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J.Spin

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About J.Spin

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    http://www.JandEproductions.com

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  • Four Letter Airport Code For Weather Obs (Such as KDCA)
    KMPV
  • Gender
    Male
  • Location:
    Waterbury, VT
  • Interests
    Skiing, Snow, Snowboarding, Outdoors, Winter Weather, Photography

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  1. I’m glad folks are enjoying the reports! Being able to quickly get out and experience the winter weather and recreation that’s going on here in the Northern Greens is obviously fun on my end, but it’s also a chance to help others make optimal use of our local resources. Ideally, I’d like to always get the reports out as soon as I get back from the mountain to give people the most timely updates possible for their decisions about heading out for their own turns or other snow activities, but work, family, etc. slow it down sometimes. I figure every little bit helps though. With the temperatures dropping this evening, the snow is actually accumulating better down here in the valley now, so the higher elevations are likely getting another good round of these bread and butter accumulations.
  2. I’d seen that the potential for more snowfall was in forecast today based on the weather modeling, and it looked like the afternoon period might be the best bet for catching some turns in fresh snow. The BTV NWS forecast discussions have been noting that there’s no large, defined system in our area today though, we’re just moving into a general period of unsettled weather. With nothing really going on at the house other than cloudy conditions around midday today, I was surprised when I checked the Bolton Valley Base Area Webcam and saw that the there was very low visibility up there due to heavy snowfall. It was surprising to see such a disparity between the weather on the mountain and the weather at our house, but then I checked the radar and saw what was going on. The precipitation was very convective/cellular in nature, so the mountain happened to be under one of those rather localized, intense areas of snowfall. In another 10 minutes or so, the snowfall began to wind down, but the radar of to the east was riddled with similar pockets of precipitation all across the North Country that were heading toward the spine of the Northern Greens. I suspected the mountain would see additional episodes of snowfall throughout the afternoon, so I decided I’d head up for turns once I finished up some work I had to get done. Later in the afternoon when I was getting ready to pop up to the mountain, I checked the webcam again and they were getting hit by another round of snowfall. The early morning snow report from the resort indicated that they’d picked up a fresh inch of snow before opening, and with the way the afternoon had gone, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d picked up another inch or two. We were even getting some rain in the valley with that round of snow, and as I headed up the Bolton Valley Access Road, the precipitation switched over to snow a bit below 1,500’. When I’d headed up to the mountain on Friday, the snow level was around 2,000’, so it was definitely lower today. I can’t say what the snow was like earlier in the day today, but what I found in the later afternoon was a very fun mix of different conditions that all skied quite well. The mountains have been in that temperate March/April mode over the last few days where we’ve got some fresh snow accumulations, temperatures in the upper 20s to 30s F, some sun, some clouds, semi-cycled snow depending on elevation, and probably whatever else you can think of that this time of year has to offer in the higher elevations. Descending from above 3,000’ on Wilderness, I found wintry conditions with some dense powder that was blended into the old snowpack in untouched areas, with wintry wet pack on the groomed/traveled areas that had firmed up somewhat with temperatures below freezing. By the time I descended to 2,000’ I encountered areas of semi-corn, soft packed snow on piste, and denser wet snow off piste. I didn’t ski down below 2,000’ to Timberline, but the conditions would likely have transitioned to even more spring-like. Areas that had direct sun definitely had the softest snow. In any event, it all skied really well, with nothing overly sticky or firm. I had waxed my skis in preparation for any potentially sticky conditions, so that probably helped keep things extra smooth for me, but I didn’t see anyone else struggling with apparent stickiness either. Temperatures did seem to be dropping as the afternoon came to a close, so the sub-freezing conditions were falling to 2,000’ and below. Being later on a Sunday afternoon in March, skier traffic was quite low when I was on the mountain, and I was coming upon trail areas where there were literally just two or three tracks in the fresh snow and I’d basically have the run of it with respect to laying down my own tracks. I see that the mountain is indicating 3 inches of new snow in the past 48 hours, so that seems about right based on the untouched areas I skied, and it’s generally dense so it does a great job of providing floatation above the base. The weather models are still suggesting that we’ve got more snow chances continuing right through to the end of the month, so we’ll look forward to what are hopefully additional days of these fun winter/spring conditions atop a snowpack that is probably slightly below average, but not bad. Average snowpack this time of year is nearing peak anyway, so even if we’re off from that a bit, it’s still quite plentiful.
