J.Spin

The local mountains keep picking up a few inches of powder each day, so my older son and I headed up to Bolton Valley for a tour yesterday. We headed up to Bryant Cabin and did a slightly longer tour than the one I did on Saturday with my colleague who was visiting for work. There’s not much to add with respect to describing the fantastic conditions, since Mother Nature keeps the snow refills coming, that just about cancels out the settling of the powder, and the powder skiing stays great. Indeed, powder depths continue to top out around 30 inches in the 2,000-2,700’ range, and the main problem certainly isn’t in finding deep, dry, untracked powder, the bigger issue is often finding steep enough pitches to support the depth of all that snow.

My colleague Mark arrived at UVM yesterday for some work in the proteomics core, and after we spent the morning in the lab getting some samples ready for analysis, he was wondering if I wanted to head out for a backcountry tour at Bolton Valley. Mark is a big Nordic skier, but he also likes to get out for some Telemark skiing from time to time, and with current conditions around here, this was definitely one of those times. He knows Bolton’s Nordic terrain quite well, but I was more than happy to bring him on a fun tour through some of Bolton’s classic backcountry glades. I would probably have been heading out for an afternoon tour anyway, even if he hadn’t asked – the conditions are just so good right now that it’s simply a great time to get out for turns. We headed up to Bryant Cabin as I’d done yesterday and took a slightly different descent that brought us through the Gotham City area and down to the Telemark Practice Slope. The resort was reporting another few inches of snow since yesterday’s snow report, so in terms of conditions, just tack on another few inches to the depths that were out there yesterday. We were still touring in the 2,000 – 2,700’ elevation range, and my depth checks on the powder were hitting 30 inches. Skiing in powder in that 2 to 3-foot range is definitely a different experience than your typical 1-foot powder day, and fat skis are undoubtedly your friend on days like these. Mark was on mid-fat boards with 85 mm at the waist, and they did fine, but he could see the benefits of having 100+ mm skis with more rocker for the depths of powder we were dealing with. The weather was great today, with temperatures in the mid-20s F and light snow falling for much of the tour to keep that snowpack topped off. Being a Saturday, the Nordic & Backcountry Network was busier than yesterday, but there are still tons of untouched lines out there in most glades, and we’ve got another system affecting the area tonight that could add accumulations of another inch or two.

As of yesterday morning, Bolton Valley was reporting 14 inches of new snow from our latest clipper system, and 2 feet total for the week up to that point, so another visit to the mountain seemed in order. Being an early season Friday, I expected the usual spattering of early season visitors at the resort, but I was quite surprised when I arrived at the Village to find a multitude of cars – I wound up parking down in the 4th tier of the main parking lots. As I made my way toward the base of Wilderness to start my ski tour, I realized why all the visitors were at the mountain – the Wilderness Chair was running! I hadn’t checked the snow report that morning, but apparently along with the Vista Quad terrain the resort was running the Wilderness terrain on 100% natural snow. That’s certainly a sign of how thing early season has gone thus far – to have the entirety of Wilderness open for lift-served skiing before even hitting the middle of December is definitely ahead of the usual seasonal progression. I quickly shifted gears and decided to tour on the Backcountry Network. Based on my visits to the mountain so far this season, it was obvious that the backcountry had been skiable for quite some time, but this was my first chance to really see how the terrain was doing with the current snowpack. I wasn’t sure how far I was going to go, but I started up the Bryant Trail, and before I knew it I was at the Bryant Cabin. I made a descent in some of the untracked terrain between JJ’s and Big Blue, then switched over to Coyote and finished with some of the lower glades. Despite all the visitors to the resort, it was clear that the new lift-served offerings were the big draw – I saw very few people while I was out on the Backcountry Network, and untracked snow was a very plentiful commodity. Although not as intense as what I experienced on Friday, light to moderate snow was falling during my tour, so the snowpack just continues to get topped off with fresh coatings. In term of describing the snow and ski conditions, you can pretty quickly run out of superlatives, but the numbers don’t lie. I toured in the 2,000’ – 2,700’ elevation range, and the untouched areas offer powder depths of 2 to 2½ feet atop the most recent subsurface layer. Based on the Mt. Mansfield Stake, the snowpack in the higher elevations of the Northern Greens has now topped 5 feet, so even for some of the steepest terrain, coverage is getting quite good. You can tell that the snowpack is still settling, so coverage isn’t quite the same as a snowpack of that depth that’s had a couple of months to settle and consolidate, but it’s pretty darned good for the first half of December. On my way back to my car at the end of my tour, I was met by a Bolton Valley employee who was checking passes, and he was able to get me my backcountry tag for the season right there by electronically entering my pass information. The tags are yellow this year, and I’m not sure if it was just coincidence that I had my pass checked on my very first backcountry day, but it made me wonder if they are going to increase the vigilance on monitoring tickets on the Nordic & Backcountry Network this year. In any event, those who are heading out right now are definitely getting their money’s worth in terms of snowpack depths and snow quality.

