J.Spin

Event totals: 0.5” Snow/0.48” L.E. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.5 inches New Liquid: 0.02 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 25.0 Snow Density: 4.0% H2O Temperature: 33.1 F Sky: Snow (2 to 20 mm flakes) Snow at the stake: 0.5 inches

There was no accumulation to report down at our elevation at this morning’s observations, but indeed the snow line looked like it was down close to 1,000’ around here in our local hills. I’m not seeing any significant accumulations reported yet by Bolton Valley this morning, but there’s definitely new accumulation visible on the live webcam at the main base.

It’s obviously tough when it’s only your first full season up here and you don’t have a wealth of perspective Phin, but what folks provided above were some great examples of seasons that could be placed in that D/F range of quality – ‘05/’06, ’11-‘12 (115.3” of total snow at our site), and ’15-‘16 (72.2” of total snow at our site). I was still out west in ‘05/’06, so I can’t say from firsthand experience, but I hadn’t heard great things. For some reason, I have ‘09-‘10 (127.7” of snow at our site) in my memory banks as well as a poor season, but maybe it’s not quite down in that D/F area for the slopes? And remember, even those poorest of ski seasons can have some bright spots, like big storms, decent stretches, good ski weather, etc. As you can see from the comments, this ski season just doesn’t “feel” like it’s down in the basement with those. You can certainly grade a “winter” on just seasonal snowfall and snowpack depth as you mentioned, but realistically, for a “ski season”, it’s a bit more complicated because there are factors like powder days, snow surface quality, preservation, consistency, comfortable temperatures, etc. Think about well-known ski areas like Sun Valley in Idaho, which averages ~200” of snow a season, or Lake Louise in Alberta, which averages ~140” of snow a season. Those places average roughly half the annual snowfall that some of our local places out here in the Northern Greens do, but their average season is still pretty darned nice because of their great snow preservation. So that’s just one of those “other” factors that really needs to be put into the equation for an overall ski season, and it’s definitely one that had an impact on this one around here. Remember, I’m personally still giving this ski season a C- at this point here in the Northern Greens, which is slightly below average, so it’s not as if this has been a season that knocked it out of the park or anything. But one has to remember that slightly below average here in the Northern Greens is still a pretty darned good season from most people’s perspectives. And I’m not just talking about a Northeast perspective; my perspective is framed by many years living and skiing out in the Rockies. No, the Northern Greens are not going to outperform the top tier snow places in the country like Alta, or spots in the Sierra or Cascades that simply get incredible snowfall, but I can tell you from years of experience that they stack up quite well against a lot of the mid-tier resorts in the Rockies for conditions if there hasn’t been some sort of big thaw. People “ooh and ahh” a bit more at the scenery and terrain out there in the Rockies of course, but because we get such frequent snowfall up here in the Northern Greens, the snow surfaces can often be really good – even in a national sense. I just wanted to give you that context in that my grade on the season has that perspective in place; it’s not simply based on some comparison to Northeastern U.S. ski conditions, which are generally considered pretty subpar on a national scale. It was interesting to hear Alex’s perspective on this when he left NNE and headed farther south for some skiing. There are a couple of final notes of caution I’ll mention with respect to simply using raw snowpack numbers as a quality gauge for the ski season. There’s no doubt that more is better, so if the snowpack at the Mt. Mansfield Stake is at 8 or 9 feet this time of year, that’s generally great news. But there’s a degree of threshold effect for the parameter as well. An average season at elevation here in the Northern Greens has more than enough snowpack for typical off piste skiing. That’s why we talk about that “40-inch rule” around here, in that once you get to that depth at the stake, the off piste skiing is pretty much in play. So if you have 6 feet of snow at the stake, which would be something fairly typical for this time of year, it doesn’t mean that the off piste skiing is only “half as good” or something like that if there’s only 3 feet of snow at the stake. You’re still pretty close to that off piste threshold and there could be plenty of off piste terrain in play at elevation. I also recall PF saying that this season had a smaller base depth differential than usual between the high and low elevations on Mansfield, which is going to further mitigate any natural base depth issues. And finally, remember that the natural snow depth is entirely moot for many people’s ski experience because they’re sticking to trails with manmade snow, which is set up to ensure sufficient base for skiing no matter what’s going on with the natural snowpack.

I was flipping past the Weather Channel and saw that things were changing over on the radar. It prompted me to look at the thermometer and I see we’re dropping through the 30s now here at our site. There’s not really any accumulation expected down at this elevation with this system based on our point forecast, but the models have been snowing snow chances around here from the next three to five projected systems. It seems like a more typical, active March/April pattern vs. one of those sunny/mild ones.

