J.Spin

Event totals: 3.6” Snow/0.27” L.E. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.8 inches New Liquid: 0.03 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 26.7 Snow Density: 3.8% H2O Temperature: 17.4 F Sky: Light Snow (2-10 mm flakes) Snow at the stake: 1.5 inches

Event totals: 2.8” Snow/0.24” L.E. Details from the 6:00 P.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.2 inches New Liquid: 0.01 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 20.0 Snow Density: 5.0% H2O Temperature: 13.5 F Sky: Light Snow (1-3 mm flakes) Snow at the stake: 1.5 inches

I’ve added the north to south listing of available snowfall totals from the Vermont ski areas for the current event. The lack of notable snow at Burke would suggest that resorts off the spine have not seen much accumulation this far, but the resorts of the Northern Greens had fairly consistent reports of accumulations approaching the 1-foot mark. With Sugarbush reporting 6”, and MRG clearly not getting enough to consider opening for midweek service, it looked like a typical trend of snowfall dropping off south of the Northern Greens, but the Killington/Pico area clearly bucked that trend, so perhaps they were under a streamer or something along those lines. Jay Peak: 10” Burke: T” Smuggler’s Notch: 10” Stowe: 11” Bolton Valley: 12” Sugarbush: 6” Middlebury: T” Pico: 12” Killington: 12” Okemo: 2” Bromley: 4” Stratton: 2” Mount Snow: 1”

With the way it was pounding heavy snow when I left Bolton yesterday, and their morning report indicating a foot of snow for the storm total at that point, I figured another ski session was in order. Snow levels had dropped all the way to the valleys yesterday, but they really didn’t start picking up much accumulation until the evening. Even the valleys were coated in white this morning, so accumulations started there, and I’ve updated yesterday’s accumulations profile with the numbers I saw this morning: 340’: 0” --> 1-2” 1,000’: T --> 2” 1,200’: 1” --> 2-3” 1,500’: 2” --> 3” 2,000’: 4” --> 5” 2,500’: 5” --> 6” 3,000’: 6” 3,300’: 6”+ Today’s tour only brought me up to ~2,700’, so I can’t update those numbers from the higher elevations, but the trend between the additional snowfall and settling seemed to be to tack on another inch or two to what was present yesterday afternoon. When I first got up to the mountain this morning, I encountered blizzard like conditions due to the snowfall and wind, and the wind was certainly stronger than I saw at any point yesterday. Like yesterday, the snow would often come in pulses – you’d have light to moderate snowfall with a brightening of the sky, and then visibility would drop and you’d encounter heavy snow. At one point on today’s tour, intense snow came on so fast that visibility dropped to ~100 feet in just seconds. I was in the middle of taking some photos, and will end up having to use some of the initial exposures because part of what I was shooting about 200 feet away literally became invisible behind the snowfall, and I just had to move on. I’ll put together some images and a bit about the ski conditions as soon as I get a chance.

There was a prominent stream of moisture sitting there visible on the radar with some of those yellow 30+ db echoes. It was right down there in Addison County and upstream of Sugarbush/MRG, so I was wondering if they were getting hit, but the valley certainly got in on it based on those numbers.

Event totals: 2.6” Snow/0.23” L.E. Details from the 12:00 P.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.6 inches New Liquid: 0.04 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 15.0 Snow Density: 6.7% H2O Temperature: 21.0 F Sky: Snow (2-8 mm flakes) Snow at the stake: 1.5 inches

Event totals: 2.0” Snow/0.19” L.E. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 1.3 inches New Liquid: 0.06 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 21.7 Snow Density: 4.6% H2O Temperature: 12.0 F Sky: Light Snow (1 mm flakes) Snow at the stake: 1.5 inches