As of yesterday morning, we’d already picked up 7 to 8 inches of snow in the valley from our most recent clipper, and Bolton Valley was reporting 8 inches in the past 48 hours. So, consistent with what PF had mentioned, it didn’t seem like there wasn’t a huge elevation gradient for accumulations up to that point in the storm. We were actually in a snowfall lull at that point – the front side of the storm had wound down, but the back side precipitation was quickly moving into the area. Indeed, as I ascended the Bolton Valley Access Road in the morning, I drove right up into heavy snowfall as the first bands of snow from the back side of the storm were hitting the mountain. I geared up for a tour at the Timberline Base amidst huge flakes of snow falling in the range of 1 to 2 inches/hour. Clothing and gear were getting covered so fast that I was constantly having to shake off the snow. During my previous outing on Monday, I’d found powder depths of roughly 8-12” around 1,500’ at the Timberline Base and 12-16” up near the 2,500’ level. Yesterday I’d say you could tack on a couple more inches to those general powder depths. Even though a lot more snow fell than that, my liquid analyses revealed that we had a solid period of 10-11% H2O snow during the day on Wednesday with all those small flakes, so that would have compressed the existing powder a bit. Fortunately, the density of the snow had dropped down to around 5-6% H2O by Wednesday night, so if there had been any perturbing of the powder grading with that denser snow, it had been largely restored by Thursday morning. Coinciding with that denser snow that fell Wednesday, this most recent storm did have the advantage of bringing more liquid equivalent to the snowpack. Whereas our previous Clipper brough a bit more than a quarter of an inch of liquid equivalent here at our site, this one had already brough a half inch as of yesterday morning, which would likely mean that between a half inch and an inch of liquid equivalent fell in the mountains. So although the powder skiing yesterday wasn’t quite as light and airy as it was on Monday, it was still right-side-up, and the added liquid equivalent more than made up for it with the ability to charge a bit harder on steeper terrain.

It looks like the Winter Weather Advisories in this area start up at 7:00 A.M. tomorrow, and the forecast here in the valley suggests accumulations in the 3-6” range. That seems to line up well with the BTV NWS Event Total Snow Accumulation map through Thursday morning. The forecast also calls for a few inches of snow beyond that period, which is probably covered in the longer period map that mreaves posted.

As of this morning we’d picked up 6-7” of snow in the valley from our most recent Clipper, and Bolton Valley was reporting 10” of new snow in the last 48 hours. Based on my tour up at Bolton yesterday afternoon/evening, I knew that all the additional snow that fell overnight was going to create some excellent conditions. Temperatures were in the single digits F this morning, so I considered touring at Timberline with its lower elevations and typically warmer conditions, as long as the snowpack looked like it was ready. Indeed the base depths and powder seemed fine even down at 1,500’. In terms of powder depths, I was finding 8-12” around 1,500’ at the Timberline Base and roughly 12-16” up near 2,500’. The snow was quite dry (liquid analyses for the storm revealed an average of 4-5% H2O), and that was helpful, because it was deep enough that you needed to be on moderate to steep pitches for good speed. The cold temperatures made the snow even a bit slower, so low-angle areas weren’t enough if you were in untracked powder. With bright sun and no wind, the temperatures were actually quite comfortable for touring, and the feel was much different than what single digits F feel like with clouds, snowfall, and wind.

I hadn’t had a chance to put together the November precipitation summary for our site, but December is already rolling along, so I figured I should get it done. We had 23.5” of snow and 6.52” of total liquid. It was a solid, above average November for snowfall as the red trace in the plot below shows, and it was jostling for record progress just after mid-month, but the second half of the month couldn’t hold that same pace that we saw in the first half of the month. That’s what would have needed to happen for this November to challenge for a snowfall record - the total would have needed to be up around 40” of snow to get into contention. It was still up there with some of the other notable Novembers we’ve seen, and it continues to hang with some of those other strong early snowfall seasons as we head into December.

