J.Spin

Indeed, I’d say above average temperatures are often fantastic around here for both September and October. September is kind of a no brainer because the chance for skiable snow is essentially nil. October is a bit tougher because there’s almost always some snow, and below average temperatures or at least a below average stretch can mean some nice early season turns. It looks like last year we had one round of snow in September, and then three rounds of snow in October on the 16th, the 27th, and the 31st. There wasn’t really anything notable in terms of skiable snow though. The previous year had some more substantial events however, with the first salvo coming on the 23rd and dropping a foot of snow at elevation. I was out of town for that one, but it kept snowing with upslope from the moist cyclonic flow, and I got out for some turns on the 28th, by which point it looks like the northern half of the state had seen 18-20” at elevation. That was a great way to kick things off for the season:

That’s good, but you still need to get that “all” in there somewhere. Studies have shown that its use is associated with inordinately high potential for convincing oneself that what they’re saying is true, and it’s a key component in the process of transforming opinion into fact. You can also reinforce it with visual aids if desired.

Yes, definitely. We had some steady rain at times, and it was the type where I’d look at the radar and not really be able to see it, so I figured it was some of our classic orographic stuff. We picked up ~0.20” of liquid from the showers with plenty of autumn look and feel. It will be interesting to see if there’s any discernible orographic pattern in the local liquid reports tomorrow morning.

Tamarack is right, ideally you want to report a precipitation number every day, 0.00” or otherwise. With that said, I often don’t report immediately on obvious zero precipitation days if I’m busy (it’s a 365 day a year job, so I don’t mind skipping some zero days and filling them back in later on the monthly zeroes chart). I’ve never been contacted by the auditors, so presumably they know what’s going on. I assume that’s what the monthly zeroes chart is for anyway, and I typically update that the next time I’m reporting precipitation.

Our butternut tree out back that usually starts losing its leaves around the first of August actually started losing its leaves earlier this year – they were already falling at some point in late July. Perhaps it was because we’ve been drier than usual for this area over the past couple of months. One thunderstorm we had a few days back brought down a ton of yellow leaves, so the back yard and deck are littered with them. I’m actually watching more of them falling right now, and with the current upslope rain/mist, and cooler/drier air moving in, the scene is very autumnal. In this area we’ll often start to get that feel of seasonal change picking up by August 1st, and certainly by about August 10th, but in terms of everyday feel, it just hasn’t happened substantially yet with this weather pattern. You can tell that full summer is definitely on borrowed time at this latitude though – even with this pattern the forecast lows are dropping well into the 50s F around here, and we’re not particularly cold with respect to a lot of spots in the area. In any event, the dew points are taking a huge hit relative to where we’ve been if lows are dropping like that instead of staying in the 60s F. On our way out of town yesterday we saw a nice band of yellow hitting various trees in the 1,000-1,500’ elevation range on the north wall of the Winooski Valley. We were actually up above 47° N at Mont Sainte Anne Thursday and Friday, but I didn’t see anything notably different than around here with respect to color change.

Actually, now that I’ve obtained the L.E. for exclusively the snow & sleet from each winter, I can calculate the average snow to water ratio for just that precipitation. That comes in at 13.7 ± 1.4 during the eight years in my data set. That’s just total snow & sleet to total snow & sleet L.E. I don’t have it broken down by storm size in any way, which would take a bit of work because there are over 400 accumulating storms documented at our site during that stretch that I’d have to categorize and find the individual snow and L.E. numbers. The 13.7 ratio does include sleet L.E. of course, so the number is lower than what it would be for pure snow, but it does jive fairly well with the plot from the 2005 Baxter et al paper in Weather and Forecasting, which seems to put NVT in the 13 to 14 range with respect to mean SLR.