It’s back to winter indeed. Even with your timely snow updates providing knowledge of how much snow fell and how it was skiing on Mansfield, you really never know quite how it’s going to be until you get up there. I’d seen Bolton’s initial morning report of 1-3” in the 2,000’-3,000’ elevation range, so when I found 2” at the Timberline Base at 1,500’ on the way up the Access Road, I knew the accumulations had been increasing through the morning. I detailed the accumulations profile in my previous post, but this was one of those days where it was definitely nice to be able to start touring above 2,000’ with the elevation dependence. As of midday, there was already a solid resurfacing of the low angle terrain, so aside from any scoured areas, the powder on that terrain was skiing beautifully. Even low-angle terrain that had been skier packed was excellent, so this new snow had adhered nicely to the subsurface. On one of my lift-served runs, I saw this in play with the quiet turns of skiers on Bear Run and Sprig O’ Pine as I passed over on the Vista Quad. I’m not sure how much liquid equivalent has been put down at elevation with this storm, since we’re certainly not getting as much liquid down here in the valley as the mountains are. We’ve had about 0.12” of liquid from this event down here, but based on how the powder turns felt today, the mountains had probably seen 0.3-0.5” up high as of midday? That’s an estimate of course, and PF can weigh in with his thoughts. Anyway, medium angle terrain was a mixed bag in terms of sufficient resurfacing. In areas of untracked powder over at Wilderness, I was generally getting bottomless turns even up to some single black terrain. There were some great turns in areas that hadn’t been scoured. When I was over skiing the lift-served terrain on Vista though, you were definitely getting down to the old base on the blues and blacks – there certainly hasn’t been enough liquid equivalent put down with this event to hold up to those levels of skier traffic. But in terms of not quite knowing what it’s going to be like until you get there, today definitely delivered. The quality kept me around for some lift-served runs even after touring, although I was able to connect over to parts of Wilderness on those runs for powder laps. Overall, the snow was great, and so was the scenery, since it was often pounding snow with big flakes, but the light levels were pretty high because it’s now late March. A few shots from the day:

I headed up to Bolton for a midday session, so I can pass along some snow observations. I started out with a tour up to the Wilderness Summit at ~3,150’, and someone had also broken trail up Ricker Mountain, so I followed that for a bit and probably topped out around 3,300’. The powder skiing was great, so I hung around for some lift-served laps as well. It was snowing all the way down to the valley floor, but accumulations didn’t start until ~1,000’. Here’s the accumulations profile I found around midday: 340’: 0” 1,000’: T 1,200’: 1” 1,500’: 2” 2,000’: 4” 2,500’: 5” 3,000’: 6” 3,300’: 6”+ Once above the 2,000’ level, there weren’t any massive increases in accumulations that I saw, just sort of slow, steady increase, as the profile shows. The powder was meaty like you said, so powder turns were great. The snowfall ranged from huge, pounding flakes, to lighter episodes where the snow continued, but the sky would brighten. It was really pounding when I left, and made me want to stay for another run or two. I’m not sure if it can keep up at today’s snowfall pace overnight, but tomorrow would obviously be another great day if it did. I’ll put together some images and a bit more info when I get a chance.

That’s great to hear. It’s been a bit slow over the past week as you’ve noted, with just a couple inches here and there, but this should give us a bit more to play with. It’s the Northern Greens, and it’s only March, so it’s good to see an uptick with still April to go.

The precipitation just switched over to snow down here at 500’, or at least this is the first time I’ve seen snow down this low with this current event. The temperature hasn’t changed much here, so I’m assume some threshold was hit higher up in the atmosphere. I saw that Bolton reported 1-3” in their early morning report, with obvious elevation dependence. It is snowing nicely on their webcams though, so we’ll see how things proceed today. It’s nice to see that flow into the mountains, it looks somewhere between W and WNW.

