J.Spin

Yesterday I’d hoped to get up to Bolton for some afternoon turns and take advantage of some of the warmer temperatures, but I couldn’t get up to the mountain until after dark. That did allow me to get my first lift-served ski session of the season under the lights. It turns out that while temperatures crept above freezing in the valleys, the mountains stayed below freezing, so the snow never really had a chance to soften up. I was only able to sample terrain with manmade snow, since that’s most of what’s available under the lights, and it was about what one would expect on busy terrain. I’d say it was fairly middling in terms of typical manmade conditions that had seen plenty of skier traffic – not horribly icy, but certainly not universally soft by any means. It was decent snow for carving turns, and temperatures in the upper 20s F made it comfortable to be out. All the main Village parking lots were rather full when I arrived, and when I was leaving the mountain around 6 PM or so, cars were just streaming up the access road. I wouldn’t be surprised if Thursdays are one of their busier nights, but I’d definitely say that the night skiing scene at Bolton is alive and well. The fact that midweek night skiing tickets are only $29 is probably a factor in getting folks up to the mountain for turns as well – that’s just a fraction of the price for a typical daytime lift ticket.

That’s interesting, because it clearly shows that there was quite some variability in the effects from that storm, even within the same town. I was actually referring specifically to our observations site when I wrote “minimally degraded the snowpack here or resulted in a net gain in snowpack liquid equivalent.”. So the focus was our site and the mountains; I didn’t mean to imply “here” in the more regional sense. I cored the snowpack before the storm on December 15th and there was 1.26” of liquid in it, and then I cored it again after the storm on December 20th and there was 0.70” of liquid in it. So, we lost about ½” of liquid from the snowpack over the course of the storm, which I felt was fairly minimal relative to the event as a whole (the totals for the storm were 0.91” of liquid equivalent and 0.5” of snow). There’s definitely some room for debate about just how minimal/moderate one considers that, but if that’s what happened at our site in the valley, then the mountains must have incorporated all that liquid and hardly missed a beat. The other warm event I was considering in that post (Winter Storm Ezra) was later in the month, and it brought 1.24” of liquid equivalent and 3.2” of snow. In association with that event, the snowpack at our site went from 1.63” of liquid on the 28th to 1.93” of liquid on the 30th. Aside from the snow “quality” issue after that storm, that seems quantitatively like a gain for the snowpack at our site in the valley, and if that’s what happened down at our site, the mountain snowpack should have had the capacity to just gobble up everything that storm had to offer (which should have been 1 to 2 inches of liquid equivalent). When we’re talking the 12-14” of liquid that PF measured in the higher elevation snowpack, I’d think both of those events would have minimal effects.

Since it looks like temperatures will go above freezing with this next system, I cored the snowpack for liquid here at our site in the valley for this morning’s CoCoRaHS report. Our snowpack currently contains 2.42” of liquid, which is the highest I’ve recorded so far this season. We’ve really only had a couple of notably warm storms, since maybe all the way back to some point in November? And those events either minimally degraded the snowpack here or resulted in a net gain in snowpack liquid equivalent. And with the deep snowpack in the mountains, they easily just incorporated any of that liquid for a net gain. We saw how much liquid was in the Mansfield snowpack from PF’s report a few weeks ago (12 to 14 inches), so it’s got to be even more than that now. It should be interesting to see how things go with this next system based on the most recent modeling.

Bolton Valley was reporting another 3-5” of snow in their morning report, and 10” in the last 48 hours, so I figured it was time to head back up to the hill to see how much progress there had been in the ski conditions. The first thing I noticed when I reached the Village was how incredibly warm temperatures in the mid to upper-20s F felt – it was so warm that it seemed like the snow should be melting. I started off with a ski tour on the Wilderness Uphill Route to the Wilderness Summit. Being a Wednesday, they were running the Timberline Quad instead of the Wilderness Chair, and that meant skier traffic on Wilderness was quite low. Conditions have improved quite a bit since I was last out on the mountain six days ago. Low-angle terrain has seen a full resurfacing, so unless the terrain had been recently groomed, you were not contacting any of the underlying hard surfaces. You could actually get bottomless skiing on any pitch of terrain if it hadn’t seen skier traffic, but that was quickly lost anywhere that had seen many skiers, so we’re not talking about a limitless resurfacing of all terrain. The skiing was so good that I decided to stay around for some lift-served skiing as well. On my first ride up the Vista Quad Chair I rode with Will, another Bolton Valley regular. We wound up both skiing Cobrass, and after he told me about an adventure he’d had that brough him down the back side of the resort and required skinning back out, I showed him some of the terrain around Maria’s so that he had a good sense of how far you could go without ending up on the east side of the range. I continued on down to Timberline, since it was my first chance this season to get in some lift-served skiing there. Not everything on Timberline is open quite yet, but skier traffic has been much lower there and fresh snow abounds. The off piste terrain in the 1,500’ - 2,000’ elevation range needs just a bit of additional base to be ready for prime time, but as with the main mountain, from ~2,000’ and above there’s plenty of snow for off piste adventures. This most recent storm put down some fairly dense snow, and that played a big part in stepping up the conditions. My liquid analysis from the storm so far have indicated that the snow has come in right around 10% H2O. The off piste conditions out there right now are generally quite good, but there’s plenty of variability with respect to elevation, aspect, wind, and the predominant types of trees. Some areas are simply fantastic with mid-weight powder available, while others have a crust buried between layers of powder, and there’s some upside-down snow spots. Wide skis are a good choice to smooth out some of those irregularities. There was definitely deeper powder with elevation, and here’s what I generally observed for powder depths out there today: 1,500’: 5-7” 2,000’: 5-7” 2,500’: 9-10” 3,000’: 12-24” There certainly wasn’t two feet of powder everywhere up around 3,000’ or so, but in places that had not been skied or scoured, a foot plus was the norm. I did find some areas with up to two feet of powder atop the old base however, so some spots have picked up quite a bit over the past week.

