J.Spin

June Totals Liquid: 4.27” Total liquid for the month of June here at our site was nearly three inches below the average in our data set, so it’s certainly been on the drier side as data from the surrounding sites would suggest – I see BTV with 1.88” of liquid (50.9% of average), MVL with 2.83” of liquid (71.1% of average), and MPV with 3.47” of liquid (91.3% of average). The numbers here indicating 60.9% of average certainly fit within that range, but with the localized nature of pop-up events as we get into summer, the sites aren’t necessarily going to run in sync. We’re seeing what are presumably the benefits of the local orographics for keeping the lawn/vegetation happy – even the 4.27” of liquid we picked up, while well on the low side for here, would be an above average June for those surrounding sites. Liquid for the 2020 water year is running at 39.03”, and calendar year liquid is at 23.93”, which is right around three inches below average.

We were actually just on the edge of that and picked up 0.04” of liquid, but with the rain and air associated with that cell, things cooled down really nicely. The liquid was a bump up from the traces over the past three days, and there’s actually some additional activity off to the west, but we’ll have to see whether or not that affects us here.

We’ve been touched by the scattered thunderstorms around here each of the past three days, although nothing has been right on us so we’ve only accumulated traces of liquid for those measurement periods. Even just getting the associated clouds is nice though to help keep the temperatures down a bit. We definitely appreciate the clouds we get around here though, and the enhancement the orographics can bring in that regard. As much as living in Montana with the typically drier air was great in that you were basically guaranteed to get down into the 40s and 50s F each night to cool off, you were also much more likely to get those dry days where you get into the 90s F and bake under cloudless skies. That was for our valley of course, and you can probably get a bit more clouds and cooling if you’re up into the mountains, but it’s definitely a much drier environment overall. Just as most farms have those huge center pivot irrigators out there that you rarely see around here, you’re typically not going to have a green lawn out there without irrigation. Precipitation for the month thus far is at 2.72” at our site, which I’m sure is behind average pace for around here, but it’s been more than enough to keep the lawn happy. It looks like chances for precipitation are increasing over the next few days, and temperatures are expected to come down for the second half of the week: Area Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Burlington VT 952 AM EDT Mon Jun 22 2020 LONG TERM /WEDNESDAY NIGHT THROUGH SUNDAY/...As of 348 AM EDT Monday...It continues to look like a nice little pattern change for Wednesday night onwards, with more seasonable temperatures anticipated. Upper level low situated to the north of the Great Lakes will be slow to exit the region. This will keep us in a pattern with more clouds and chances for showers than we have seen recently.

We had a few sprinkles yesterday afternoon, so perhaps it was in association with that cell. That was the first trace of precipitation in six days, although it does look like chances continue to increase over the next several.

Naturally that “A” threshold is going to vary based on a location’s snowfall average and S.D., but at our site, somewhere in that 200” range for snowfall is typically what I use for “A-grade” territory as well. If I set the average at C and use the typical 1/3 σ steps for the grade subdivisions, the snowfall thresholds for reaching the various B and A grade levels are as follows: B-: 179.2” B: 191.1” B+: 203.0” A-: 215.3” A: 227.2” A+: 239.2” Although 2007-2008 had only 203.2” of snowfall, I’m pretty sure I gave it some level of an “A” grade because it was just so solid in many snow-related categories. We don’t have the wild swings in annual snowfall up here that some places do, so it feels like it’s hard to get solid “A” and “F” seasons, although using the S.D. in grading should actually take care of that issue. The grading scheme I’m using is pretty stringent on the high end though, in that only the top few % (+2 σ) of seasons are going to get a straight A or better based on snowfall. One thing to note is that the current 36.2” S.D. is probably artificially large due to the highly anomalous 2015-2016 season’s effects on the relatively small data set. Removing that season from the data set results in a huge drop of the S.D. down to 28.3”, so the snowfall totals required to get up into that A range will come down a bit as that S.D. potentially relaxes.

From around 1975 to 1980 I lived in the Buzzards Bay area. I was pretty young and didn’t really have much of a clue about weather, but I do remember day after day after day throughout the winter of getting up for school hoping to see at least some white ground… and being disappointed most of the time. We certainly had snow in the Blizzard of ‘78, but that seemed to be a one-off sort of deal. I’m sure that area averages even less snow than the Boston area, but my impressions from then and the general discussions I see on here are that SNE climate, especially the closer you get to the coast, is more about the occasional very big storm due to the ocean influence vs. a sustained wintry climate. Big storms can be neat, but a consistently wintry climate seems far more important for supporting reliable winter recreation, and it’s definitely more appealing to me. NNE in general is pretty solid in that department because of latitude and generally being away from direct coastal influence, but I’m still amazed by the massive increase in snowfall amounts, number of storms, increased snowpack, etc. that the mountains give on top of that. It was always obvious to me that the higher elevations of the mountains themselves had significantly more snow than the Champlain Valley, but I had no idea just how much even the mountain valleys had increases in all those elements of winter vs. the broader NNE valleys. Anyway, the season here was definitely below average on snowfall. It wasn’t horribly low, but after the previous three solid seasons with an average snowfall >180” as you can see on the updated chart below, it was notable. Using C as an average, and snowfall being right on that C-/D+ border, it was easy to push it to the D+ with things like SDD, max snow depth, and largest storm being below average. The length of the accumulating snowfall season was above average because of the May snows, and we had an above average number of storms at 55, but those aspects don’t really appear to be enough to counteract the deficiencies.