Yes, that number is for everything, every drop of liquid/liquid equivalent that fell between the dates of the first and last accumulating snowfalls for each of those seasons. So the 22.97” includes all-snow events, mixed events, all-rain events, sleet, freezing rain, etc. I’ve always tracked that number because it’s unequivocal, and I can get it easily by going to the CoCoRaHS website by simply entering the start and end dates. Beyond that, the analysis obviously becomes more arbitrary and there are numerous ways to do it as your notes indicate. I haven’t really done much with those types of analyses, but I realize that the CoCoRaHS data archive does have an excellent record that I can use for a more detailed analysis. In our daily CoCoRaHS reports, we are supposed to indicate the liquid equivalent associated with the sleet/snow as a distinct record from total liquid. That can be a challenge in mixed events, but I’ve been quite rigorous with respect to catching and documenting the various liquid/frozen break points in events, so what’s in the CoCoRaHS database for our site should be pretty solid. Running the numbers for the past eight seasons reveals an average of 10.64 ± 2.77” L.E., which is the L.E. for just sleet and snow, no rain or freezing rain. So of that 22.97” of total liquid during each snowfall season, roughly half is derived from snow and sleet.

I normalized the SD values into percentages in the table below, and they’re actually quite comparable for the two sites aside from max depth. So at least for these past 12 winters, the variability in snowfall at your site is similar to what it is here in the Northern Greens. I always thought we had relatively low snowfall variability because of the addition of upslope snow, but perhaps it’s more of an NNE thing. Standard Deviation (Percent) Location Waterbury New Sharon Avg Snowfall 24.41% 26.80% Avg Max Depth 31.95% 40.00% Avg SDDs 52.74% 48.41% I do have liquid equivalent data for the past eight winter seasons, but I don’t track it by specific dates, I track it for the accumulating snowfall season (i.e. all liquid from the date of the first accumulating snowfall to the date of the last accumulating snowfall). For that period the mean L.E. is 22.97 ± 4.23”.

That’s sort of what happened in 2015-2016, but up here’s that’s not a very happy outcome. It’s still amazing how much that season sticks out like a sore thumb in the data set, especially with our reduced seasonal snowfall variability up here in the Northern Greens. It’s simply incredible, but unfortunately on the low end. With my data set not being that large, that season literally knocked the snowfall average down (I’d argue artificially in an actual long-term sense) by roughly 10 inches. The mean is slowly recovering year by year at this point, but it’s going to take a lot of seasons to average out such an aberrant value.

Nice PF, we always love it when you revisit these awesome stretches of snowfall with your Mansfield snowfall numbers and images. I checked my data for that 22-day stretch and it looks like we picked up just about 55” at our place, so right around 50% of the upper mountain snowfall as usual. I think timing of the biggest days during that period had me skiing solo, so I couldn’t get the boys in any of those deliciously deep shots that we love, but I still grabbed a few fun images from that stretch in the Northern Greens:

Posting those old Concord snow data in the banter thread made me realize that I hadn’t updated my Waterbury Winter Weather Summary Table with this year’s numbers, so I just took care of that and added it below. Anyway, I’d say it was a nice, solid, average season. This past season’s data are in the top row of the table, and they’re all in black, indicating that there were no extremes in any of those parameters. The seasonal aspect of most note I guess was just the late start to the accumulating snowfall season on November 10th – that was the second latest start I’ve seen here and the only parameter that was outside of ±1 S.D. from the mean. We had some snow on October 31st to keep that October frozen precipitation streak alive, but no measurable accumulation until November 10th. Beyond that, most numerical parameters were even within ±10% from the mean aside from number of storms (+14.6%) and largest storm (+14.7%). No complaints really based on the table (which doesn’t capture how poor much of February was with respect to typical snowfall), and I guess based on the parameters shown I’d give it a grade somewhere in the C+ range.

This is pretty neat - seeing that 1st snow info for such a stretch so far back:

LOL, what I’ve never understood is how the DIT can simultaneously proclaim his love for the dews, HHH, and all that, and then simultaneously be the install king. Aren’t AC units specifically created to produce the exact opposite of the type of air that he loves so much? Are the AC units ever actually used, or are they simply installed for show, to impress the neighbors? Is everyone being duped on the install thing?