Thanks for the update PF – and well put with regard to explaining what’s out there. As you can see in my Bolton report from my post above, our experience was very much the same yesterday, but we didn’t even go near any high-angle terrain because I knew it just wasn’t really worth it. The base is clearly there, and there’s plenty of terrain available, but we’re going to need a solid resurfacing to get back to the generally excellent conditions we’ve seen over the past several weeks. That will require a solid large storm cycle, or a good number of bread and butter systems based on the subsurfaces I’ve encountered. We’ll need a system or two with some meat in them. There are some storms out there in the models, but it doesn’t look like a real slam dunk bread and butter pattern for the next couple of weeks as far as I can see, so it might be a little while before the mountains get back to pleasant surfaces. I’m OK with a bit of a slow down in conditions though – looking at my records I see that I’ve had almost 30 ski outings so far this season, and that’s a lot to pack into a couple of months with everything else going on in life. That’s well ahead of my typical November/December pace, since the seasons don’t always take off quite this fast with such prodigious snowpack. It’s easy to get out during the holiday period but packing it during the fall takes a lot of planning. We’ll roll with whatever Mother Nature decides to give us though, and having that fantastic snowpack in place means that conditions should be good to go as soon as that liquid equivalent comes along.

With the mountains picking up several inches of additional snow from our most recent clipper system, the family along with some friends headed up for some holiday season turns at Bolton Valley yesterday. Temperatures were cold – it was in the upper single digits F on the mountain for the start of the day, and it was only expected to get colder as the day went along. With that in mind, we decided to just head up for a quick tour in the morning via the Wilderness Uphill Route before the Wilderness Chair started loading. Up at the resort it was quite windy in exposed areas, and snow was still falling, so here was certainly a January feel. Based on my reconnaissance tour on Wednesday, I recommended we just stick to lower-angle terrain because even with the new snow, I didn’t think there were be enough liquid equivalent to support good turns on anything steeper than that. So the six of us toured up to ~2,700’ on Cougar and descended from there. Despite the additional snow for yesterday’s tour, I think that turns might have been a bit better on Wednesday. We were actually one of the first groups hitting that terrain for the day, so we had access to plenty of untracked snow, but the perceived slight drop in ski conditions might have been due to additional traffic on the earlier snow. Temperatures in the single digits F meant that the snow was somewhat slow as well, so that was kind of a knock against the skiing – you just didn’t glide that well, and that can be important on lower-angle terrain. After our tour, my younger son and his friends decided to hop on the Wilderness Chair for a lift-served run while the rest of us hit the base lodge, and they had fun, but the conditions weren’t good enough that it was worth hanging around to brave more of those cold temperatures and winds. Overall, it was great to get out for the tour, but even with the couple rounds of snow we’ve seen in the past few days, there’s just hasn’t been enough liquid equivalent set down yet to be anywhere near a real resurfacing. That, and the relatively cold temperatures mean that the skiing is there, but it’s just not back to anything great yet. The snowpack is quite robust though, so as soon as we get that resurfacing, the local resorts should be set up for some excellent skiing again.

