J.Spin

My wife is fine with it. I don’t think she’d necessarily want it year round, but she’s in no rush for it to disappear. We actually just made some sugar on snow a few days ago, so it was nice to have it around. I always find it interesting when folks are in such a rush for the snow to disappear from the yard – when my grass is snow covered it takes literally zero maintenance. Once it starts growing, it requires routine maintenance. Fortunately the lawn’s still got about a month or so of waking up to do before it will really need attention.

The snow in the yard has finally melted out as of today, so yesterday goes down as the final day of the season for the winter snowpack. My data sheet indicates that this season’s snowpack was continuous from November 10th through April 21st, or 163 days. It’s interesting to note that despite the substantial snowpack this season, it actually melted out several days earlier than it did last season for our property. That’s it for the snowpack this season, but I guess we’ll have to see about additional snowfall as the models do show some chances for snow over the next week or so.

We had some frozen precipitation and accumulation at the house this morning with the current system coming into the area, but I didn’t find any areas where depth hit the 0.1” threshold, so it’s going down as a trace.

Event totals: 0.6” Snow/1.37” L.E. Details from the 12:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.3 inches New Liquid: 0.07 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 4.3 Snow Density: 23.3% H2O Temperature: 33.6 F Sky: Light Snow (2 to 12 mm flakes) Snow at the stake: 1.0 inches Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.3 inches New Liquid: 0.06 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 5.0 Snow Density: 20.0% H2O Temperature: 33.6 F Sky: Cloudy Snow at the stake: 1.0 inches

Even down here at around 500’ it switched over to snow about an hour ago – it’s not accumulating much yet, but the temperature is getting down toward freezing now.

I was just checking the Sugarbush Webcams, and I see that the changeover to snow has definitely started at the upper cam at 3,900’. It looks like they built some snowmen on the camera snowboard in celebration. From what I see in the forecast, accumulations are supposed to make it all the way down to the lower mountain valleys.

Event totals: 0.7” Snow/0.52” L.E. Details from the 11:00 P.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.3 inches New Liquid: 0.04 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 7.5 Snow Density: 13.3% H2O Temperature: 32.4 F Sky: Light Snow (2 to 4 mm flakes) Snow at the stake: 6.0 inches Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.4 inches New Liquid: 0.03 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 13.3 Snow Density: 7.5% H2O Temperature: 29.1 F Sky: Light Snow (1 to 2 mm flakes) Snow at the stake: 6.0 inches

PF has had a post or two, and I’ve had a post or two (and you’ve had a couple of posts), so I’d say it’s about the usual in the thread for what’s there in the models. From what I’ve seen it’s just not a rock solid “yep, that’s a foot of snow for the spine” setup yet. The skins are certainly on the skis and ready though. Actually the skins are still on from one of our recent outings at Bolton when we were anticipating having to skin because of the winds, but they were able to run the Timberline Quad. There are some encouraging runs, but things can be a bit more tenuous this time of year.

Event totals: 0.9” Snow/0.16” L.E. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.4 inches New Liquid: 0.04 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 10.0 Snow Density: 10.0% H2O Temperature: 34.9 F Sky: Cloudy Snow at the stake: 10.0 inches

Event totals: 0.5” Snow/0.11” L.E. My wife said that the precipitation was a mix of rain and snow as she headed through Waterbury this evening, but snow by the time she got here to the house. I’ve had the rain gauge in summer mode, and there was no liquid in it, so I guess it’s been all snow thus far. We had a good burst of snow for a while there visible by the 30-35 db returns on the radar: Details from the 10:00 P.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.5 inches New Liquid: 0.11 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 4.5 Snow Density: 22.0% H2O Temperature: 33.3 F Sky: Light Snow (2 to 6 mm flakes) Snow at the stake: 10.0 inches

Those thoughts seem quite consistent with what I’m seeing in the point forecasts around here – a touch of snow in the valley with a few inches in the hills.

Yeah, there aren’t any time constraints on those storms, they’re just totals for each complete synoptic-scale storm cycle (or in some cases mesoscale events), however long that might be. Honestly, much of the SNE climate is so vastly different from what goes on up here in the mountains that it’s hard to make a comparison in many ways. The best bet might be to just look at 24-hour daily accumulations for comparisons vs. trying to compare individual storms.

Things are probably a touch leaner right in the town of Stowe vs. my site, but the average number of 12”+ storms for us is right around 3 per season. So in my data, the leanest stretch for 12”+ storms was 2011-2012 – 2015-2016, similar to that stretch you mentioned above. Probably not coincidentally, those five seasons in there marked the notable stretch of below average snowfall we had around here. We seem to be making up for it over the past three seasons though, with an average or above average number of 12”+ storms.

I saw that Ginx posted this GFS snowfall map in the April thread. I get it that it’s just for ribbing in there, but looking at the latest GFS run as well as some of the other models, there are actually five potential shots of snow in the next ten days up here: one tonight, one Friday, another on Monday, then Wednesday, and then again next Friday. It’s hard to say how these will all sort themselves out, but with the elevations in play, there’s always potential for something interesting around here. I’m sure most folks would rather have the slopes switch right to warm sunny days and corn snow skiing, but an active pattern like that is definitely nice vs. the April doldrums that can sometimes happen, where’s it’s not quite warm enough to really soften the slopes, but we also aren’t getting much in the way of snow.

That’s very cool PF, such an impressive amount of water still in the pack. Are you going to run a snow survey at the 3,000’ plot as well? I really hadn’t been back by the boardwalk and those beaver ponds until a couple months back when I did some sidecountry there with my older son. For those that aren’t familiar with the area, I actually labeled Barnes Camp on my map from the day: It’s such an interesting, relatively broad area of the notch, and really cool and accessible when it’s all frozen and covered with snow. It can probably hold the cold quite well. We dropped in from the main entrance near the top of the Sunny Spruce Quad (there’s probably a name for that area, but I don’t know what it is) and generally headed skier’s left. This brought us down among the ponds and the boardwalks, but I guess you can also head to the right and get some of those lines father up in the notch.