I’ve been waiting on these past couple of systems to let some fresh snow build up before heading out for turns, and I went on an afternoon/evening ski tour today, so I can pass along some conditions updates. As of this morning we’d picked up about an inch of snow in the valley from the disorganized cold front that hit the area, then we had a brief lull in snowfall during the morning today before snows from the next clipper started to fall around midday. We’d picked up another inch or two in the valley by the time I popped up to the mountain in the late afternoon. The flakes this afternoon had been on the smaller side, so accumulations didn’t come on too quickly, but we were getting a medium-weight snow with some density to it. Up in the Bolton Valley Village at 2,000’ they were similarly receiving those fairly small flakes, although the snowfall intensity was certainly a notch up from what I’d seen in the valley. I toured in the 2,000 – 2,500’ elevation range using the Wilderness Uphill Route, and you can really feel the way that the pattern of system after system has been building that surface snow. My depth checks in that elevation range revealed that untouched areas generally have 15-18” of powder above the old subsurface from the last thaw. I’m sure the surface snow is a bit deeper up around 3,000’ and above, and the total snowpack depth is presumably in that ~50” range based on the latest depth report from the Mt. Mansfield Stake. In areas that had seen some skier traffic, I was generally skiing in 5-6” of powder, and that seems to match up fairly well with the 6 inches of new snow that Bolton Valley is reporting in the past 48 hours as of this afternoon’s snow report. There should be at least a few more inches reported as of the morning report the way it’s been snowing down here in the valley. With the small flakes falling while I was up at the mountain, the powder density was in the light to medium range, so it offered some resistance. In untouched areas of powder you really need moderate to steep slope angles because the powder is just too deep for really good movement on low angle slopes, but those areas with about half a foot of powder skied well on any slope angle. I was on mid-fats for today’s tour, but I suspect one could go with anything in the mid-fat to fat range by tomorrow morning. Based on the accumulations n my car when I got back from my tour I’d say it was snowing in the 0.5”/hr. range or more. It may not have felt like the snowfall was that robust, but if you’re accumulating in that range with such small flakes, you’re certainly getting some liquid equivalent down. My tour took me from late afternoon light to dusk to December’s early darkness, and there was all that snowfall on top of it that further reduced visibility. For once I’d planned ahead and had a clear lens on my goggles and a full charge for my headlamp, so even with the snowfall I had really good visibility for my descent. There were numerous other skiers out there touring by headlamp, and after this evening’s great experience with the snow quality, visibility, and temperatures, I’m definitely looking forward to more headlamp powder skiing. It was so much fun that I’m starting to think about getting a dedicated headlamp for these types of tours – with LEDs you can get them so bright now compared to a decade or two ago. The storm had progressed to much larger, upslope-style flakes by the time I got home, and the density of the accumulating snow had definitely come down. My evening liquid analyses revealed that the afternoon portion of the storm produced snow with an average density of 5.6% H2O, so the snow was certainly getting fluffier as the system progressed.

I’m seeing roughly 2-4” of new snow projected along the spine of the Greens through tomorrow with a bit more at elevation and a bit less in the lower valleys, but it looks like the snow starts tomorrow morning and lasts into tomorrow night. A quick scroll through the most recent run of the GFS shows 7 to 9 potential systems in the queue out through mid-month or so. A couple of them look a little warm, but the mountains will do their thing and get snow as long as there aren’t any heavily wound up systems passing to our west. That’s the beauty of a somewhat safe “zonal” flow. It’s not a textbook Northern Greens bread and butter pattern showing very discrete clippers lined up, but it’s certainly in that neighborhood and it looks like there are a lot of systems poised to come through. Now that we’re into December, average snowfall here in the valley is jumping up to 1 to 2 inches per day, and that means probably 2 inches per day for the local mountains, so that’s sort of the average baseline snowfall to think about. As it stands on the modeling, the GFS shows 2 to 3 feet of projected accumulation for the mountains at 10:1 SLR through the next couple of weeks, which would probably be about an average pace. That’s with the caveat of course that some of that projection is at long lead time and SLR ratios might be substantially higher than 10:1 depending on how much upslope snow is in the mix.

