for most of NNE though.

Big winds today here, like a lot of places. 

I've lost a couple of trees, one a dead balsam and another red spruce (pictured). Both fell away from the house. Still getting some lake effect action, but it's not really accumulating. There was around 2" last night, as best I can tell with all of the blowing and drifting.

Heavy snow, 31.0° F. Very graupelly though. West winds have kicked in and mixed me out. Max was 32.6° F at time of FROPA, still glaze on the trees. 

My Davis anemometer was frozen in place so I had to tap it to get free again. 

I never mixed out here today ahead of the cold front, 31.8° F with fog and freezing drizzle. The high so far is 32.1° F and there's still around 0.3" of glaze on everything from earlier. 

I'll probably briefly spike when the front passes, but with the glaze still on the trees and big wind there could be a lot of issues around here. At least I have backup power now...

30° F with freezing drizzle. Breezy out of the east. 

3 km NAM gives me 12" of Kuchera derived (8" 10:1) snow tonight and tomorrow...lol. 12 km gives me about 4". Not sure I get more than 10-20% of what the 3 km NAMster gives me.

Looks like there could be some upslope snows here in the Greens tomorrow night into Monday. Unlike the failed events where it's just the 3 km NAM on board with its usual bogus orographic precipitation, the Euro and GFS seem to be showing it too (albeit to a lesser degree than the 3 km NAM). 

It will be a fast, unblocked flow so the snow may be of a more convective or streamer nature as opposed to more stratiform. Measuring will be pretty much impossible with the winds, should it occur.

3 hours ago, backedgeapproaching said:

Its a definitely been a pretty clear NW to SE gradient with regards to snowfall across NE.

76" Season to date here which is pretty much close to seasonal average-so I guess that's pretty impressive for mid-late Feb., but the amount of change over events has been frustrating

I think I've even had almost constant cover here since Nov--which is almost impossible in the valley spots west of the Greens, so that's pretty impressive with the amount of cutters thrown in.

Your location is one of the best west of the Greens for snow and retention, IMO. Having the Taconics and Mt. Equinox west of you definitely helps mitigate the easterly downsloping and torches a bit. Narrow valleys are generally much better than the wide valleys.

I've had perpetual snow cover since November 9th. It would be something if I can keep some patchy snow around until May 9th like I did last year to break the 6 month mark with snow OTG.

1.6" of crap last night brings my season total to 102.8". Depth ranges from 22-29" with an average of 25.5" The pack is solid and you can walk on it without sinking into it more than a few inches. 

I'd guess this is pretty close to average at my location, but I don't really have a climatology to go by yet that really represents this spot well. Snowfall has been above average in the North Country (correct me if I'm wrong), but below average in SNE. The depth here was around 40-42" in each of the past 2 Februarys prior to the mega torches. It got wiped down to 8-12" with bare spots in the sun each year. Then of course I had 90" in the first 2 weeks of last March, with a peak depth around 55-60". Imagine if we didn't have that damn mega torch what the depth would've been.

Statistics says that won't likely happen again for a while, but I hope we can get something decent in the first half of March that's not one of these fast moving, annoying SWFE mixers. The North Country has managed to get more snow and less mix than I have, which explains the higher totals there. A nice coastal or colder SWFE redeveloper with backside upslope would be good.

All things considered though it hasn't been a bad winter here. Not great, but not bad by any stretch of the imagination. We were able to establish a base early thanks to Snowvember, which was good for the snow mobilers and ski areas. The occasional rainy cutter and thaw have made for some sketchy periods (especially from late December through early January), but the lack of mega torches has been a life saver.

Had 0.4" of snow earlier this morning. Ended as some light freezing rain/drizzle. Now it's 35.4° and mostly cloudy.

6.0" snow/sleet total here. There must have been some freezing drizzle mixed in overnight as it got a bit crusty on top. 

Very dense, there's probably at least an inch of water in this stuff, but the snow blower handled it okay.

4.8"  of new snow/sleet. Sleet with pixie dust. Latitude FTL. Temperature creeping upward, now at 17.6° F. 

The winds have slacked off. Still breezy, but we're not getting the freight train sound from above with the occasional gusts to 30+ MPH anymore.

33 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Damn, only around 4" down there?  I had the SVT ski resorts as more.  Maybe you can get 3" of sleet now.

The NAM didn't have us getting much more than 4-5". Maybe we get a little upslope action on the backside tomorrow AM? 4.5" or so now, heavy sleet. 

The wind has definitely been a under appreciated/forecast part of this storm. Classic freight train sound coming from just above the surface. Perpendicular winds to the mountains + high inversion = wind.