Down here at 500’ we had a couple rounds of accumulating sleet with the 3/24 system (where the Winter Weather Advisory was in effect), but that’s all I’ve seen here for frozen accumulation since the weekend. We actually had a lot of sleet fall with that system, but not much accumulation down at this elevation since the temperatures were marginal. It has been snowing at elevation, as I’ve seen on the Bolton Valley main base webcam, but down at 2,000’ it’s sort of been on and off with accumulation/melting back. I popped into the thread though because I saw potential snow in our forecast even down here in the valley, and there were some substantial numbers when I checked on the local elevations. I’ve been targeting Sunday as a possible day for turns if the snow starts to build up, so we’ll see. The BTV NWS is mentioning snow in their discussion though, and the numbers they mention seem consistent with the point forecasts I’m seeing: Area Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Burlington VT 1002 AM EDT Sat Mar 26 2022 NEAR TERM /THROUGH SUNDAY/...As the front moves into the region early Sunday winds shift around to the northwest and precipitation becomes more terrain focused with the low level flow initially blocked backing snow into the Champlain Valley, but by the afternoon the flow becomes unblocked and we`ll see snow mainly along the mountain crests and on the lee side. A slushy 1-3" is possible at lower elevations by the days end, with significantly higher amounts up to 6-8" across the higher peaks.

The forecast this weekend seemed generally on the dreary side, but I did want to get out for some turns and exercise, and early this afternoon seemed like a decent window. The colder air and snow were expected to move into the area later in the afternoon, so midday offered the chance at spring snow that wouldn’t have tightened up, and it would be ahead of any rain that might fall on the lower elevations of the mountain. Indeed I found some nice spring conditions at Bolton, all the way up above 3,000’. There’s a lot of good corn snow out there, but some trails have those still slick areas of denser snow and ice underneath that you have to watch out for. It wasn’t warm enough (generally in the 30s to near 40 F at 2,000’+ where I skied on the main mountain today) to really soften those densest spots, so the best skiing involved working your way around those areas and using the available corn snow. Some trails (like Alta Vista and Hard Luck) had more corn snow available and fewer slick spots, while others (like Spillway and Beech Seal) had more of those icy/dense spots to work around. The good news is that all that dense snow is going to last quite a while as we head into the spring. Most natural snow trails had some coverage issues, so skiing was generally on routes with manmade snow today. There’s still a lot of natural snow in the elevation range of the main mountain though (the snowpack depth at the Mt. Mansfield Stake is around 40 inches), so a lot of terrain would be in play with natural base for any large storm cycles that come through in the next few weeks. When I first got to the mountain this afternoon, the cloud ceiling was up and down in the 2,500’ – 3,000’ range and there wasn’t any precipitation. On my last run though, it was snowing up at ridgeline level, and by the time I was leaving, the frozen precipitation was just starting to make it down to the Village elevations. The snow level must be well below 2,000 now though, because I can see that the precipitation is all snow on Bolton’s main base area webcam. A few images from today:

Yeah, it was already snowing at 3,000’ at Bolton when I took my last run about an hour ago. I saw just the occasional touch of frozen down at 2,000’ when I was leaving, but that should gradually change over as the temperatures drop going into the evening. It seems there’s a good stream of moisture hitting the spine on a westerly flow:

Sunday was the day after the storm, and the weather had settled down. My wife and I headed up for morning turns at Timberline, and the conditions were great. It was still cold by March standards, somewhere in the teens F in the morning. The storm total reported by Bolton was around 18 inches. We spent our entire morning at Timberline, and just stayed there since there was plenty of snow even down to 1,500’, and there was still some wind around as we hit 2,500’. My depth checks generally revealed about 12” of new snow after settling down in the Timberline elevations, which with the density at the beginning of the storm was plenty to cover most on piste terrain. Initially, the headwalls of the steepest terrain areas were closed, since they had been scoured by the winds and thus not covered as well as they otherwise would have been. The traverses below them were in good shape though, so that gave you access to run after run of untracked powder on spots like Spell Binder. Eventually, patrol even opened the Spell Binder headwall, but you had to be quite cautious going down the most scoured sections For off piste runs, you had to know the areas with good base depths, but the skiing in those areas was excellent. The usual steepest areas were still sketchy of course, as one storm can only do so much. My wife and I had a great run in one of our favorite glades, and when we showed it to my younger son and his friend when they arrived it the early afternoon, they were pretty impressed with the conditions. We left around 1:00 P.M., but the boys did a lot of off piste exploring in the afternoon, and my son’s ski got a solid core shot to show for it. The parking lots up at the Village were already full when we arrived in the morning, so the Timberline Quad had intermittent periods with a lift queue as the people arriving made their way up to the main mountain, but thankfully those died off as people dispersed. Bolton opened the new expansion to the Timberline Lodge for the first time this weekend, and it looks quite nice. I hear they are also going to use it as rentable space for conferences and events, but it’s going to be a great addition to the space in the lodge.