Data collection for December 2025 is complete, so we can see how it played out via the red trace in the updated snowfall progression plot below. Around mid-month, December had accumulated about 30 inches of snow, but the productive bread and butter pattern from the first half of the month slowed down a bit, and we hit that relative lull you can see after the 15th for about a week. That lull broke for the last week of the month though, which delivered roughly another 20 inches and ensured that December snowfall ultimately wound up above average. This season, the combo of November and December delivered between 70 and 80 inches of snow, which is solid, but still at the end of that +1 S.D. range. The plot nicely shows how the last week of the month allowed 2025-2026 to pull away from 2018-2019 (green trace). It looked like it was making a run for some of those top seasons, but it ultimately fell short of surpassing 2008-2009 (orange trace) and well short of catching 2007-2008 (blue trace). Overall though, this season has certainly had a solid start relative to average as the plot shows.

That overnight snowfall played out similarly here at our site – the underlying snowpack is currently consolidated enough that we picked up 4 inches of snow, and the snowpack depth went up the same amount. We’ve had a lot of continuously settling snowpack over the past couple of months with the types of systems we’ve been seeing, so each round of new snow has typically been compressing the underlying snow. This snow from this recent clipper was fairly dry down here (4 to 6% H2O), so it’s already settled an inch since yesterday.

With the approach of our next system, winds already began shifting to a more southerly direction, and that pushed some lake moisture and accumulating snow into the area this afternoon. I see the BTV NWS has us in the 3-6” shading here in the valley with some 4-8” shading farther north along the spine toward Mt. Mansfield, and that generally seems to mesh with the point forecasts I’ve seen. Some modeling gets the mountain areas up toward half an inch of liquid equivalent in the Mansfield area, but most seem to be more in the 0.2” to 0.3” range. As noted in my previous post, every bit of liquid equivalent that comes with this system will do that much more with respect to improving the quality of the snow surfaces, so it will definitely be interesting to see how the mountains fare.

The vestiges of Winter Storm Ezra wound down this morning, with the storm ultimately delivering 3.2 inches of snow and 1.24 inches of total liquid equivalent here in the valley. Not all of the storm’s precipitation was incorporated into the existing snow in the valleys around here, but it looks like we captured close to 0.5 inches of liquid that bolstered the snowpack. Based on my data collected here in the valley, the storm presumably delivered 1 to 2 inches of liquid equivalent to the local mountains, and the deep snow base there should have captured all of it. That’s a great boost to the snowpack in a quantitative sense, but with all that mixed precipitation, and some of it being freezing rain, it was unquestionably detrimental to the quality of the snow surfaces. As of this morning, Bolton Valley was reporting 5 inches of accumulation from the back side of Winter Storm Ezra, and I’d estimate there was less than ½ inch of liquid equivalent in it, so we’re nowhere near a substantial resurfacing of the slopes yet. We’ve been in that sort of post-mixed precipitation/thaw/refreeze “no man’s land” of waiting for ski conditions to return to something respectable, but with the snow that finished off this morning, it felt like we were hitting the point where it was at least worth heading up for a ski touring workout. And, with another system moving into the area tonight, I definitely wanted to get a sense of where conditions might be tomorrow with the new snow. A definite plus with regard to getting out to the mountain today was that temperatures have made a nice upward move – it was close to 20 F in the Village when I headed out on my tour. My plan was for a quick tour using the Wilderness Uphill Route, since the backcountry isn’t going to be anywhere near ready yet, but groomed, low angle slopes might hold some potential. With the winds that came along on the back side of Winter Storm Ezra, powder depths were typically in the wildly disparate range of 0-6”, with many areas having 1-2”. Those lower end accumulations might be nice over a soft subsurface, but the current subsurface is very hard, so those don’t cut it. I took a quick reconnaissance run through some available trees, and off piste areas are quite a mess with respect to snow quality. Some places are dust on crust where wind blew away all the new snow. Other areas that were protected from the mixed precipitation to some degree have up to 10 inches of softer surface snow, but it’s upside down, with one or more layers of crust in it as well. In general, the off piste terrain was rather dangerous and unpleasant to ski – you could go from dust on crust, to a few inches of powder, to deep surface snow with a semi breakable crust. You never know what kind of snow you might encounter from one turn to the next, and most of it was not good. The bottom lines is that we’ll want to get at least another good inch of liquid equivalent down atop the snowpack to get back to some decent off piste conditions. There was a nice bright side to my tour though, and that was skiing on lower-angle terrain that had seen some grooming. Lower Turnpike came delivered like a champ as usual. There were certainly some unpleasantly firm surfaces in some of the moderate angle spots, but once I got down into the consistently lower-angle areas and found powder areas that had been protected from the wind, there were some excellent turns. I’d say in those lower areas I was getting 50% bottomless turns on 86 mm mid-fat skis, and that was much better than I’d expected. Areas in that vein that have not seen much skier traffic could offer some very good skiing tomorrow with the addition of more powder. Anyway, if you haven’t been out skiing around here over the past couple of days and have been taking care of other things – well done; you’re not really missing out on anything, especially relative to how good the conditions were ahead of Winter Storm Ezra. The fact that I was able to head up in the late morning period during a big day of the holiday week and didn’t have to park down at Timberline suggests that many people are making similar choices. The resort was still reasonably busy though – they were parking folks in the last tier of the main Village lots when I arrived, and I saw two fairly large (5 to 8 people each) groups of skiers ascending the Wilderness Uphill Route during my descent. We’ll have to see what tonight’s storm does, but lower to even moderate-angle terrain could be getting quite good tomorrow depending on how much liquid equivalent is delivered in the snow.