Yeah, with the addition of this latest round of snow from Winter Storm Chan, I was expecting the ski conditions to take another bump upward. With that in mind, I definitely wanted to get out for some turns to see what this new snow had done, so I headed up to Bolton Valley for a tour this morning. I was a little worried when I saw temperatures in the single digits F as I neared the top of the Bolton Valley Access Road, but I got out of the car in the Village parking lot and found that it was very comfortable. With full sunshine, zero wind, and dry air, it felt like the temperature was in the 20s F. For new snow accumulations, there did seem to be some elevation dependence in the Bolton Valley area. In terms of settled new snow depths this morning, I measured 3-4” at the Timberline Base at 1,500’, and up at 2,000’ in the Village I found roughly 4-5”, similar to what I’d measured for accumulations down at our house in the valley. Those new snow depths definitely increased as one went up toward 3,000’, but it was hard to tell exactly how much snow was new with the powder from previous rounds of snow also sitting atop the old base. The Bolton Valley Snow Report is indicating 5-6” new for today, and that would easily make sense above 2,000’, especially since I was there in the morning after settling. This snow fell light and dry around here, in line with what a lot of folks have been saying. My liquid analyses for Winter Storm Chan down at our site revealed an average snow density of approximately 6% H2O, and that’s a fantastic ratio for powder skiing as long as you have enough of it and its fallen into an appropriately right-side-up snowpack. Thankfully, the accumulations from this storm are bolstered by the accumulations from the past couple of systems, so in areas that haven’t been touched in the past week, I was finding powder depths of around a foot. All you had to do was seek out that untouched snow and you could reel in some fantastic powder turns. The total liquid equivalent in the surface snow above the base isn’t enough for bottomless turns on high-angle terrain just yet, but it was game on for moderate and low-angle terrain. I was on my 115 mm fat boards, and they easily floated me in those terrain areas. And boy, the Bolton Valley faithful definitely got after it early this morning. I was out there in probably the 8-9 AM range, and all the middle terrain on the common descent routes on Wilderness had been skied. There was still plenty of untracked powder along the trail edges and off the beaten path, but people had really been out early in numbers. In Bolton’s case, the resort doesn’t start full 7-day operation until next week, so I bet some folks who might have opted for lift-served skiing went touring today instead. But this storm did hit the valleys quite well and announce itself, so that could have been another factor in people getting out to the mountain.

Winter Storm Bellamy hit parts of the Midwest fairly hard on Saturday to become TWC’s second named storm of the season, and then the system continued its eastward trek and started to affect our area by early Sunday morning. Throughout the day it brought light snow to the area, and by the afternoon we’d picked up about an inch of accumulation in the valley. Coupled with the accumulations from the midweek system, I figured it would be worth a quick ski tour to see how the powder was building up in the higher elevations, so my older son and I headed up to Bolton Valley in the mid to late-afternoon. We toured on the lower 2/3 of Wilderness and found a general 3 to 4 inches of powder coating the existing base in untracked areas. That seemed about what one might expect based on picking up a couple of inches from each of these past couple of systems, and conditions were actually a bit better than I’d expected because I was worried that the wind might have blow the snow around and left us with little powder to ski. Indeed the snow was fairly light and dry (my liquid analyses from the two storms averaged out to snow in roughly the 5% H2O range for liquid equivalent), so it was nowhere near enough for a resurfacing, but it definitely offered up some nice turns on lower angle terrain. Most turns weren’t bottomless, but you’d get some bottomless turns here and there where the powder had settled in a bit deeper. This was certainly a case where denser snow would have made a huge difference in resurfacing, but there was only so much liquid equivalent with these past couple of systems in this area, so they could only do so much to cover the subsurface. The next storm in the queue has been named Winter Storm Chan, and it looks like it could add a more substantial shot of snow to the slopes – Winter Storm Warnings and Winter Weather Advisories are up throughout the area. So, on top of the snow that’s already fallen in the past few days, it definitely holds the potential to kick the conditions up another notch.

Those snow totals through Saturday morning certainly appeared to fall off south of Stowe. Checking Bolton’s snow report, they weren’t reporting any new snow, so I wasn’t planning on making any turns, but my younger son and his friend were looking to get out for some runs with me and my wife, so we ended up heading out for a morning session. It turns out that the resort did pick up at least a couple of inches of snow based on what we saw, but the accumulations varied a lot with the wind and perhaps their standard measurement spots didn’t hold onto any of the snow to a degree that they felt confident enough to report it. The resort is working on beefing up the manmade base on their main Bear Run beginner route on the lower mountain, so there was no beginner terrain in play yesterday, and I think that helped to keep the number of visitors lower than they might have been. Conditions on their main Sherman’s Pass/Beech Seal route were decent, with some manmade snow of course, but some natural mixed in and a nice amount of loose snow that gave you something to carve on. The relatively low skier traffic kept the morning groomed surfaces lasting longer than they typically might, but by late morning the skier traffic was starting to pick up, and you could tell that the surfaces were getting a little firmer. Bolton Valley has been putting up some impromptu mini terrain parks near the base these past couple of weekends with just a feature or two, and it seems like folks are having a lot of fun with that. They’re short enough that you can literally hike back up in 20 seconds and hit the features again. My son had fun with the one they have set up near the Mighty Mite and made a couple runs down the rails on our way out.