  3. This morning I was seeing reports of 2 to 5 inches of new snow for the resorts of the Central and Northern Greens. Snow levels were relatively high, thus the accumulations were likely to be fairly dense, but that would mean the liquid equivalent could be there for some decent resurfacing of the slopes. I wasn’t actually sure how much resurfacing would be needed, but the past couple of days have had some spring-like warmth and sun at times, and I haven’t been up to the hill during that time, so there would be plenty for me to discover about the state of the snowpack. Heading up to Bolton, light rain in the valley didn’t actually change over to snow until just below 2,000’, so indeed snow levels were relatively high as expected. With the anticipated snow levels, I’d planned to ski out of the main base area, and the elevation of the snow line confirmed that I likely wouldn’t be heading down to the Timberline elevations for my outing. The resort only indicated a couple inches of new accumulation in their early morning report, but that was either very early and/or from the base elevations, because I definitely found more than that up high. I started off with an Alta Vista run, and I’m not sure when it was groomed, but I’d say 2 to 3 inches of dense powder atop the groomed surface would be a good description of what I found there. Turns there in the untracked snow above the groomed surface were ~75% bottomless on 86 mm mid-fats, so I was occasionally touching down to the firmer surface below, but overall it was quite a pleasant and surfy experience. Off piste, things were a bit different. At the Wilderness Summit above 3,000’ I measured what seemed to be 5 to 6 inches of new snow, but it was a little challenging to get exact numbers. In many areas off piste, especially up high, the new dense snow has simply bonded into the underlying snowpack and you can’t find an interface. I can’t say exactly at what elevation that changes, but it’s most pronounced up high where the snowpack presumably has seen fewer or less intense freeze-thaw processes over the past couple of days. Off piste turns were especially good up in those high elevation areas, but in general I found that everything off piste in all but the lowest areas of the main mountain delivered consistent bottomless turns thanks to the dense snow. The freezing line seem to sit right around 2,200’ for most of the morning while I was there, and that was based on the fact that the snow got sticky for roughly the last 100’ of vertical on my runs. As midday approached, the freezing line seemed like it began to rise because on my last run I’d say the stickiness of the snow started to appear about 200’ above the base. It was really quiet at the resort this morning, being a random March Friday without a major publicized snowstorm, but I did ride the Vista Quad with a guy who had come up from Northampton, Massachusetts. He’s and Indy Pass owner, his home mountain is Berkshire East, and with Bolton Valley being on the Indy Pass as well, it was a perfect fit for a trip. He said it’s been a rough season down there at Berkshire East, at least in terms of natural snow. Thankfully they were able to get by fine on manmade terrain, but he was blown away by the natural snowpack at Bolton. From about Mid Mountain on up during our lift ride, when the surroundings really started to get white, he could not stop talking about all the snow. He said he really needed this trip for his overall state of mind because it’s been so long since he’s seen snow around his area, and from looking at the Berkshire East Webcams, I can see what he means. He’s really lamenting that fact that he thinks this is only going to continue to get worse with climate change. With the way the last couple of seasons have gone with regard to snowfall down in Southern New England, I can understand why it’s so depressing. He’s a passionate backcountry skier as well, and I definitely wanted to ask if he’d considered the idea of relocating to somewhere like NNE or the Rockies etc. with more reliable snowfall, but I didn’t get a chance to go there before our lift ride ended. Looking ahead on the weather models, it seems like we’ll have snow chances right on through to the end of the month and beyond. That’s typically par for the course during March and April, but getting snow becomes more fickle toward the end of the season, and sometimes the supply of new snow just shuts off due to above average temperatures.
  4. I see that the BTV NWS created a final storm total map for the system earlier in the week – it seems like a decent match with their Event Total Snowfall map in many areas. It was certainly on track around here at the spine of the Northern Greens.
  5. As our most recent storm cycle progressed into its second half on Monday, it brought prodigious upslope snowfall, but heavy winds also pounded the upper mountain areas at Bolton Valley. That meant that the Vista Quad Chair never ran on Monday, so all that fresh snow would still be sitting there for Tuesday. For my older son, Tuesday was one of his days off from work, so the two of us headed up to the mountain for a ski session. At this point in the ski season we’re well past President’s Day and school vacation week, it’s mid-March, and yesterday was just a random midweek Tuesday - we didn’t expect a lot of visitors to the mountain. Apparently nobody told the skiers about that though – we arrived up in the Village within a half hour of lift opening, and we were already having to park all the way down by the Sports Center, in an impromptu middle lane of cars. Where did all these people come from? What we eventually discovered was that every parent in the state had decided to pull their kids out of school for the day to get in some skiing. On our Vista lift rides, we literally paired up with multiple dads and their kids who had done this, so apparently it was the thing to do! The weather yesterday was absolutely clear with brilliant March sunshine, so it was quite a contrast to Monday’s snowy maelstrom, but winds were still brisk near the summits. Despite the bit of remaining wind, overall yesterday had that “day after” the storm feel. The new snow from the storm had been pounded and scoured in exposed areas like the tops of trails near the Vista Summit, but thankfully most terrain was protected enough to hold onto quite an excellent bounty of soft accumulations from the storm. There was a bit of wind crust in areas depending on exposure, but nothing that ruined the skiing aside from reducing the explosiveness of the powder relative to Monday’s consistency in the more exposed areas. My snow depth checks revealed the same roughly two feet of accumulation that I’d found near the middle of day on Monday, so there was probably some additional accumulation and continued settling that left things about where they were. We prioritized hitting some of the steepest terrain to really make use of the resurfacing that the storm brought us, so we visited areas like Devil’s Playground and the Vista Glades, which I hadn’t yet visited at all this season. There were still a lot of nice areas of untracked snow, but areas that had seen skier traffic still provided top notch conditions. The storm was so potent that even the steepest terrain has the coverage to keep you from encountering the old base snow, so you can just drop into anything and anticipate your edges biting into packed powder without the worry of touching the crusty stuff underneath. Along with the steeps, we also visited some of our favorite areas for powder turns, and as long as the snow was protected from the winds, it was still delivering that cold smoke that we enjoyed on Monday.