Very astute observation there PF! We were all standing at the top of Vista Peak and commenting on the amazing views of the Adirondacks/Whiteface (along with most visitors that were getting off the lift) and my younger son caught that nuance of the view immediately. He was quickly looking for a word and in the guessing game I threw out “mirage” and a few other things until my wife finally realized he was looking for “mesa”. What he had actually first noticed was how surprisingly glacier-like that col to the right of Whiteface looked (more than usual), and we started talking about local examples like Lake Willoughby. It was shortly after that when the flat appearance of the peaks to its right caught our attention. I did comment that the col looked a bit more U-shaped than usual, but without the aid of the lens, it wasn’t immediately obvious whether the overly flat appearance of the peaks to the right was due to mirage or simply due to a localized area with a lower cloud ceiling. But once you see the image with the help of the camera lens, its very obvious that its Fata Morgana – you can see the refraction ripples in various spots in the image. It’s interesting that the area around Whiteface itself seemed less affected, but I bet more people would have noticed with the naked eye if something had been going on there.

Ahead of the current system (Winter Storm Ezra) I cored the snowpack here at our site in association with yesterday morning’s CoCoRaHS report, and the 1.63” of liquid measured was within a few tenths of the projected snowpack water content based on NOHRSC modeling. The modeling also suggested that Winter Storm Ezra could be quite a snowpack boost around here, even in the valleys, with another inch of liquid equivalent being added. Comparing the modeling from yesterday with that of today, it looks like the updated projection for snowpack depth increase is probably a bit more realistic, but both estimates stick with about an inch of liquid going into the snowpack. We had 0.81” of liquid equivalent recorded from the storm as of this morning, with a bit more falling today, so those liquid estimates seem to be in the range of what we’re getting. The mountain snowpack should certainly get a solid injection of liquid equivalent out of this event. Now we’ll just need a decent amount of new snow on top of the snowpack to get the surface conditions back in good shape, but the BTV NWS forecast discussion says snow showers should be continuing throughout the week.

Schedules lined up today to make the whole family available for skiing, so we headed up to Bolton Valley for a session. Things started off cold in the single digits F for the early morning around here, but by the time we headed up to the mountain in the mid-morning period, temperatures were up into the 20s F with plenty of sunshine. Conditions on the slopes are excellent, and it really was a spectacular day for getting outside – it was so good that the National Weather Service Office in Burlington even mentioned it in their afternoon discussion: Area Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Burlington VT 129 PM EST Sun Dec 28, 2025 NEAR TERM /THROUGH MONDAY/... As of 127 PM EST Sunday...High clouds are beginning to stream into the region out ahead of the storm system tonight into Monday. The lingering effects of a polar high is keeping winds relatively calm. A stark temperature inversion is in place today, with mountain temperatures in the upper 20s and 30s, while elsewhere is in the upper teens or twenties. Overall, it`s a great day for winter recreation. We’re in the big holiday week now, so there are certainly plenty of visitors at the resort, but the quality of the snow both on piste and off piste is excellent, and conditions are holding up well. Everything is open except for the Timberline area, so we roamed all over the main mountain’s alpine trails, hitting some excellent groomers as well as powder off piste. For the first time in a while, there wasn’t any fresh power this morning, but the resort has seen two feet of snow in the past week, and temperatures have been cold, so there are plenty of adventures to be had with fresh tracks if you poke around a bit. Arriving when we did in the mid-morning period, we had to park down at Timberline and shuttle up to the main mountain, but without any mountain operations taking place on Timberline, we were able to ski back down to the car. They’ve made a ton of snow at Timberline in the past several days, and the rumors I’m hearing are that they’d like to open in time for the New Year’s holiday. They’ll just need to groom out all the huge snowmaking whales they’ve put down, but it sure seems like there’s plenty of snow there to open up that lower part of the resort now.

