J.Spin

Sort of similar here in BTV – but the snowfall rate has certainly picked up with the approach of those 30 dB echoes on the radar.

Assuming the snow growth parameters producing the snow you’ve seen continue to be present, that should be very interesting to see. Things can change as the energy moves east of course, but there’s always lots of potential when areas of deeper moisture run into the spine. I’m not home at the moment, but we’ve got our snow stake webcam running, and that typically provides a decent real-time visual of what goes on at our site in terms of snowfall rates.

We’ve got some snow starting back up here in BTV.

Event totals: 2.5” Snow/0.06” L.E. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 2.5 inches New Liquid: 0.06 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 41.7 Snow Density: 2.4% H2O Temperature: 16.7 F Sky: Cloudy Snow at the stake: 15.0 inches

We were out for a couple of sessions this weekend in the Bolton Valley area, so I can pass along some snowpack and conditions updates. Saturday was the chillier of the two days, so we hit the BV Backcountry Network, starting our tour all the way down at 1,200’. From my Tuesday outing, I found a total snowpack depth of ~18” at 1,500’, and I wouldn’t say it was much less at the 1,200’ elevation. Depth checks on the powder revealed 12-13” above the base, and overall coverage was absolutely fine for the low and moderate angle terrain we were skiing. The powder has obviously settled a bit since the period immediately after Izzy, but the cold temperatures have probably minimized the settling somewhat and/or some sublimation/drying is keeping the powder reasonably dry. On Sunday I was up in the 2,000’ – 3,000’ range at the main area of the resort for some lift-served skiing, and I focused on the Wilderness area since this weekend was the season debut for running the Wilderness Double Chair. The overall snowpack is deeper up at those elevations of course, you can easily tack on another foot up around 3,000’, but a lot of the difference is subsurface snow/base – the powder depths weren’t all that different. On piste surfaces were excellent packed powder aside from areas that were wind scoured or steep, but of course Wilderness doesn’t have snowmaking, and until this weekend the only traffic had been ski touring, so that’s left the snow quite pristine overall. The depths I’m report were all ahead of the Sunday evening system and this one that’s currently coming through the area, so these will certainly top off/replenish those powder depths, even if they aren’t major contributors to the total L.E. of the snowpack. On piste, I’m sure these little systems will soften up spots that aren’t icy due to snowmaking, steep pitch, or high traffic. A few shots from the weekend:

I see that we’ve got some snow falling here at our site now, so any dry levels in the atmosphere must have been saturated.

The BTV NWS point forecast here has fluctuated between 2-4” and 3-5” from what I’ve seen, so the thoughts above seem right on track. I’m currently seeing 3-7” shown for the Mansfield point forecast. I think folks will post some observations when the flakes start to fly, but I’d say we don’t need too much fanfare yet - for now it seems like good ol’ NNE…

Event totals: 1.5” Snow/0.03” L.E. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.2 inches New Liquid: Trace Temperature: -8.7 F Sky: Clear Snow at the stake: 13.5 inches

Event totals: 1.3” Snow/0.03” L.E. Details from the 6:00 P.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 1.3 inches New Liquid: 0.03 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 43.3 Snow Density: 2.3% H2O Temperature: 20.3 F Sky: Light Snow (2-12 mm flakes) Snow at the stake: 14.0 inches

Thus far today I haven’t seen anything at the house, and I was up at Bolton for a midday session and didn’t see any flakes there either. I have seen some flakes this afternoon on the Bolton Webcam, and I’m starting to see some snow crash out around the local peaks. PF is seeing flakes, so maybe this next wave of moisture will have a little more oomph to get flakes down to the surface.

I hadn’t had a chance to post any images from my Tuesday ski session yet, but after the backside snows from Winter Storm Izzy, it was down in the single digits F, so touring seemed like the call. I ended up touring down at Timberline because the snowpack is pretty substantial even down to 1,500’. The parking lot hadn’t been plowed, but there were several cars in the lot from others who were touring there, and the traffic had packed down the snow enough to get around reasonably with 4WD/AWD. I checked the snow depth in various spots on both the ascent and descent, and my best estimates of overall settled snowpack depth at that point were ~18” at 1,500’, ~22” at 2,000’ and ~24” at 2,500’. I’ve got a few shots from that outing below. We actually toured today starting all the way down at 1,200’ and even that was fine. I’ll pass along some images from that session when I get a chance.