The clipper system that came through the area over the past couple of days was relatively weak, but in general agreement with the forecast, we still picked up close to 2 inches of new snow at our site down in the Winooski Valley. I was up in the Bolton Valley Village on Sunday, where it was snowing at a decent clip, and as of their snow report that evening, they indicated that they’d already picked up 3 inches of new snow. I’m not sure how much more they picked up overnight into yesterday, but at the pace the snow was falling, it seemed like it was worth taking a tour to check things out. Valley temperatures were marginal for parts of the event, and as I headed up the Bolton Valley Access Road yesterday morning, there weren’t any substantial signs of new snow until I’d reached roughly 1,000’ of elevation. After a couple of tours from Timberline’s lower base elevation over the past several days, it was clear that the better play with this system would be to start my tour up at the Village. The cloud ceiling as I ascended was around 1,800’, and above that point, everything was socked in with dense clouds and lightly falling snow. At ~2,000’ in the Bolton Valley Village, I found 1-2” of new snow accumulation. From my visit to the mountain on Saturday, I knew that temperatures above freezing had affected the snowpack, at least up to the 2,500’ elevation. So, the new snow from our small system certainly wasn’t going to resurface that snowpack, but I was curious about what was going on in the higher elevations. The accumulations of new snow did increase the higher I went, but more importantly, at some point between 2,500’ and 3,000’ you reach a level where it’s clear that the temperatures haven’t gone above freezing in quite some time. The snow quality there is excellent aside from areas affected by the wind or some sort of skier of resort vehicular traffic. I did my best to estimate the accumulations from this latest system at various elevations, but once you get up to the point where there’s no consolidated melt layer to mark the surface of the old snowpack, it becomes difficult. In any event, here are the estimates for accumulations I found from this event at various elevations in the Bolton Valley area: 340’: 0” 500’: 0” 1,000’: 0-1” 1,500’: 1” 2,000’: 1-2” 2,500’: 3-4” 3,000’: 5-6” All the snow from these November storms has really been accumulating on the trees, and in places where it hasn’t gone above freezing to melt some of it off, it’s a lot of weight on the evergreens. In fact, I saw several evergreen trees that had fallen onto the trail along the Wilderness Uphill Route. There’s also a layer of ice on the trees that accumulated from whenever we had some mixed precipitation earlier in the month, and that is definitely adding to the weight the trees are bearing. While I was up at the Wilderness Summit, I watched a small section of trees on Ricker Mountain just collapse from the weight of the accumulated snow and tear away a large chunk of soil as they tumbled down the slope. In any case, many of the evergreens in the higher elevations are absolutely caked with midwinter levels of snow.

That system is on our doorstep now, so we should have a decent sense for potential accumulations. The latest BTV NWS forecast discussion that mentioned accumulations was from earlier this morning: Area Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Burlington VT 1251 AM EST Sun Nov 23, 2025 .NEAR TERM /THROUGH MONDAY/... Total accumulations will be relatively light, mainly 2 inches or less, with the highest accumulations above 1500 ft. The summits could pick up 3 to 5 inches during this time frame. On their most recent maps for expected snowfall, it looks like projections are for 4-6” in the higher elevations, and 1-2” in the mountain valleys, so that seems to jive with the forecast: As I mentioned in my report from yesterday, the mountains could use a refresher to bump the powder conditions up a couple of notches, and it’s always nice to cover up some of the open areas in the valleys as well. This event certainly won’t be a full resurfacing event for the slopes, but the models generally suggest something on the 0.1”-0.3” of liquid equivalent for the mountains (with the 3K NAM being up there >0.5”, which is typically exaggerated as PF has been noting). It looks like snow chances will start to pick up a bit more as we go forward with the GFS showing 6-7 systems through the course of the latest deterministic run.: Sun-Mon: Clipper Wed-Thu: System heading into northern Ontario/Quebec Thu-Sun: Cold Front/LES Mon-Tue: Snow/Mix/Rain Tue-Fri: Rain to snow After that there are a couple more systems into the first week of December, but that’s way out there in the modeling of course. In any event, many of the systems have some rain potential, but lots of frontside/backside snow potential as well.