We were on the fringes of Winter Storm Devin up here in Northern Vermont, but Bolton Valley still picked up 3 inches of new snow from the system to top off the current powder depths. And thankfully, today was much warmer than yesterday – it was 15 F when I arrived in the Bolton Valley Village in the late morning period, which was quite a contrast from yesterday’s 2 F temperature at the start of my ski tour. Today I toured more on the eastern side of the Bolton Valley Nordic & Backcountry Network. I ascended the Bryant Trail up to and around the Bryant Cabin, then headed out on North Slope to catch some glades there with a descent via Gun Sight in the Gotham City area, and I finished off with some of the lower glades near the Telemark Practice Slope. The powder skiing continues to be absolutely fabulous, with the accumulations from Winter Storm Devin coming in around 6% H2O based off my snow analyses in the valley. That meant it topped off the current snow quite well and maintained the right-side-up density gradient in the powder. Between settling and compression from the new snow, total powder depths were about the same as what I encountered yesterday, with 12-15” around the 2,000’ level and 15-16” in the 2,500’-2,700’ elevation range. We’re definitely into the holiday week now, and with the great snow conditions, it’s not surprising that the resort is seeing a lot of visitors. Arriving in the late morning, they were already having people shuttle up from the Timberline parking lots, but thankfully some early morning folks were leaving at that point, and I was able to grab a spot in the second lot for backcountry/uphill skiers. The upper backcountry parking lot was actually blocked off for lessons, and while I was out on my tour I saw a couple of groups out with backcountry instructors, so it’s nice to see that people are taking advantage of the holiday week and the great powder conditions to get out there and become familiarized with backcountry skiing.

It was cold out there today – midwinter cold. By the afternoon we’d reached the upper single digits F in the valley, but I knew it was colder than that in the higher elevations. I wasn’t too excited to get out in those temperatures to ski, but Bolton had reported another 5-7” of new snow from the Christmas Day storm, and on top of all the recent snowfall, there was likely going to be some really great skiing out there. I ultimately decided to head up for a quick ski tour and was planning to get on the Bolton Valley Nordic & Backcountry Network from the Village, but I figured I’d at least take a look at Timberline on the way up. A woman I rode the chair with on Wednesday said that the resort was working their way toward getting Timberline skiing underway during the holiday week, and indeed they were blowing snow at Timberline, so that made the decision easy to head up to the Village. By the time I’d ascended to the Village, the temperature was down to 2 F, which is about what I’d expect based on the valley temperatures. I’d geared up with my usual dual base layer setup for cold temperatures, so I was actually nice and warm on my ascent. The fact that there was no wind actually helped make it quite comfortable, and my older son was up riding the lifts and giving ski lessons to some beginner friends, and he commented about the lack of wind as well. For a change of pace I ascended part of the Bryant Trail and connected over via Cliff Hanger for a descent of Prayer Flag. The powder depths I measured in undisturbed areas were typically 12-15” at the 2,000’ level, and 15-16” in the 2,500’ range. The subsurface just continues to get buried under deeper and deeper layers of powder, and the descent of Prayer Flag was one of the better ones I can remember. I was worried that the skiing might be on the slow side with the cold temperatures, but the composition of the powder out there made for great gliding. It also didn’t hurt that only one or two other skiers had toured in the Prayer Flag area, so the snow was mostly unracked. Once I was back down to the Broadway bridge I made another ascent up to the top of World Cup and descended through some of the glades in Telemark Practice Slope area. It looks the current conditions are going to make for some fantastic skiing this weekend, with some additional snow expected tonight, and much warmer temperatures for the next couple of days.

Our most recent clipper system dropped about 10 inches of new snow in the local mountains as of this morning’s reports, and on top of the new snow that was already in place yesterday, it meant that today was definitely a good one to get out for turns. There was quite a temperature gradient with respect to elevation this morning – it was in the mid-20s F in the valleys, but it was in the mid-teens F up in the Bolton Valley Village at ~2,000’. It was probably in the low teens up above 3,000’, and with brisk winds it was downright cold in exposed areas. It turns out those winds would have quite an effect on how my morning session played out at the hill. I arrived around opening time for the Wilderness Chair, and was surprised to see that it was running, but there was a queue of probably 50 people or so still waiting to get on. I paired up with a guy who filled me in on that latest – the Vista Quad had been running earlier, but it had gone on wind hold not too long ago, and naturally everyone headed over to ride the Wilderness Chair. From the Wilderness Summit, I worked my way over toward Fanny Hill since the Vista Quad was down, and I found great conditions with plenty of untouched snow all the way back to the base. I was thinking of taking a couple of runs off the Snowflake Chair, but much to my surprise, I pulled up to the Vista Quad, and it was loading skiers. Since it hadn’t run that long before it went on wind hold, conditions off Vista Peak were fantastic. Alta Vista yielded an excellent groomed surface, and Vermont 200 offered up some steep, soft turns with untouched powder along the sides and especially down near the bottom where the trail fans out. On yesterday’s outing it was clear that many lower-angle slopes were offering good conditions, and the extra snowfall overnight bumped that right up to include just about any terrain. You could still find slick areas on steep terrain where skier traffic had pushed away the new snow, but snow that hadn’t been touched by other skiers was dealing out beautiful turns. In general on the upper mountain I was finding 12”+ of powder available in untouched areas, with some places hitting 24” where snow had collected well. Down in the valley we picked up another half inch of liquid equivalent from this latest clipper, and I’d say between these last few systems, the mountains should have picked up an inch or two of liquid in the snow. It’s represented a decent resurfacing, and it’s definitely having an effect on conditions - this latest system was the one that pushed them over the top.