  6. It looks like totals topped out around 30 inches, so not quite 4 feet, but there’s a lot of liquid equivalent in the snow and it definitely delivered in that regard – great skiing and riding!
  7. I’ve put the final north to south list of storm totals for the Vermont ski areas below – there is still a bit of MRG vs. Sugarbush discrepancy, so I’m not sure exactly where that came from, but it looks like totals for this storm cycle topped out around 30 inches. Jay Peak: 28” Burke: 21” Smuggler’s Notch: 21” Stowe: 21” Bolton Valley: 24” Mad River Glen: 30” Sugarbush: 23” Middlebury: 21” Pico: 27” Killington: 27” Okemo: 18” Bromley: 14” Magic Mountain: 15” Stratton: 15” Mount Snow: 10”
  8. With the storm cycle transitioning into its back half overnight, the upslope really turned on in the Northern Greens. Bolton Valley was reporting 20 inches for the storm total in their early morning update, so I headed up for some turns with my younger son and his roommate. There was solid 1”/hr. snow falling in the valley and up at the resort, so I was worried about vehicles struggling to get up the Access Road like my older son and I experienced a couple weeks back, but the road was in nice shape and we made it up to the Timberline Base easily. The upslope winds were roaring all throughout the resort, and the Vista Quad was not likely to get off wind hold at all during the day, so we spent our entire session down at Timberline. Relatively speaking, the lower elevations of Timberline meant that the winds were at least somewhat lower, and the temperatures a bit warmer. And, temperatures were cold enough everywhere so that even the lower elevations were still pulling in cold smoke powder, so Timberline was definitely the place to be. Even calling the weather “cold” is relative though – we’re talking “March cold”, which is nothing like “January cold”. Temperatures were well up into the 20s F and quite pleasant. There were no lift queues for most of the morning, so it was simply hop on and run laps until we approached late morning when more people started to arrive and others realized that Timberline was the place to be. We did overhear conversations from people who were arriving from other resorts like Stowe that were having wind hold issues as well. As expected with the beautiful right-side-up nature of this storm cycle, the powder skiing, and even the packed, on piste skiing, were excellent. We picked up 2.34 inches of liquid equivalent from the storm down in the valley at our site, so the mountains must have seen close to 3 inches of liquid from the event. When you get to those levels of fresh liquid equivalent on top of the snowpack, you’re looking at an unmitigated resurfacing of the slopes. And aside from the occasional scoured areas, a thorough resurfacing is just what we found. During our session, my depth measurements at around 2,500’ were indicating roughly 24 inches of accumulation, and I see that’s what the resort is indicating for their storm total as of their midday update, so that seems very much in sync with what I found. For our session, we made use of the solid resurfacing dump and jumped into just about all of our steepest favorites. There were really only a couple of very steep spots that we skipped (craggy cliff bands and super steep lines in very dense evergreens) that I knew wouldn’t quite be there since the snowpack below 2,000’ was a little too lean coming into this system. All in all though, it’s been an excellent storm cycle thus far, and the boys clearly picked a good week for their spring break.