I was last out on the mountain for turns on Thursday, and the powder from our early week storm was holding up well. There had certainly been some consolidation of the snowpack, with sunny areas seeing the effects more than shaded areas, but the general consistency of the snow was dry, and there was no melt layer or melt crust. A couple days have passed now, and we haven’t had much in terms of new snowfall. High temperatures in the mountain valleys have remained in the 30s F, but the lower elevations have definitely been above freezing, and the snow has seen some thaw-freeze cycles. I didn’t know how high the freezing line had gone and how the snow quality might have been affected in the mountains, but I figured I’d head up for a ski tour today and check it out. I decided to tour at Timberline as I’d done on Thursday, which would give me a good point of comparison with respect to changes in the snow. From today’s tour I can say that the freezing line has definitely been above 1,500’ on the western slopes, and even above 2,000’. The snow hasn’t consolidated much more from where it was on Thursday, but the above-freezing temperatures have definitely degraded the quality of the snow. Even shaded areas have a melt layer in the top few inches of the snowpack, so you’re not dealing with fluffy, right-side-up powder skiing. Thankfully the humidity has been relatively low, so the melt layer has a spongey consistency instead of being a refrozen aggregate. I’d still recommend alpine fat skis with some decent rocker or a snowboard as the best riding tools. The powder is a bit upside down now with that melt layer on top and drier snow below, but shaded snow is still reasonably surfy if you’re on a nice big platform that can ride up in the higher areas of the snowpack. I was on my 115 mm Telemark boards, but I made only a few Telemark turns – I stuck with alpine turns for the most part because the more consolidated platform and tighter stance was a much better fit for those snow conditions. As long as you have the appropriate tools on your feet and stick to untracked areas of snow, you can get some decently surfy turns. Tracked or packed areas of snow aren’t offering up great turns right now – the snow there has consolidated enough that it’s just bumpy terrain and you’ll get tossed around for a much rougher ride. At least in those lower elevations, we’ll need a decent storm to get back to fluffy powder conditions. Today was supposed to be fairly benign with respect to the weather, but in true Northern Greens form, as soon as I started gearing up at the Timberline Base, a snow squall moved in and pounded us with heavy snow/graupel and reduced visibility for several minutes. It was nothing that resulted in substantial accumulations, but it was a definite reminder from Mother Nature that she’s there. In their early morning forecast discussion, the BTV NWS mentioned two areas of weather interest for today passing to our north and south, leaving us in “no man`s land” with no active weather, but in later updates they noted that there was going to be plentiful cloud cover across much of the region in the afternoon as an upper-level shortwave passed through and supported cold air advection and snow showers. We even picked up accumulating snow down at our place in the valley, so there was definitely some wintry weather out there, even during this relative snowfall lull. Bolton’s planned opening day was the 28th, but in the spirit of all the November snow we’re received, they started the lift-served season today. Lift Operations Manager Scott Beasley and President/CEO Lindsay DesLauriers made a fun social media post on Thursday to break the news to the community. They’re only running the Mid Mountain Chair and the Mighty Mite at this point, but since I was up at the mountain anyway and had to hit the main base to take care of some passholder stuff, I figured I’d stop in for a few lift-served turns. Conditions were fine, with a mix of manmade and natural snow, but with manmade snow in the mix, there were certainly some firmer areas. You can tell it was a bit of an impromptu opening since they hadn’t full groomed the Bear Run route, but that left some fun contours on the terrain and made it even more interesting. The highest elevation I reached today was up to Mid Mountain at 2,500’, but even at that elevation, you could see that the snow had been affected by the temperatures, so you really have to go higher than that to find pristine winter snow at this point. The resort was bustling though, so it’s great to see them get off to a great start. I heard that they expect to open the Vista Quad Chair for next weekend, which is their original planned opening date.

Around here in the Champlain valley, Burlington, Waterbury, Stowe, etc. area, some houses have gutters, and some don't. Indeed, backedge is correct on the insulation - as long as you have a newer build house that was done with modern insulation standards, it's not an issue. Our house was built in '06 with gutters and we've had no issues for close to 20 years. And, it's not as if this area doesn't get a ton of snow. The snow just sits as a stack on our roof all winter, and gradually disappears, so there are never any icicles. The contractor who built our house commented on the level of insulation he put in the roof - I'm sure at a minimum it's to the R-60 local code, but he may have gone with more, since he commented on it. We have a truss roof, so it's not living space, so he could sort of go as thick as he wanted with the insulation. When he showed me the insulation up there in the attic space, it had to be at least a couple feet thick. I've mentioned it here in the form before, but as a kid, I always loved seeing the icicles on houses when we'd be driving around, but my dad would just grumble and say that means the house doesn't have enough insulation (he's a contractor of course). But that's the real deal - if you're getting icicles anywhere off the roof, it means there's not enough insulation there according to modern standards (at least around here in Northern Vermont, but I assume most cold climate areas would have updated their codes by this point as well).