The weak mid-level trough that came through the area yesterday dropped about 3” of snow in the valleys around here, and I saw that Bolton Valley was indicating 4” new in their morning report. Combined with the snow from Sunday’s cold front, it seemed like it was time to head up to the mountain and check out how the resurfacing was coming along since the most recent consolidation storm that we had over the weekend. Temperatures were well up into the 20s F and there was no wind, so it was very comfortable out on the mountain, and although it wasn’t snowing, the skies were cloudy ahead of the next incoming clipper system. The Wilderness Lift wasn’t loading until 10:00 A.M., so I started the morning off with a tour up to the ~2,700’ elevation using the Wilderness Uphill Route. Conditions were excellent on Lower Turnpike, with several inches of powder above the old base. Turns weren’t 100% bottomless, but I was probably getting 50% bottomless turns on lower-angle terrain in untouched areas of snow. And even for turns that touched down to the subsurface, the base was nice and soft. I followed up the tour with some lift-served runs, and I can say that moderate and high-angle terrain are nowhere near being resurfaced yet. The new snow was quickly pushed around by lift-served levels of skier traffic, and it’s going to take another inch or two of liquid equivalent to get the high-angle slopes back to something respectably soft for lift-served skiing. There is an increase in powder depth with elevation, and here’s roughly what I found for depths out on the mountain today: 2,000’: 3-4” 2,500’: 4-5” 2,700’: 5-6” 3,150’: 7-8” The best turns were in areas of untouched snow, which were thankfully fairly plentiful ahead of the lift opening, but there’s just not enough liquid equivalent in the surface snow yet in any terrain area to hold up to lift-served skier traffic. The current system affecting the area is even more robust than the last one however, so it certainly should bring the snow surfaces up another notch by tomorrow morning.

The numbers are probably too borderline for a Winter Storm Warning down here in the valley (the most recent update is more like accumulations of 5-8" without yesterday afternoon's snow included), but this is often the way they do it when the more substantial accumulations are localized right along the spine – it’s too small a geographic area to focus the alert.

At some point during the day today Alexa alerted me that we’d been put under a Winter Weather Advisory, and it looks like the BTV NWS advisories start up at 7:00 A.M. tomorrow morning and cover a good chunk of the state outside the Champlain Valley. The most recent Event Total Snow Accumulation map shows totals in the 8-12” shading for the higher elevations of the spine around here. Down in the valley our point forecast suggests something in the 5-10” range through tomorrow evening, and the map has us in that next tier of 6-8” shading, so those projections seem to correlate fairly well.

Yeah, I find the GFS is the best mid-range model out there with respect to telling us what’s likely to happen up here in the Northern Greens when looking ahead a week or two. It seems to see the terrain well and it knows what to do with it. When it comes to modeling, I think we sort of have an advantage around here in that this is an incredibly snowy climate, so basically any impulse, piece of energy, or system that gets near the spine is typically going to produce some snow. All a model has to do is assume that it’s going to snow and it’s generally going to be correct. Also, our classic “bread and butter” patterns are often based on a single northern jet stream, so there’s not a lot of concern about lining up perfect phasing, etc. Looking back at my post from earlier in the month, the GFS suggested 7 to 9 systems coming through the area through about this time period, and this current system is #7 or #8. We’re right around 30” of snowfall for the month so far here at our site, so it will be interesting to see if we end up above average for December. If we kept the snowfall pace we had through the first half of the month, that would have been a slam dunk, but the pattern doesn’t look quite as prolific for the remainder of the month. The GFS shows roughly 6 potential systems in the queue through the rest of December, so we’ll see how thing play out. This current system isn’t really a big one for snowfall, with probably just a few inches on the back side, and then there’s a system tracking along to our north over the weekend – it seems a bit far north to hit us with too much snow, but there will potentially be some effects and the BTV NWS talks about that in their discussion. Then there’s a potential system in the Tuesday timeframe. That one has that look on the GFS with the lingering upslope precipitation, which definitely suggests some decent potential at first glance. That one is still a bit in the distance, but the BTV NWS certainly touches on that in their discussion as well: Area Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Burlington VT 1233 PM EST Fri Dec 19 2025 LONG TERM /SUNDAY NIGHT THROUGH FRIDAY/... The next system will approach Tuesday afternoon. Although temperatures during the day will climb near to just above freezing, we`ll likely remain all snow for precipitation. Our weather pattern will feature us on the fringe of a very warm air mass to our south and cool air off to our north. Small fluctuations in the pattern could spell a wide range of scenarios. On a day-by- day scale, these kind of weather patterns tend to have lower predictability since systems move fast between stronger winds between these sharp thermal gradients and the lack of amplification means these smaller systems can be more difficult for global models to resolve. It`ll certainly be active, with likely breezy conditions and precipitation opportunities every other day or so.