It’s been a busy past week, so I hadn’t had a chance to put together anything from Winter Storm Quinlan yet, but I had some time this weekend to assemble a few photos and snow updates from last weekend’s sessions at Bolton Valley. On Saturday, the storm was just getting going. Once it did though, it was quite a ride, and I’d say that term applies to both the skiing and the driving. Snowfall rates down here at the house were running at around an inch an hour during the day, and the higher elevations were obviously doing at least that well. With that in mind, I decided to hit the mountain in the afternoon, by which point there should have been a good chance at a solid resurfacing of the slopes. I had no idea how long the lifts were going to hold out in terms of the wind, so I packed midfats and fat skis, with skins for both. It’s always a good insurance policy to have the skins on hand for these types of storm days. My wife opted out of heading up with me, since she suspected the driving on the access road was going to be outrageously hairy, and that the storm conditions on the hill were going to brutal. She was, of course, correct on both accounts. On the drive up the Bolton Valley access road, I saw two cars that had ditched on their descents. That wasn’t bad compared to some storms, but it was certainly a sign. Both vehicles had gone off at those steep bottom pitches of the access road as it makes its final dive into the Winooski Valley, which is a common area for cars to bail. For one of the vehicles, a tow truck was just getting set up to pull it out, and it looked like the operator was going to need to take up the entire roadway to do it. Thankfully, he waved me by just as he was about to rig up. In the midst of the heavy snowfall, the scene felt like something out of “Highway Through Hell”. Thankfully, it wasn’t a big rig off the road, but the weather fit the bill. I could see that there were multiple plows working the road to try to keep up with the snowfall, because it was constantly pouring down and making the driving rough. Up above 2,000’ at the resort, Quinlan was going full tilt in terms of both snowfall rates and wind. Obviously the skiers and riders were dressed for it and took it in stride, but you could see that Village elevations had already taken quite a pounding during the day. By that point, the storm had put down 8-10” of new snow in the Village, and the parking lots hadn’t been plowed since the morning. Moving through the lots was tough with all that snow, and cars without 4WD/AWD and clearance, were definitely struggling to get around. I got a spot right in the top lot from someone who had recently left, but I spent a good amount of time packing and checking my spot to ensure that I was going to be able to get out later. I hopped on the Snowflake Lift and took a run on Sprig O’ Pine to find that indeed there had been quite a resurfacing of the slopes. That 8-10” of snow certainly wasn’t fluff, and it had started out quite dense, allowing it to bond to the subsurface. The Vista Quad and Wilderness Chair were already down on wind hold, and just as I skied up to the entrance of the Mid Mountain Chair, it went down on wind hold as well. When Mid Mountain goes down, you know the wind is serious. I could have done some additional laps on Snowflake or headed down to the Timberline Quad, but I really didn’t have a sense for how long they might be able to keep running with the winds. So, I grabbed my skins from the car