  9. Thanks for the full summation and storm total PF, well done. I’ve updated the north to south list of reported storm totals for the Vermont ski areas as of this evening. Some resorts made end-of-day updates, but some are still just morning totals. Jay Peak: 24” Burke: 19” Smuggler’s Notch: 21” Stowe: 21” Bolton Valley: 24” Mad River Glen: 29” Sugarbush: 23” Middlebury: 21” Pico: 27” Killington: 27” Okemo: 16” Bromley: 14” Magic Mountain: 15” Stratton: 15” Mount Snow: 9”
  10. This storm cycle is ongoing, but below is the current north to south listing of storm totals from the Vermont ski areas. Some totals are from early morning, and some are midday updates, so there’s going to be some extra heterogeneity at this point. Jay Peak: 24” Burke: 19” Smuggler’s Notch: 15” Stowe: 15” Bolton Valley: 20” Mad River Glen: 29” Sugarbush: 19” Middlebury: 13” Pico: 27” Killington: 27” Okemo: 16” Bromley: 14” Magic Mountain: 15” Stratton: 15” Mount Snow: 9”
  11. We headed up this morning for a session at Bolton Valley to check out the snow from the front end of this current storm cycle, and as the resort snow reports from around the state have indicated, the higher elevations received a solid shot of snow. We’ve picked up roughly 1.4 inches of liquid equivalent in the snow and mixed precipitation that has fallen down at the house, so up on the mountain they’ve likely seen upwards of an inch and a half of liquid equivalent in their accumulations. That’s certainly enough for a solid resurfacing, and they’re all set in that regard all the way from the summit areas above 3,000’ down to the lowest slopes at 1,500’. Bolton’s early morning snow report was indicating 8 inches of new snow, but my own measurements while out on the mountain up above 3,000’ were already reading 10 to 12 inches by midday, so they’d obviously continued to pick up some substantial accumulations since that first report. Their midday report is now indicating 10 to 12 inches new, so that lines right up with what I was finding. As noted above, it was a solid resurfacing, and I’d say we were getting 95%+ bottomless turns on even the steepest slope angles, with just a few spots here and there where you might touch down depending on skier traffic, obstacles, deposition, etc. The only knock against the snow at this point is that it’s rather dense, so the usual caveats apply with respect to the quality of the turns. We suspected that the snow was going to be dense going into today’s session, so we went with alpine setups instead of Telemark, and that was definitely the right call for stability and ease of turning in the thick snow. Snowboards would also have been a good choice for what we saw out there, and skiing in and on the snow today had me thinking fondly of some of those surfy turns on a board. The snow became denser the lower one went in elevation, so although we parked at Timberline in the morning, we stayed above 2,000’ essentially the whole time, and only returned back down below that when were we heading back to the car at 1,500’ at the Timberline Base. The powder turns out there are still great, since the snow is so dense that you can really lay into whatever you want and tackle any pitch with the confidence of not dealing with underlying obstacles, but both the powder and groomed conditions are better the higher you go. While the new snow was dense, it wasn’t wet or sticky until we dropped down toward the Timberline Base around midday. That was likely a result of both the initial snow being wetter, and temperatures creeping above freezing in the lower elevations by that point. If the snow transitions to a drier consistently for the next part of the storm cycle as the forecasts suggests, it should be an excellent topping off for what’s fallen thus far.
  12. Below is the north to south listing of available snowfall totals that I saw for this winter storm cycle as of the early morning reports from the Vermont ski areas. It looks like roughly 8-12” up and down the spine with a few areas above and below that range. Jay Peak: 8” Burke: 6” Smuggler’s Notch: 7” Stowe: 8” Bolton Valley: 8” Mad River Glen: 12” Sugarbush: 9” Middlebury: 8” Saskadena Six: 8” Pico: 9” Killington: 9” Okemo: 13” Bromley: 10” Magic Mountain: 12” Stratton: 12” Mount Snow: 8”
  13. Yeah, the positive snow depth maps are definitely helpful and provide some realism – I know you’ve been working to infuse those into storm discussions, and hopefully it helps temper some of the more unrealistic maps that get posted. Maps can be challenging to use for our site because we’re so tight to the spine (just about in line with it) that the resolution isn’t always there to differentiate this location from the surrounding higher elevations. The base of the Winooski Valley is only about 1/4 to 1/3 of a mile wide here, rising up to ~2,000’ pretty quickly, and then to the 3,000’ to 4,000’ range within a few miles, so resolution is important in differentiating the various elevations. Another factor is that being so tight to the spine can get this area in on a lot of the forced ascent, resulting in additional accumulations relative to its elevation. Typically what seems to work is to go into events with the assumption that the running forecast for this elevation from something like positive snow depth map is a good baseline, and then sometimes the orographics push accumulations above that level a bit if the setup is appropriate.
  14. The Winter Storm Watch that was posted here in our area was converted to a Winter Storm Warning, and various Winter Weather Advisories have been added as well. On the Event Total Snowfall map, the area of 18-24” shading along the local Bolton-Stowe-Smugg’s portion of the spine has expanded. Down here at our site, we’re in the 12-18” shading, and that does correlate well with our point forecast, but depending on the temperatures, that may not be quite representative of accumulations in the valley bottoms. Snowfall intensity will probably factor into accumulations here, but up at elevation, the potential is definitely there for a solid resurfacing of the slopes.
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