My colleague Mark was still in town for work yesterday and my older son had the day off, so the three of us headed out for another tour on the Bolton Valley Nordic & Backcountry Network. Mark was looking for a tour that would have an ascent in the backcountry potentially followed by some rolling backcountry terrain, finishing off with a descent on some groomed alpine terrain where he could work on his Telemark turns. When he described what he was looking for, I had just the route he needed. We ascended via the Bryant Trail to the Bryant Cabin, then traversed back toward the alpine trails on the rolling terrain of North Slope and finished off with a final descent down Lower Turnpike. Temperatures had crept up into the 30s F in the valleys, so I was unsure what was going on up at the resort, but temperatures dropped as we ascended to the Village. The temperatures were below freezing at Village level, so all the snow was still in midwinter form. My younger son had been out for some lift-served skiing in the morning, and he felt the off piste snow had settled somewhat, so I was surprised to find that the powder was just as fluffy as usual out in the backcountry. We didn’t ski a ton of untracked powder on the backcountry route we took, since it had a lot of rolling terrain without many big descents, but the powder that we did hit was excellent. Just as impressive as the powder off piste was the quality of the turns we found during our final descent on Lower Turnpike. I hadn’t been there in quite a while, but I’d say it had the highest quality packed snow I’ve seen during this recent stretch. Even with lift-served traffic on Wilderness, we couldn’t find a touch of firm snow on Lower Turnpike, so it wound up being a highlight of the trip and a fantastic surface for Mark to use for practicing his Telemark turns.

Since the snow depth for our VT-WS-19 CoCoRaHS site is reported each day, SDD for our site is actually something that can be obtained publicly. SDD isn’t something that CoCoRaHS reports directly though, so it would require some offline analysis (unless it’s available in one of the various CoCoRaHS analysis tools – I haven’t explored all the features in those tools exhaustively). You could even explore some of the data for a CoCoRaHS site closer to you if you wanted something that might be more relevant to compare to your location. It looks like southern Franklin County has relatively poor coverage on CoCoRaHS, but the one active site in that area is in Fairfax: VT-FR-21: Fairfax 4.9 WNW. Anyway, I have all my data in a spreadsheet, so it’s really quick for me to calculate SDD. If one is looking for relative snow retention/snow cover, SDD is certainly going to be helpful, but I could also envision the total number of days with snow cover being another important parameter. There could be a season with a solid number of SDD through mid-December, but it all happened to come from one notable storm that fell in the last week of November and hung around for several days, but the rest of November and the first half of December had bare ground. Or, there could be a few inches of snow cover right from the start of November that never melted and the ground was white the entire time. It’s hard to say which one of those is “snowier”, so I made plots for both of those parameters. There are three plots below covering data from the start of the snow season (Oct 1) through Dec 15: the first one plots SDD, the second is total days with snow cover, and the third is the sum of those two (sort of a way to blend those two parameters into a more comprehensive parameter for integrated snow depth & snow cover – the numbers are generally within an order of magnitude of each other, so a straight up sum seemed reasonable). As you can see from the data, this season is solid, but not really a standout that jumps from the pack of other decently performing seasons in either SDD, days with snow cover, or the combined parameter. I’ve never really explored these numbers until you inquired, so it’s interesting to see the season that does jump out here is 2018-2019. It’s actually the top season on all three plots, but boy does it absolutely soar above everything else with respect to SDD. It’s not surprising to see that 2018-2019 is one of the comparative seasons I’ve been tracking in my snowfall progression plots (I added that latest plot at the bottom here for reference). Coincidentally, there is currently a discussion on First Tracks!! Online Ski Magazine about the strong start to the ski season here in Northern Vermont, and in that discussion, Tony Crocker has a post showing that as impressive as this start has been with respect to open terrain – through December 8th, the 2018-2019 season was even better than this one.