Isn’t this literally the day the big hot period starts? Then on Friday everyone is supposed to bump that discussion in the June thread for further review? This must be the NNE version of hot because it really doesn’t seem too bad. I think most of us would be fine with more of this sort of stuff this summer.

I can see there are some 0.4” to 0.6” readings southward along the western slopes and spine a bit south of here, but I guess there weren’t any other CoCoRaHS sites quite in the hotspots of those storms. Most of the time it doesn’t seem like the mountain valleys around here have to worry too much about really drying out and browning up the grass, since there’s typically extra moisture, more clouds, or cooler temperatures vs, the broad valleys. But there are still soil differences and water retention issues for certain yards, so it can happen.

We had a second thunderstorm overnight that dropped some additional liquid. My wife and I woke up briefly from some thunder, but I went right back to sleep and didn’t look at the radar to get a sense for the localization of that storm. Looking back at some radar, it seems as though that storm was around 4:00 A.M. as part of a more typical line of storms. I could see on the radar last night that there was a bunch of additional storms off to our northwest, probably out ahead of that cold front that’s moving into the area. We picked up an additional 0.41” of rain from that later system, so the total picked up by our gauge was 2.11” this morning. Only some of the CoCoRaHS numbers are in thus far, but it’s certainly going to show quite a patchwork of different totals around here.

Yeah, we definitely seem to get convergence at times with the lift all around and the moisture funneling through the gap. I’m sure it’s a factor in what gives us both the relatively large seasonal snowfall and total liquid numbers around here at fairly modest elevations. Rain in the gauge was from this event was 1.70” when I checked a little while ago, with a few sprinkles still continuing. It actually came at a reasonable pace of probably a bit more than an inch an hour, so it didn’t cause any notable drainage issues in my survey of the property. We actually had a brief shower last night – it wasn’t enough to hit 0.01”, but it does make this the 8th day in a row with at least trace of liquid, and 2.62” of liquid during the stretch. June rainfall is off to a decent start now with this event, and June is actually the wettest month here according to my data, averaging over 7 inches of liquid. I think the month is relatively wet here because we have multiple routes to getting the moisture – we can still have residual fall/winter/spring-style upslope precipitation, but we also get some of these early summery pop up systems. Whatever the case, something conspires to give June an average of 2 inches more liquid than either May or July here. I’m not sure if that will ultimately average out lower with a longer data set, but with a decade of rainfall data, year upon year upon year, June towers over May and July. Thus far, I’ve only had two instances of May or July having more liquid than the corresponding June – a couple of times May had more, but that’s it so far.

I suspect we’ll have over an inch of liquid – it was around 0.85” when I was out checking for any washouts around 9:00 P.M. The radar suggests we’re just about done with it now, so I’ll get a total in a little bit:

Did you see the one on radar that was sitting over the spine around Sugarbush/Buels Gore/MRG today? It really looked like another one of those terrain-influenced events because it just hung there and kept rebuilding and rebuilding over the spine for a couple of hours in the same spot. In the radar grab below I’ve only got its remnants as it finally pulled east, but we’ve got one building over out part or the spine now:

Ha, that’s certainly related to what I wrote yesterday. I also fixed up your text a bit to make it a little more of a Mansfield/Northern Greens fit.

Indeed, things weren’t quite as dry over here (the 3.90” of liquid equivalent equated to 78% of average), and we had 1.44” in the second half of the month. What we did have was an impressively dry period from the 17th through the 29th, with only two traces of liquid in a 13-day stretch. I’m sure there have been similar stretches around here at points in the past, but it’s definitely uncommon for us to go that long without more than a trace. I’m usually struggling to find a dry 24 to 48-hour window to put down lawn treatments, and I put some down at the beginning of that dry “window” this year to find that I was really at the other end of the extreme. Ironically, we had to start looking for rains so the treatment could soak in and I could get in that first mowing. PF can probably speak to his experience, but from what I’ve seen, it’s probably July and August (potentially extending into September sometimes depending on when a more autumnal pattern shows itself) that represent the nadir period in our liquid boost from the moist northwest flow. Obviously it depends on the year, but I typically find that the upslope flow can carry into June, then by July we seem to move into a more convective type of “summery” precipitation pattern. There can certainly still be a moisture boost during that midsummer period around here when a storm hits the mountains and drops extra liquid, but it’s not as consistently obvious as it is when we’re getting the northwest flow. Things have definitely switched up in the past week though, as today will be the 6th day in a row with measurable precipitation here, and we’re closing in on an inch of liquid in total. I hadn’t noticed any issues with the lawn during the dry spell, but with this liquid soaking in the fertilizer, it’s definitely exploding with growth now. There’s certainly that northwest flow “feel” on the radar with respect to the rain we’re currently getting:

May Totals Accumulating Storms: 3 Snowfall: 5.7” Liquid Equivalent: 3.90” Total liquid for the month was more than an inch below average, but it was certainly an interesting May for winter weather. Some notable aspects in the data set thus far were: · First May with three accumulating snowstorms · Highest May snowfall total · First May with more snowfall that the preceding April That should be just about it for the active snow season, so I’ll start putting together some of those data now that we’re getting into the warm season. Despite the May liquid being a bit low, calendar year liquid through May was at 19.66”, which is pretty close to the mean value I have of 19.93” for this site.