and headed to the Wilderness Uphill Route. The Lower Turnpike area was sheltered from the winds as usual, but above 3,000’ on the ridgeline, the winds were just brutal. The winds had to be 40 to 50 MPH sustained, and when I hit the final traverse of Peggy Dow’s to the Wilderness Summit, I almost couldn’t skin across because there were already waist-high drifts blocking the route. I had to break trail along the eastern edge of the traverse and cut between the drifts and the trees. Conditions at the Wilderness Summit were a maelstrom, and even in the most sheltered spot I could find, it was still so windy that packing up my skins was a struggle. I laughed to even think of the upper lifts running under those conditions. I’d say the snowfall accumulations at that point were rough 8-10” at ~2,000’ and 10-12” at 3,000’, and the skiing, as one would expect, was excellent. As noted, there had been dense snow at the start of the storm, and everything of moderate pitch, or even higher angle pitch if the subsurface was smooth, had been resurfaced. I’d seen a couple small groups of folks descending while I was heading up, but after that, I saw nobody. I essentially had the entire main mountain area to myself at that point, and it was just point, go, and ski lots of fresh powder. With the solitude I’d experienced out on my tour, the intensity of the ongoing storm, and the fact that it was already after 4:00 P.M., I expected to return to a deserted base area. But that wasn’t the case; the Snowflake Lift and Mighty Mite were still running, and some folks were even skiing. After being up in the 40-50 MPH winds, the 20-30 MPH winds around the base area did feel a bit tamer. I couldn’t believe that the new Miso Kome Japanese food stand outside the base lodge was operating, but I’d yet to have a chance to try it, so despite the stormy conditions, I took it as a sign. If they were willing to stay open during a storm like this, then hey, I’ll take the opportunity to try out their food. While attempting to read their menu, which was on a sign pitched several feet away from the stand, it was snowing so hard that I had to keep wiping off the new snow just to get through the various items. It had to be snowing at around 2”/hour at that point. Inside the lodge, everything appeared to be quite normal, and I was even able to grab a couple of pizzas from Fireside Flatbread to bring home to the family. So I guess storm or no storm, the services roll on at the resort. The final part of Saturday’s outing was the descent down the access road. I’ve obviously been down that road in many, many storms, but the timing of this one with the heavy snowfall rates made it one of the more challenging descents I can recall. We were crawling down the road. Cars were moving at a snail’s pace because the intense snowfall made it hard for the plows to keep up, and the road surface was so slick that you’d almost be slipping off the edge at a full stop. On more than one occasion, I opted to ride the crown of the road because just the natural drainage slope in your lane wanted to guide you off. About halfway down, we caught a nice boost from a plow that was on the way up and set up some added traction to the center of the road. I used that slice of extra traction as much as possible for the remainder of the descent. It was great to get home with the food and talk about the whole experience at dinner, and all told, that was certainly one of the more eventful ski outings of the season.