Actually, the 12Z CMC run does show some improved bread and butter pacing – there are potential systems coming through for tomorrow, Tuesday, Friday, and then Monday. With those four systems over that span, that’s getting pretty close to that every other day sort of interval we see when the northern branch is active and sending through the moisture. I find that the GFS is better than the CMC in terms of giving the best prognostication for these systems at relatively long lead times, and the models don’t really agree on the latter two systems (probably because of some potential phasing and/or pacing differences). So, one can’t put much stock in those latter two systems yet, but seeing what the CMC shows suggests some potential with our favorite jet stream.

Between skiing and work I’ve been a bit busy this week to comment much on the pattern, although if there was a really strong bread and butter look in the modeling, I probably would have squeezed in the time. There’s been a little something on the models for tomorrow, and then another northern stream system shown for Tuesday, but beyond that, there isn’t anything suggested until around next weekend, and that seems a bit indeterminate at this point because there could be some phasing. When we’re in those really solid bread and butter patterns up here, we’ll have something come through just about every other day, and some of them will show those robust signals for precipitation along the spine of the Northern Greens. So, it’s not a horrible bread and butter pattern by any means, but it’s not necessarily worth pulling out the artisan bread icon, probably more like something in the range of white bread as currently modeled. Not that we’d mind if that potential phasing shown farther out in the models produced another something like Izzy, but putting too much reliance on those types of systems means you’re jumping into that SNE game of Russian roulette. Actually, assuming the bullet is the “undesired outcome” with the way some of the weenies start latching onto fantasy modeling so far out in time, the game they play is really more like some form of reverse Russian roulette, with five rounds in the cylinder and just one empty.

We sometimes get those January doldrums where arctic air moves in and we’re just under cold, dry high pressure for a week or more, but this January hasn’t felt like that so far. At least here in our area, it’s felt like the occasional subzero type of day, but the northern stream still has systems coming through giving us precipitation – and variations in temperature with warm-ups on the front side of systems. I wouldn’t say they’ve been very robust systems the past few days since Izzy departed on Tuesday, but fortunately, we’ve at least had breaks in the cold.

Winter Storm Izzy was obviously a game changer with respect to the local snowpack, but the Mt. Mansfield Stake data objectively tells that tale that we still haven’t even hit the traditional 40-inch mark at the stake. The appropriately-manicured low and even moderate-angle off-piste pitches are pretty much there, but not really the steep stuff. We’re getting close on that terrain, and that’s probably making it tough on folks who are chomping at the bit to hit that stuff. It can also be a bit tougher to manage at Stowe because so much of the off-piste terrain is on the steeper side.

I found 0.2” on the boards this morning from the current system passing through the area. The BTV NWS forecast discussion indicates that it’s a quick moving low pressure system moving along north of the international border. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.2 inches New Liquid: Trace Temperature: 3.6 F Sky: Cloudy Snow at the stake: 16.0 inches

Event totals: 16.5” Snow/1.20” L.E. We’ve largely cleared out now, so I’d say this last accumulation marks the end of Winter Storm Izzy here at our site, and the above numbers should represent the final totals. This storm has now surpassed Winter Storm Carrie (9.3”) from back in December as the largest this season, and is the largest recorded here since Winter Storm Kade (17.0”) back in Feb 2020. Details from the 1:00 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: 16.9 F Sky: Partly Cloudy Snow at the stake: 18.0 inches

Here’s the north to south listing of available storm totals from the Vermont ski areas for Winter Storm Izzy: Jay Peak: 14” Burke: 5” Smuggler’s Notch: 14” Stowe: 13” Bolton Valley: 16” Mad River Glen: 19” Sugarbush: 15” Middlebury: 14” Pico: 17” Killington: 17” Okemo: 13” Bromley: 15” Magic Mountain: 13” Stratton: 15” Mount Snow: 14”

The GFS is usually pretty good at catching these potential bread and butter northern stream systems several days out. I’m only seeing the midweek (Wednesday/Thursday) one at this point, but we’ll see if anything pops up. In an earlier post I’d mentioned that if we could get 1.5” of L.E. out of the weekend system and the potential midweek one, it would be quite a boon to the slopes. I think the mountains may have already picked up that 1.5” from just Winter Storm Izzy though. Since we picked up 1.19” of L.E. down here in the valley, they’d almost have to have hit that mark, so that’s going to be a great addition to the mountain snowpack.