I’d be interested in hearing more about the timeframe on DIT’s climate of yore when CT had a NVT climate. That’s a shift of about 200 miles in latitude. What climate did we have up here? When are we talking here, hundreds of years, or back to the last ice age? Fella’s comment would suggest there’s not much change of note in the past ~100 years.

Agreed, when I first saw the posts proclaiming a warm, humid summer, it immediately smacked of recency bias and the typical agenda-driven drivel we get in a lot of posts here. Let’s just conveniently forget about the weeks and weeks of discussion about the June weather. Starting in astronomical summer puts it in much better perspective. Entering the period later does reduce the amount of summer we’ve actually had from which to draw the conclusions though.

Those data are really interesting – I checked my data to see if the same sort of pattern occurred since we’re fairly close geographically, and indeed it’s there. I just used 1/3 of my July rainfall numbers as an estimate instead of getting all the daily July data, but it should be a decent approximation. Mean for the period is 13.52 inches, so this has indeed been a dry stretch – the lowest rainfall I’ve seen during that period. The grass has been fine though, will plenty of windows for mowing. 2018: 7.89 2017: 16.46 2016: 9.70 2015: 17.88 2014: 11.19 2013: 19.25 2012: 11.60 2011: 15.85 2010: 11.04

This was the first time we had to turn on the AC in our house in the roughly 12 years that we’ve been living here, so I don’t think we’ve had a stretch like it during that time. With our proximity to the mountains, we always drop into the 60s F or lower each night, so for our area to stay up in the 70s F for two (or three?) nights during this stretch was definitely unusual. And oh man, the swimming was such an awesome perk from the heatwave. I usually find that we need about three days or so in the 90s F to really get a lot of our cooler streams around here to comfortable levels, and it seems like we haven’t done that in a while. We took care of it with this stretch though. We headed to Bristol Falls on Wednesday and it was glorious! It was an absolutely perfect day to be out there – we spent two continuous hours mostly in the water, and like you said, you could get out without even feeling a chill. I do look forward to these sorts of heatwaves in that regard, but it looks like we’ll be getting back to business as usual now. I’m psyched to get back on the bike etc. though.

I just checked my CoCoRaHS numbers, and our site is at 2.96” of liquid for the month, so just on the low end of that 3-4” range. I think you guys had a bit more in the Stowe area with at least one of those May events. Checking my data, that puts us roughly 2” below average liquid for May though, so it has been on the dry side. Liquid this month has been more akin to a local site outside the mountains like BTV (May mean liquid = 3.21”), but it’s given me some dry windows of time and I was able to get in a first cut of the lawn this weekend for the parts that needed it. I took advantage of the dew this morning and the dry forecast for the next couple of days put down some weed and feed on the lawn, but true to form, some light showers moved in during the process. I’d even checked the forecast and radar thoroughly, and there was no precipitation visible in the area even on composite, but the mountains had other things to say about that I guess. The rain seemed light enough that it wouldn’t be too detrimental to the process though, so I’m hopeful.

I was out for ski tours on Mt. Mansfield on Friday and Saturday, so I can pass along a few pictures and snow updates. I actually got to chat with PF on the slopes on Friday, and I see he’s posted some recent shots in the ski thread. There was still a pretty good bang for your buck over the weekend in terms of % snow top to bottom on Liftline, but the % decreases every day, so folks will have to decide when it hits their own point of diminishing return. That upper section of Liftline offered up some of the best turns though, and should still offer some decent skiing this week. A few shots from those outings:

I was out for a Mansfield ski tour on Thursday, and can pass along some snowpack info and a few pictures. Coverage on Nosedive was top to bottom down to the level of Crossover, and Perry Merrill is close, with just a couple of breaks. The snowpack on the south side of the Cliff House has really been thrown around by the plowing for summer activities, but the north side is in good shape for connection to the lower trails. PF’s picnic tables are still going to require a bit of thawing before they’re ready for use. A few shots from tour: