wxmanmitch

Light snow, 33.0° F. Started as straight snow and is now sticking too. HRRR rips me until 00-01z at which point we flip to IP due to midlevel warmth. This morning's low of 26° F definitely helped to cool the surface skin temperatures a bit.

This is suddenly beginning to pique my interest here above 2K. It's going to a battle between the WAA aloft near 700-750 mb, the surface, and the dynamical cooling resulting from the heavy precipitation. I'm more concerned about the midlevel warmth...if I can overwhelm that, it'll snow parachutes down here at the surface. Mesos keep me wet snow for several hours before flipping to cold rain and then ending as some upslope snow showers Saturday AM. I may have a glacier by then if we snow, rain, and snow/freeze. Snow blower is gassed up and ready to go just in case.

I was treated to this spectacular pink/lavender sky at sunset just as the last of the rain was departing. It only lasted a few minutes, but it was easily one of the most surreal shows I've seen put on by Mother Nature. Everything was bathed in this color, which the photo doesn't pick up too well. Absolutely incredible!

Neither...why pay Ryan Maue when you have so many people (weenies and mets) posting images on social media sites like Twitter where you can see them for free?

Interesting...I never bothered to count the rings, but noted that they were pretty wide compared to other species I've cut, indicating that fir is a fast growing species. The upper part of the tree where the newer growth was had the widest rings. I have some larger firs on the property, one of which died a couple years ago by the road. It is a bit more than the diameter of my 16" chainsaw and leans toward the power lines, so I don't feel comfortable tackling it on my own. I will need to hire a tree service for that one or else ma nature could bring it down onto the wires.

Took this recently died balsam down (plus a couple of smaller ones not pictured) since it was a dry day for a change. It was a bit cold to start when I went out at 10 AM, but it recovered nicely into the low 40s with little to no wind. Unlike the other trees, this one died this year and was likely a result of the excavator burying the roots under 3 feet of fill, which cut off the supply of water and nutrients. This will kill any type of tree. Felling this tree was a little tricky since it had a slight back lean toward my propane tank, so I had to hammer in some wedges into the back cut to make sure it didn't fall backwards. Then again, I pretty much always use them on anything >= ~4" in diameter. Got it to go right where I wanted it to and I'm glad it's down because dead evergreens look like toilet brushes.

So far very meh winds here. Peak gust of 20 MPH on my new Davis VP2. 3.31" of rain in the past 3 days...like we need it. Some graupel showers rolling through from time to time. 36° F.

Hemlock is sparse at my elevation, but it does exist. I have a single small one in my spruce/fir stand. There are many more below 2K. There are lots of narrow crown firs around, and my long term goal is to thin out my woods so I can get an understory and have healthier trees.

Only 1 small hemlock on my property, but there are quite a few of them in the area, so that may indeed be the culprit.

I wasn't referring to deep winter as much as now. I've got a ton of outdoor projects (lawn planting, brush clearing, burning, raking/leaf blowing, etc.) that I couldn't get done over the past 3 months due to the constant rain/fog, and I'm trying to get as much done as possible before the snow pack establishes. I couldn't seed the back half my lawn either before it got too cold, so it'll have to wait until spring when the black flies are out to greet me. There's a lot of deadwood in the woods around the yard that needs cutting and burning. I cut down like 8 dead balsam firs and a black cherry last week, and this doesn't include those that were already on the ground. I harvested the cherry for future use, but I burned the balsams since they were partially rotten and they don't burn that well. I'm glad I cut them down because they may have blown down on my driveway or power line with the big east wind we had this past Saturday. There's more to cut too. At least with DST I get about 2-2.5 hours of daylight before dark after I get home, and that get shrunk in half on Sunday, which means less time to get stuff done. I'm not sure what's killing my balsams but pealing the dead bark back from the trees reveals lots of horizontal borer paths. There's definitely some type of boring beetle larvae in them and this "chokes" the tree to death much like Emerald Ash Borer does to the ash trees.

Ugh...I hate falling back. The hour of sleep gained for one day is not worth the steep price of it getting dark before 5 pm. I'm not a morning person and the early darkness makes it pretty much impossible to get outdoor work done in the late afternoon. We should stay on DST year round. Sunrises after 8 am won't bother me if we can have light until nearly 6.

I lost power for about 3 hours here earlier from the winds. A tree blew down somewhere near the state line on route 8 per GMP, which is an area that seems very vulnerable to fierce downslope winds and rotors during easterly mountain wave events. It's still quite windy, so I hope we don't lose power again. Glaze is gone, but I wonder if I reglaze a little overnight as we've now dropped back to 32° F off a high of 34° F. I got a picture of this very vivid rainbow near the state line as they were clearing out there thanks to downslope flow. It's neat how you go from dark skies with heavy mist to partly cloudy over the course of a couple miles. Of course the winds are stronger where things clear out. The sun likely enhances mixing too.

Just a bunch of rubbish falling out of the sky this morning. We started briefly as a snow/sleet mix but it's mostly freezing rain with some ice pellets now. Things beginning to glaze a little, 29° F and holding steady. This could get ugly. The roads are getting a little icy above about the 2,100-2,200' level. Searsburg pass on VT-8 at 2,500' is a little hairy right now. I was hoping to fire up the new snow blower, but I guess that'll have to wait.

The high res NAM going with an icy look the past few runs for many of the typical CAD spots on the eastern slopes of the mountains. Verbatim it's giving me over and inch of liquid of freezing rain as the 650-850 mb layer torches with maritime air and the low level cold gets stuck. I'm still 31° F at the surface at 06z Sunday on the 18z run! That's a sneaky ice storm if I ever saw one. I find this a rather surprising evolution as I was thinking this would be either rain or snow and not ice. I was kind of thinking things would be mixed enough to prevent ice and this event would be either a cold rain or isothermal blue snow. I'd rather have snow than ice. Hopefully the 00z will trend colder.

Although it's still clown range for the 3-km NAM, the distinct possibility is there for an isothermal wind driven blue bomb here on Saturday morning before the warmth comes in and flips it to cold rain Saturday afternoon. Maybe I can test out the new snow blower???

Good spot for snow! Wardsboro does well in nor'easters and SWFEs (or basically any type of event with a low level flow out of the NE, E, or SE) because it will upslope with easterly flow. It is, however, a bit too far east of the Green Mountain spine axis to get much in the way of snow from westerly flow upslope save for maybe flurries or light snow showers if the westerly flow is unblocked. I'd guess your spot averages around 110-120" per year.

I consider frozen mud to be a badge of honor in mid October. I was going to do my (hopefully) final mowing of the year, but showers earlier and again now prevented that from happening. Will try again tomorrow despite the forecast cold.

Much milder day today after the hard freeze. 22° F yesterday morning, 27° last night, which killed the ragweed and Japanese knotweed. We didn't radiate at all last night as it was cloudy and breezy. There was about 1/2" of ice on the puddles and the top layer of mud was completely frozen. Wednesday's dusting didn't completely melt in the shade until this morning. We are 90-95% leaf drop now and most of what remains is the understory with the exception of the tamaracks and aspens.

All fogged in...again, 51° F. It's been this way since early morning. The amount of fog I get here is simply incredible. Pretty much any wind direction between about 70° and 215° is fog here as long as the ambient airmass is at or near saturation. It can even occur in calm conditions (radiation fog not as common though) as long as the inversion base is high enough. I've been fogged in behind cold fronts if the W and NW winds haven't mixed me out yet.

With at least 70% leaf drop I think it's safe to say that stick season has arrived here. Mostly just some yellows and browns on the beeches and aspens, but there's still a spot red from a lingering maple. Above 2.5K it's pretty much totally bare. The foliage came and went quickly!

31° F low this morning which is my first subfreezing since 4/30. Leaves are more than 70% down here. I'll post a few drone shots in the foliage thread.

Chilly, windy, and glorious! So glad to get rid of that foggy, warm, manky weather pattern at long last. Foliage is now well past peak with trees more than 50% bare. The copper browns of the beeches and yellows of the poplars (aspen) have taken over now. The maples and birches are mostly down and what's left of them is mostly yellow anyway. There's still a spot red tree though, but the tourists will disappointed if they come up this way. It was fast...mostly green to peak to past peak in 2 weeks. Maybe some flakes here tomorrow morning???

I have a number of balsams around with their tops missing. Whether that's from 12/08 I don't know. We had a bad heavy wet snowstorm in 12/14 and I think some of the balsam damage is from that event.

I will try to update this year. Last year was tough as I moved during the height of the winter and had a lot going on. Use the location in my profile. Edit: I seem to have lost the username and password.

I bet my new location is primo territory for bad ice storms. This spot seems to be a champion at holding low level cold since I remain fogged in pretty much every time we get WAA and it's really difficult for me to bust into SW flow. Woodford seems to mix out and warm before I do. I bet December 2008 was really bad here, but 1998 was probably to my north. It was very hard to get much ice accretion in Lenox on the west slope as they warm up quickly due to downslope flow. It's nearly impossible to get sustained icing conditions on NW flow as usually things mix out during CAA and the precipitation flips to snow. Lenox (as with other west slope locations) seems to get a decent amount of sleet on the other hand, especially during a SWFE or coastal with a midlevel warm tongue.