J.Spin

The Mad River Valley (Waitsfield, Warren, Fayston, etc.) is beautiful. It’s certainly got some of the resort area vibe with the presences of Sugarbush and Mad River Glen, which means plenty of amenities, but much lower key than Stowe. Many people prefer it over Stowe due to the less developed, more authentic feel. I like both places, and in Waterbury we’re essentially halfway between them, which means great access to both. If you like Mexican food, certainly don’t miss The Mad Taco if you’re going to be in the Mad River Valley.

Snow recently started up here at the house in Waterbury – probably around 10:30 A.M. or so. Flakes are fairly large, ranging from 5 to 15 mm.

I didn’t find out until I saw it on The Weather Channel local forecast, but we’re under a Winter Weather Advisory here. It’s still October, so this is the first winter advisory here in the Greens as far as I’m aware. General snow accumulations mentioned in the advisories range from 1 to 4 inches, with up to a tenth of an inch of ice. Related maps are below:

Event totals: 0.1” Snow/0.26” L.E. Details from the 6:00 P.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.1 inches New Liquid: Trace Temperature: 34.0 F Sky: Flurries Snow at the stake: Trace The low that formed off the coast really dropped its heaviest snowfall overnight on Tuesday night to the east in New Hampshire and Maine, but we’ve had various bouts of snowfall here since Wednesday morning. Temperatures have been a bit too warm for any accumulation down at our elevation, but we’ve finally had some accumulation this evening with that continued northwest flow and falling temperatures.

I walked to the store on an errand (actually oil and spark plug for annual snowthrower maintenance) here in Burlington, and it’s definitely blustery and cold out there. The BTV NWS office showed a temp of 36 F with winds in the 20 MPH range and it’s been spitting snow and graupel all afternoon. We are in late October now, so it’s not all that outrageous, but have this weather even down the in the Champlain Valley feels deeper into fall than the date would suggest.

We’ve had some snow falling at the house this morning, but there’s no accumulation to report down at valley level in the Waterbury area. Heading through the Winooski Valley toward Burlington, I’m seeing snow accumulation in the peaks, with a snow line that looks to be around 1,500’.

At our house in Waterbury, I didn’t see any frozen precipitation yesterday evening or early this morning, but things have definitely changed over to snow now in line with PF’s report from Stowe. Raindrops on the windshield had obvious crystals in them when I was heading out around 7:45 A.M. and the precipitation was fully over to snow by about 8:15 A.M. There really wasn’t much change in the accumulation at the Sugarbush Lincoln Peak Cam overnight; there are a couple of inches there that were picked up with the initial phase of this system. Higher elevations off to the north and east are definitely seeing some additional accumulations though.

Ahh, I was wondering how it was going up there – looking out at the wall of precipitation, it’s not quite the obvious white of all snow. Temperature is 30 F up top at the co-op according to the latest readings. Sugarbush live cams show snowfall at the base of Lincoln Peak with no accumulation and closing in on 2 inches of accumulation up top at the snowboard cam.

Even though this sub forum seems to be less active than it was in years past, when a big storm is taking place, observations still get buried in the main threads very quickly. So, I always try to post mine in the NNE thread where they’ll be easier to find. We’re lucky in that we can essentially have a single thread for the entire winter, and all our observations and discussion is right there to find when it’s needed as a resource. I’ll occasionally post observations in the main threads if it seems relevant, but for the most part, the general population of the sub forum isn’t that interested in what goes on up here. We’ve got a dramatically different climate up in NNE, and that difference is exacerbated the farther north and west one goes. As folks have noted, it’s hard to get a storm that is big region-wide – we’ll often have events up here that aren’t even a blip father south, or we’ll be on the fringe if something big is going on along the coast. I’d say just play it by ear though, you’re going to have a chance to be in synch with more ENE/SNE events in your location compared to those of us in NVT, so you can post where things are happening. Any material in the NNE thread is good though, since we’re not typically suffering from an excess of posts.

Event totals: 0.3” Snow/Trace L.E. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.3 inches New Liquid: Trace Temperature: 34 F Sky: Cloudy After a simply gorgeous fall day on Saturday, Sunday kicked off cold and blustery, and once the snow showers got started in the morning, they literally kept going all day with that classic upslope flow from the northwest. There were still a few flakes coming down, even around midnight last night. We had numerous rounds of transient snow accumulations during the day, and it stuck around better after dark when the temperatures had dropped a bit, but there was still nothing around as of this morning. I recorded one of the early 0.1” accumulations, and then a 0.2” accumulation later in the day after one of the heavier bouts of snowfall, but what I found in the rain gauge this morning was a bit under 0.01” so liquid goes down as a trace. This event was the second accumulating one at our site this month, and the fourth one for the mountains. Looking ahead, there seems to be some potential for snow in the midweek timeframe, and then again out toward the weekend.

That northwest flow has been consistently there all day keeping flakes in the air, the precipitation has generally been quite light, but it’s still chugging right along:

Yeah, I just checked outside and we’ve got a 0.2” coating on elevated surfaces that’s hanging around now that the temperatures have been coming down. Light snow continues to fall at varying intensities, but accumulations are still very transient on the warm ground and only elevated surfaces are holding it.

Well appreciated. Here at our place we’ve got fairly consistent flakes in the air, but it’s definitely got that pulsing nature of upslope with bursts of heavier rates at times. I still haven’t seen anything above the level of light intensity though.