We were skiing up at Bolton yesterday, so I can pass along some updates and a few images. Wind holds were in effect at the very start of the day, but they were loading by mid-morning and we headed up. The snowfall rates were already pretty substantial (~1”/hr.) down in the valley, and they ramped up as we headed into the higher elevations. With the snowfall rates, it was hard to keep pace with plowing the Bolton Valley Access Road, so snow was definitely present and giving some vehicles trouble making the ascent. We had to head around stopped vehicles in a couple of different spots, and one was working on turning around to head back down and presumably wait for the plow/sander to make a pass. As far as ski days go, you had a number of factors that made yesterday’s session a good one. By mid-morning, the wind had settled down to almost nothing across many areas of the mountain, temperatures were very comfortable in the upper 20s to around 30 F, and it was pounding snow somewhere in the 1-2”/hr. range a lot of the time. The snowfall meant that surfaces were getting constantly refreshed, atop of what had already been a solid resurfacing with probably 0.50 – 0.75” of liquid equivalent in the form of medium-weight snow. With the overnight shot of snow and the continued heavy snowfall, patrol was opening up trails all over the main mountain that had not been available yet this season. It was hard to know which ropes had been dropped before opening time, and which ones were done on the fly, by just about everything on Vista was open. The resort had completed their snowmaking and preparation of Spillway, which is one of their signature steep trails, so that was open with all the new snow atop the base they’d made. That offered up some excellent steep skiing. You could still contact the harder manmade snow below at times, but it was snowing so hard that the manmade stuff was quickly getting buried. The heavy snowfall rates were very evident while riding the lifts because of how fast you would get coated with snow, so on one of rides on the Vista Quad, my son’s friend stayed still to catch the accumulation. I’ve got a shot of that in the images below.

Event totals: 16.3” Snow/1.19” L.E. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 3.7 inches New Liquid: 0.07 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 52.9 Snow Density: 1.9% H2O Temperature: 16.0 F Sky: Light Snow (1-3 mm flakes) Snow at the stake: 19.0 inches

Event totals: 12.6” Snow/1.12” L.E. Details from the 12:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 2.0 inches New Liquid: 0.15 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 13.3 Snow Density: 7.5% H2O Temperature: 22.1 F Sky: Snow (4-20 mm flakes) Snow at the stake: 16.0 inches

The snowfall has picked up a bit over roughly the past half hour, so it could be the back side portion of this event coming through.

Event totals: 10.6” Snow/0.97” L.E. It was a 7-hour block of snow collection time while we were up at the mountain today, so with 7.3” new on the boards, snowfall down here in the valley averaged a bit above 1”/hr. during that period. Up at Bolton the snowfall rate was somewhere in the 1-2”/hr. range, so they picked a good shot today. If it’s been like this up here in NVT, it’s going to be interesting to see the numbers out of the places that really got into the heavy snows. Details from the 3:00 P.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 7.3 inches New Liquid: 0.59 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 12.4 Snow Density: 8.1% H2O Temperature: 32.9 F Sky: Light Snow (1-3 mm flakes) Snow at the stake: 16.5 inches

I totally agree. I didn’t know this accumulation was going to be even denser than 10 to 1, but that will be fantastic for the base. We actually were out on the Bolton Valley Backcountry Network yesterday for a snowshoe tour, and I was quite impressed with the off piste/backcountry ski conditions that were already present. The conditions over the past week seem to have been improving under the radar. There was decent base and 6-7” of powder atop that, even down in the 2,000’ – 2,500’ elevation band. On our ascent of the Bryant Trail, I took the image below of a track that a skier had left in the A1A glade area, probably around 2,300’, and I was definitely wishing I’d brought my skis instead. Things have really been primed for a synoptic storm like this, and the coverage is in a position that even the ~0.40” of liquid we’ve picked up so far is actually going to kick things up substantially.