What one considers a “big” storm is sort of arbitrary/subjective, so there’s certainly room for pushback. But your comments help to make the point – I can’t even tell you when those two 20” cycles occurred. I’m not sure if anyone in the forum other than you knows when they happened. Most likely they were “nothing” events in terms of their impacts on the majority of the Northeast. There have only been three TWC named winter storms so far this season, and they all impacted us and are in the list below, but none of them were named for their impacts in our area because their effects here were minor as you can see by their accumulations at our site. Alston and Bellamy earned their names because of impacts in the Midwest, and Chan was named because of impacts off to our south. If you look at this list below of the 18 storms that have hit our site so far this season, it’s loaded with Clippers, cold fronts, and shortwaves. My main argument was that the Mansfield stake has reached record depth without being in the sweet spot for any major synoptic storms. If someone told me that Mt. Mansfield had reached a record snowpack depth for mid-December, I’d assume there had to have been at least a couple of major synoptic storms in which our area was in the perfect position to cash in and get a ton of snow. But that hasn’t been the case. And, what’s more interesting is to consider that perhaps the record depth wasn’t achieved just in spite of not getting hit by those big synoptic storms, but the record depth was actually achieved because we were in a pattern that wasn’t conducive to creating big storms. What has transpired so far this fall just proves that it’s not necessary to have multiple perfectly placed coastal storms to achieve a record mountain snowpack around here - that’s the part I find most counterintuitive and intriguing. Below is the list of accumulating storms that have affected our site so far this season, and it should be just about the same list for the local mountains. The description of each storm is included, and none of them were big coastal systems. The closest to a typical nor’easter was Winter Storm Chan, but it was still quite weak, and its effects this far north were fairly minimal (only 4.8 inches for a storm total at our site).

Now that we’ve hit the mid-month period, I’d been meaning to put out an update on the seasonal snowfall progression and check where things stand with respect to other seasons. As the data show, this season’s snowfall progression (red trace in the plot below) is clearly running above average. But as much as everyone has been talking about how outstanding this season has been, its snowfall is really just running in a similar manner to how 2018-2019 progressed (green trace in the plot below). In fact, this season has generally been running behind the 2018-2019 snowfall pace. And for even more perspective on this season’s snowfall, it’s now well behind the 2007-2008 pace (blue trace in the plot below). At this point, the second half of December would have to put on quite a snowfall performance to even be in the same league as 2007-2008. That was a season which essentially stacked a 20-inch November with a 70-inch December, so it’s not surprising that it holds the current snowfall record for that combo in my data set. As of mid-December, all of the resorts along the spine of the Northern Greens have recorded 100”+ of snowfall on the season, and Jay Peak is approaching 200”. But, this season’s snowfall is basically running in line with what we saw just had a few season’s back, and well behind 2007-2008, so why does it seem like such a strong start? The deviation from average snowfall pace may be a bit more in the mountains than the valleys, but I think a big factor in making this feel like such a strong start to the season has been the temperature consistency. Indeed temperatures have been well below average over this stretch, but they don’t have to deviate much if at all from average to get good snow at this time of year – especially in the higher elevations. I’m sure there are seasons that can attest to that, but I really think it’s the temperature consistency that has been helping to get us to where we are. Temperature consistency has clearly been a positive, but somewhat inseparable from that factor in this great start to the ski season has been the general pattern/storm track. And one could argue that the process of getting all the snow we’ve seen has been a bit counterintuitive. The local resorts have reached 100”+ of snowfall in just a month or so without any huge coastal systems, and without even getting any of our classic stacked lows sitting in the Maritimes. All this snow has basically been achieved through modest bread and butter systems without a highly amplified pattern. What’s certainly impressive is that we’ve gotten to where we are with a generally progressive flow of Clippers and similar events, but the more important part is that without a highly amplified pattern, we haven’t had to deal with many warm storms passing to our west. We’ve seen few rainy systems, and even few mixed precipitation events over the past month or so. If you ask me, that’s why Mansfield has achieved this record snowpack – it’s avoiding the “two steps forward… one step back” type of sequence that comes with those more amplified patterns and huge systems. I don’t think it would be strange at all for someone to assume that if you’re going to get to a record Mansfield snowpack, you’d need to do it with the help of a monster system or two… but this season flies right in the face of that idea. Cleary, the type of pattern we’ve been seeing is something notable/special if it’s tied or beaten out snowpack depths from the past 70 to 80 years of record keeping. We obviously know about the critical importance of these types of patterns up here with the fact that we use the “bread and butter” terminology, but I’ve come to appreciate them more and more every year. Growing up, we were always on the lookout for “nor’easters”, since they obviously make a big splash in the news, and everyone talks about them, but as kids we wouldn’t have known any better. If this type of less amplified/more progressive weather pattern that we’ve been seeing is indeed going to become more common around here as some of the meteorologists are suggesting, one has to think there’s going to be improving chances for more stretches like this. It’s definitely going to be interesting to see (and ski) if we get more of these stretches going forward.