By midweek, our protracted period of snowfall was winding down here in the Northern Greens, and we finally began to get some views of the mountains. When the clouds broke away you could see that the mountains were absolutely plastered with snow – the snowpack depth at the Mt. Mansfield Stake topping out near 40 inches will attest to that. Also notable in the views was the very low snow line – it reached way down below 1,000’ into the valleys. I hadn’t been out to the hill since Monday when the storm was still going strong, but I had enough time yesterday to go on a ski tour for my workout. I was unsure if the lower elevations of Timberline were still going to be offering good powder turns, but when I parked and checked out the snow consistency, it seemed quite good, so I decided to tour from there. The snow had definitely settled since Monday; depths at 1,500’ that were 15-20” on that outing were roughly 12” yesterday. There hasn’t been any real melting of the snow, so that really just represented settling of the snowpack, and all the liquid equivalent was still there to support skiing. Areas in direct sun showed greater effects of consolidation, but humidity levels have been low, so even the most affected areas still weren’t getting mushy. The depth of the snowpack definitely increased with elevation, and up around 2,000 – 2,500’ the snow depths were in the 1 to 2 foot range. I didn’t get any higher than that, but above 3,000’ the depths should be fairly similar to the depths at the Mt. Mansfield Stake. By yesterday there had naturally been a lot of additional skier traffic compared to Monday, but there were still plenty of untracked lines available. The very best powder was in areas protected from the sun, but that’s a lot of terrain at this time of year when the sun angle is so low. The snow may have consolidated a bit more today with the current system affecting the area, but as of yesterday, fat skis were still definitely the way to go. There were some areas of deep, unconsolidated snow that could really throw you for a loop. To that point, I hit one especially deep pocket that was 2 to 3 feet of bottomless fluff, and even on my 115 mm boards, everything just dropped away from below me and I wound up going head over heels into deep snow. It was a chore to extricate myself from that. In general though, the skiing just offered more sublime powder turns that would rank right up there with the best midwinter days.

That shot is a great representation of what’s been going on out there. I was busy yesterday as well, but I was able to swing by Bolton for a quick tour to check out the snow from the back side of the system. I was going to head up to the main base, which has been the way to go so far this season with its overall deeper snowpack, but I passed by Timberline and could see that the snow looked great even down to 1,500’, so I figured I’d save some time and tour there. Right at base lodge level I was getting snow depth readings in the 15-20” range, and part of that is consolidated base, so I could tell that all the terrain would be good to go. I have no idea what the snow depths are up above 3,000’, but with the snow depth at the Mt. Mansfield Stake sitting around 40”, it’s probably getting close to that mark in Bolton’s higher elevations as well. Anyway, Saturday offered up some great skiing, but yesterday’s skiing was next level because of the new powder that fell. Up to this point in the season, I’d say my outing back on the 6th had offered the best quality turns, but it certainly takes a back seat to yesterday. My snow analyses from the back side of the system gave an average of 6.0% H2O, and it was set up perfectly with a right-side-up gradient atop the denser snow below. If I rated Saturday’s skiing as a 6 out of 10, then yesterday was up around 9 out of 10. I guess a way to improve it would be to go even deeper, but 1 to 2 feet of 6% powder with a density gradient beneath it is way up there in quality – the turns were just effortless, and you really couldn’t go wrong. Those are stellar ski conditions for any time of the season, but it’s especially notable for mid-November. As I was floating down through the champagne on the Twice as Nice trail, one thing that struck me was that many ski areas in the country might not even have a day all year with such primo conditions. There was actually only one other car at Timberline for the entire time I was there. It was a father and son out for some touring, and the son had already had hockey practice that morning, so this was his next activity of the day. There’s nothing like getting in two sports before it’s even lunch time. The dad, Willie, saw me taking some pictures and when I confirmed who I was, he introduced himself as a fan of our website, so it was fun way to meet another couple of Bolton Valley regulars.

Your estimate was good - with the addition of this latest storm, that’s about where we are. I just added another past season to the current snowfall progress plot – I hadn’t yet added 2018-2019 because it was a slower start than some of the others, but we’re up to the part of the month where it got going and became relevant, so it’s on there in pink. What’s notable is that this season’s snowfall just snuck above the 2018-2019 season for this date by a tenth of an inch to claim the top spot. Snowfall is essentially running neck-and-neck with that season though, with 2020-2021 right in there as well. It would take a continued strong snowfall performance for this November to be able to hang with those for the second half of the month, but the modeling suggests at least some snow chances, so we’ll see what happens.

And I guess that 28” snowpack depth is for yesterday, which would be prior to most of this new snow, so it will be interesting to see what today’s depth is going to be.