The fact that there are still a few trees with leaves gives it away a bit in terms of how early in the season it is, but today does have that Green Mountain Spine feel. The scene is typical of these types of October events though, and hopefully it will only become even more frequent as we progress into the season. Even the BTV NWS forecast discussion is going with the “classic” terminology for today’s northwest flow upslope snowfall: Area Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Burlington VT 142 PM EDT Sun Oct 21 2018 .NEAR TERM /THROUGH MONDAY/... As of 1154 AM EDT Sunday...Classic northwest flow aloft has led to upslope precipitation across the northern Adirondacks and the northern half of Vermont. Have updated the forecast from flurries to scattered to numerous snow showers over this area with some locations along the spine of the northern Greens getting a dusting to an inch. Clouds continue to persist in the northwest flow and this is holding down temperatures so have also lowered maximum temperatures today down a few degrees to generally remain in the 30s this afternoon. And with the cold air aloft any precipitation will be in the form of snow.

The precipitation had more graupel in it earlier from what I’ve seen, but indeed it’s transitioned to standard flakes in our area. We’ve had transient accumulations hitting a tenth of an inch thus far when snow intensity is up, but that’s all I’ve seen to this point. I checked the radar though, and it’s got that oh-so-familiar scene of moisture heading in from the northwest – pretty classic, and indeed we’re getting into that part of the year now:

Roger that, thanks for the update. The snows thus far have made for some great views with the foliage. With that touch of snow on Tuesday night, that’s three October events thus far by my count, and it lloks like there are more chances coming up this weekend and next week:

Nice PF, pretty stuff. What did you find for accumulations on the hill with this event?

Event totals: 1.2” Snow/0.33” L.E. Details from the 6:00 P.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.1 inches New Liquid: Trace Temperature: 36.3 F Sky: Mostly Clear Snow at the stake: Trace The bit of additional snow we picked up this morning appears to be it for this event. This was a fairly typical October snow event for around here, but a bit on the higher side of average for accumulation. It looks like we might have a couple of additional chances for snow coming up though, one over the weekend and another next week, so perhaps we’ll add to the current monthly total. We’ve still got some snow on the ground here in the yard, and it will probably stick around for tomorrow morning’s observations with the way the temperature is falling off.

Event totals: 1.1” Snow/0.33” L.E. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 1.1 inches New Liquid: 0.23 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 4.8 Snow Density: 20.9% H2O Temperature: 33.6 F Sky: Light Snow/Graupel Snow at the stake: 0.5 inches Yesterday afternoon we began to get frozen precipitation mixing down to the valley floor in Waterbury, and starting around 7:00 P.M. or so we began to get some transient accumulations. The precipitation seemed to generally be snow/graupel at that point, so I emptied the 0.10” of liquid that had accumulated in the rain gauge and set it to winter mode to hopefully catch whatever liquid the snow was brining. We may have had a few rounds of accumulation reaching the 0.1” mark on the boards during the evening, but I documented one of those, and then a more potent accumulation of 0.3” before heading off to bed. This morning there was 0.7” of additional snow on the boards composed of 0.16” of liquid, and a total of 0.23” of L.E. in the frozen material in the rain gauge. Accumulation on the warm ground was slightly less, and there was still some light snow/graupel falling post observations time that added another 0.1” of snow. Amazingly, I haven’t seen any accumulations west of Bolton Flats, even at elevations up to 2,000’, so there’s a dramatic difference around here with respect to accumulations east and west of the spine.

Since about 7:00 P.M. or so, we’ve been getting snow accumulating down here at 500’, so today marks the first accumulating snow of the season. That’s definitely earlier than average (mean and median = October 26th), but the S.D is 11 days, so we’re still inside that. The accumulations have only been transient because we’re still in the mid to upper 30s F and it’s not coming down too heavily, but the precipitation seems to be mostly snow at this point.

Well, unless there was some in the past several days that I missed, today marks our first trace of frozen for the season here in Waterbury. What I saw here was similar to what I assume folks in Burlington had seen – heavier precipitation bringing sleet/graupel all the way to the valley floor. This is pretty much right on track for our usual first trace of frozen, with mean and median date both at October 20th, and an S.D. of 6 days. This is actually the same date for first trace of frozen as in 2015-2016, so that now makes October 17th the mode for this parameter. There’s no accumulation to report, but our point forecast suggests there is the possibility for some tonight, so we’ll see if anything comes of that.

Multiple colleagues here at UVM reported a period “hail” among the rain for 10-15 minutes. I didn’t witness it myself to get a better idea if it was actually sleet or graupel, but there was definitely something frozen making it down to even the valley levels here in the Burlington area.

Yeah, but what’s not quite as cute are all the hotel guests up here that are freezing their azzes off in drafty rooms after the resorts were informed that they wouldn’t be uninstalling A/C units until November. They really should know better.

Excellent stuff PF – this “snowliage” period is one of my favorites around here. It looks like there’s more potential this week - lots of flakes in the Mansfield point forecast, so it should be fun to see what happens in the coming days.

Thanks, I think it does a nice job of capturing the snow line in the afternoon around here, as well as the somewhat past peak state of the local foliage. There’s still some color out there, but we’ve clearly lost a lot of leaves at this point.