Between all the skiing and everything else over the weekend, I was just too busy to look into the totals for Winter Storm Quinlan at the resorts, but I’ve tried to piece those together for a summary below. The numbers quickly disappear from availability on the web, so some of these are best guesses, but it should give an idea of the trends from north to south for storm totals for the Vermont ski areas: Jay Peak: 24” Burke: 12” Smuggler’s Notch: 19” Stowe: 17” Bolton Valley: 18” Mad River Glen: 12” Sugarbush: 12” Pico: 18” Killington: 18” Okemo: 12” Bromley: 8” Magic Mountain: 8” Stratton: 8” Mount Snow: 10” I’ll put together some weekend snow updates and photos from Bolton as soon as I get a chance.

Event totals: 0.1” Snow/Trace L.E. We’ve had light accumulating snow here at the house this morning, and checking the BTV NWS forecast discussion, this is from weak low pressure moving by to our north with a weak upper-level shortwave, which is distinct from the sharp shortwave trough that is expected to move across the area tonight. I’ll plan to keep any snowfall from these disturbances as distinct events. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.1 inches New Liquid: Trace Temperature: 25.9 F Sky: Light Snow (1-4 mm flakes) Snow at the stake: 12.0 inches

Event totals: 11.3” Snow/0.89” L.E. Based on the radar, it looks like this is the end of this system, so the above totals should be the final numbers for snow and liquid at our site. I’ve got the data from the past two rounds of analysis below, and indeed the snow density went way down for the final part of the storm. Details from the 12:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 1.4 inches New Liquid: 0.10 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 14.0 Snow Density: 7.1% H2O Temperature: 17.8 F Sky: Light Snow (3-12 mm flakes) Snow at the stake: 15.0 inches Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 1.3 inches New Liquid: 0.05 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 26.0 Snow Density: 3.8% H2O Temperature: 15.6 F Sky: Mostly Cloudy Snow at the stake: 15.0 inches

Event totals: 8.6” Snow/0.74” L.E. Details from the 6:00 P.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 4.7 inches New Liquid: 0.29 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 16.2 Snow Density: 6.2% H2O Temperature: 19.4 F Sky: Snow (1-10 mm flakes) Snow at the stake: 14.5 inches

There’s no doubt that the snow was denser this morning, but it’s definitely lightening up now as the temperatures are dropping down here in the valley. The morning time block for snowfall produced an average ratio that was almost 12:1, so it must be above that now. We’ll see if the ratios keep going up this afternoon, which would obviously enhance the accumulation numbers relative to denser snow, but of course it’s the liquid that matters. There’s almost a half inch of liquid down so far, which is a great start. The flakes weren’t especially large at observations time (1-5 mm), but with the rate at which the boards were getting re-covered as I cleared them, you could tell there is a lot of liquid coming out of the sky. A half inch of liquid equivalent down is great though; that pretty much already calls for an afternoon trip to the hill to check it out. Bolton actually has Blauvelt’s Banks taking place today, so that should be fun to watch. I’ve actually been watching the riders on the Bolton Base Area Webcam, which has been fun. I can see that the Vista Quad is already down on wind hold, but apparently all the other lifts are still running.

Event totals: 3.9” Snow/0.45” L.E. Details from the 12:00 P.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 3.6 inches New Liquid: 0.31 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 11.6 Snow Density: 8.6% H2O Temperature: 27.5 F Sky: Snow (1-5 mm flakes) Snow at the stake: 10.5 inches

It seems like it’s been running at about 1”/hr here at our site, nothing too outrageous, but nice and steady. I’m planning to run an analysis at 12:00 P.M. and we’ll get some info on the morning’s snow density down here in the valley.

I did a check on the snow depth difference on the boards in roughly the 9:30 A.M. to 10:00 A.M. block, and it was 0.5”, so I guess the snowfall is around the 1”/hour mark. The current snowfall is relatively dense as you mentioned, which is especially helpful as we get deeper into spring and the subsurfaces are firmer because they’ve typically gone through freeze/thaw cycles. That dense start was somewhat lacking in the past few storms as I wrote up previously. I think it failed set up great bonding to the subsurface, was pushed around quickly, and led to poorer ski surfaces than we otherwise might have seen. We probably would have needed 2”+ of liquid equivalent to really make a notable difference in that situation: “The recent clippers from this week were nice, and were potent enough that they made for some great short term conditions while the snow had its loft, but there just wasn’t enough liquid equivalent in there to really set up for lasting improvement in the on piste snow surfaces. Those systems, and even Winter Storm Oaklee before it, were fairy cold from start to finish. That meant that there wasn’t any notable dense snow to bond to the underlying subsurface, and the light, dry snow eventually just gets pushed around, bringing you back to whatever hard base was there before. My snow analysis numbers show that these past four storms (there was also a smaller system with squalls between Oaklee and the two larger clippers) actually put down over an inch of liquid equivalent here in the valley. But despite there likely being somewhat more liquid equivalent than that in the mountains, it wasn’t going to be enough to hold up to lift-served levels of skier traffic.”

Flake size has been up and down a lot here at our site this morning, going from 1-2 mm such as at observations time and early on, with some periods getting up to the 10-15 mm range. Right now it’s a mix of sizes that looks to cover roughly the 3-15 mm range.