That's awesome - the snow really was excellent. Looks like you were over by the Nose!

PF has done a fantastic job of keeping everyone apprised of the snow conditions at Stowe, so for yesterday’s ski tour my wife and I decided to mix it up a bit and head to mighty Mt. Mansfield. On the approach to the resort, we found spotty snow cover in the valleys building to roughly 12-15” of snow at 1,640’ at the Midway Lodge. Yesterday was a simply beautiful November day, with temperatures a bit below freezing, little to no wind, and some peeks of sun to keep it bright and create excellent views but not throw out so much sun that it substantially affected the quality of the snow. Plenty of skiers and other winter enthusiasts were around at the resort as they took the opportunity to get out and enjoy the snow, but crowds certainly weren’t crazy – I didn’t see many cars in the Mansfield lot, and the Gondola parking lots certainly weren’t full. There were plenty of established skin tracks on the Gondola terrain, and there were typically double and triple tracks available. So it was very easy to ascend side-by-side and enjoy conversations, and you could conveniently pass people or let them pass you if need be. Snow depth increased to over 20” as we ascended, and the snow was substantial enough that it provided both excellent base snow and surface powder for skiing. I’d say it was denser snow overall than what we had back from that storm on the 5th, but the powder skiing was still quite good. We found that the snow did get a touch denser below 2,000’, so you had to be on top of your turns a little more in those elevations as you finished the descent. My younger son was going to head to Bolton for a tour yesterday, but I suggested that he pop over to Mansfield instead, since Stowe isn’t open for the season yet and it’s an excellent time to get in some turns there. We were able to meet up with him and a friend at the start of their tour, just as we were finishing ours. I passed along the info what we’d encountered with respect to snow conditions, and he said they had an excellent tour with some great turns that even brought them into the trees.

I haven’t done a valley snowfall update yet this season, but now that we’ve reached the middle of the month and the snows have been rolling along well in both the mountains and the valleys, it’s probably a decent time. Last season was certainly solid as a whole with over 200” of snow here in the valley, but November was actually one of the weak spots, at least in the lower elevations. We only had 4” of snow (the lowest November snowfall total in almost 10 years), which is well below average, and most of it came at the end of the month as we were moving into December (you can see how the blue line in the plot below compares to the dotted white line for average snowfall progression). This season (orange line in the plot is off to a solid, above-average start, but up to this point it hasn’t been in the league of seasons like 2019-2020 or 2020-2021. The valley snows this season did seem to hit quick and hard (I hadn’t even finished blowing the last few leaves off the lawn or put out the driveway marker poles), so I was curious to see where we stood with respect to snowpack. The current snowpack started up on the 11th of the month, which is on the early side, so I wondered where it would sit if it were to persist into the winter. It turns out that if it does persist, it wouldn’t be a record, since the continuous winter snowpack for the 2019-2020 season started on November 8th, and even the 2018-2019 season snowpack started on November 10th. The past five seasons have had more typical/average snowpack starts at the end of November/beginning of December, which probably gives the early feeling to this season. Part of what’s helped jumpstart this season was simply being in that zonal flow for a while this month with modest storms/clippers passing through the area. And it looks like temperatures for Morrisville have come in right around average for the first half of the month (departure of -0.1 F), which shows that even average November temperatures can produce some decent snows for both the mountains and the valleys. That got me thinking about the weather patterns around here. More and more, I’m seeing the value of these zonal patterns with respect to getting, and more importantly, keeping snow and retaining snow quality. Every year it becomes more apparent that highly amplified patterns are just so much riskier – you basically have this narrow window/slot of storm tracks where you can get some big storms, and an average of 50% of the time you risk a storm passing to the west and putting the area in the warm sector and damaging the snowpack. The discussions around here so often cast “zonal flow” as bad, annoying, unwanted, whatever, but if zonal/average flow is not good, then that’s essentially saying “average” weather is not good. That’s a scary statement with respect to an area’s winter/snow climatology if even “average” isn’t good enough – it would suggest that only a subset of weather patterns (probably well under 50%) are going to be decent, and more often than not you’re really just going to end up with something else.

I guess folks weren’t kidding about the potential for some additional snow. We were under a Winter Weather Advisory for the front end of this system, but I woke up to find that we’re now under a Winter Storm Warning as the storm continues. Even in the valley here, the BTV NWS point forecast suggests the potential for 6-12”+. Current maps from the BTV NWS are below, and it looks like they reeled in those areas of darker red 24-30” shading in the updated version of the Event Total Snow Accumulation map, but there are still substantial areas of 18-24” shading.