I’m not sure what to tell you Phin, it feels like you want the sky to have fallen at some point to knock the overall ski season in NNE into the gutter, but it just really… didn’t. Constantly pining for a big synoptic storm over your way may have gotten to you, but it really wasn’t that bad of a ski season. It had a slow start in November and December, but a very solid two months in the middle with impressive retention and great, consistent, midwinter conditions. We had more snows and powder days through the first half of March, and since then it’s been nice, warm spring skiing. Overall snowfall in the mountains around here was certainly on the low side, but that was reasonably offset by the above average midwinter snow preservation. An outstandingly wintry March and April could certainly have kicked it up a notch in my book, but many recreational skiers don’t want that – they want nice warm days in the spring vs. more snows intermixed with gray, firm conditions. Overall I’d rate it at a C- at this point, with C being average. PF and I have been through some clunkers, and the middle of this season was just too consistent and good to really put this it in that neighborhood. At least that’s how I’d describe it over here in the Northern Greens. We’re sort of lucky in that an “average” season over here is typically above average for much of the region, so maybe it was different over there in NNH. PF is a very straight shooter on this sort of stuff, and he’s literally out on the mountain just about every day throughout the ski season, so he has a very good feel for the tenor of a season. If he says it’s been a well below average ski season in terms of quality, then I’d believe him.

They do get the notoriety/publicity from typically staying open into June, which is longer than any other resort around here, but their late season skiing isn’t some sort of stunt or gimmick. It’s actually great skiing as GC said. If you enjoy skiing moguls in spring snow on black diamond terrain with sun and warm temperatures, it can often be the crème de la crème of that experience. I’ve been many, many times, and even on weekends, there aren’t any issues with lift queues or overcrowding. There just aren’t enough people skiing at that time of year to really reach capacity (at least normal lift capacity), and when you’re bump skiing, it’s not as if you’re flying down the hill at 60 MPH and have to look out for someone 200 yards in front of you. You don’t need 200 trails open for the spring bump skiing experience, and in fact, you want a solid amount of skier traffic on the trails you’re using to set and develop the bump lines. If they groom anything at that time of year, it’s generally infrequent because it wrecks the bump lines. Here are a few shots from one of our Killington trips with the boys when they were younger – this one happened to be at the end of April, but it’s typically like that right through May:

I guess we forget that you didn’t really grow up here in New England ski country, but yeah, ski areas being open in the spring doesn’t mean they’ve got wall-to-wall coverage on every trail. Lift-served spring skiing is generally about corn snow and moguls, and you only need a few steep trails to do it. There’s often no beginner, or sometimes even intermediate ski terrain available at all as you push farther into the season. Lower-angle slopes often melt out quickly, and/or the resorts don’t prep those trails to last through the end of the season. It doesn’t seem distorted from our perspective because we’re just typical avid skiers for this area, but we’re certainly not like your typical recreational skiers from the city. But I can tell you from living out west and skiing all around the country, there are very few resorts that offer lift-served skiing in May, anywhere. You’re going to typically get one resort in a given market that will do that, sometimes two if it’s a big market like the Northeast or Colorado’s front range. When we lived in the Northern Rockies, there wasn’t a single resort that would ski into May in all of Montana or Idaho. Even in late April there was nothing, and we’d have to travel at least eight hours to get to an open resort if we were looking to do lift-served skiing at that point.

Oh, that might explain the excessive consternation. High elevation resorts in spots like Colorado will continue to get exclusively snow most of the time through April, but that’s not the case in the Northeastern U.S., even in the mountains of NNE. We can have some great winter storms in March and April, but to get through the entirety of March without any mixed precipitation or rain would be pretty unusual, and to get through April like that would be virtually unheard of.

Hopefully you weren’t misled, but only a few of the resorts around here actually have planned seasons that run through May. Killington does, and I believe Sunday River often does, but I’m not sure beyond that. I don’t know of any of the ski areas in your immediate area that even plan to go through May. I think Wildcat would be the most likely to extend their season if they happened to get an April with below average temperatures and a lot of extra snow, but I don’t think I’ve heard of any of the other areas around there doing that. A lot of us here like to ski right through May, but we’re not necessarily doing that riding lifts at our local resort. Even in years with tremendous spring snowpack, everyone stops running their lifts except for the places I mentioned. Some resorts will extend their normal seasons a week or two if they think people will come, but that’s typically up in the air and they make the decisions on fairly short notice. But for places that plan on it like Killington, there’s no concern about getting to May as Skivt2 said – they could have very warm temperatures for the next month and it would still be no issue.

The ski areas that planned to run into April and May will roll right along as we mentioned – it’s areas running on natural snow or that plan to close around the beginning of April anyway that would be in a more marginal situation. That’s for over here in NVT at least, but I don’t know what the normal closing plans are for the resorts over there in NNH. I think you’re worrying a bit too much about it though – it’s the current temperatures on the front end of this first system that are more notable deviation from the normal spring routine. You can see that PF posted about the notable high temperatures, so having those going into a spring storm is going to promote more melt than usual (you can see that the BTV NWS had flood watches up). The general pattern of upcoming storms with mixed rain and snow and temperatures in the 20s – 40s F is not at all that uncommon for this time of year.

LOL Phin, you need to adjust your seasonal clock for up here. You’re in the middle of the March through April portion of winter for the mountains of NNE – many weeks of great skiing to go, and usually plenty of potential snow chances.

We popped back up to the mountain for another sunny ski session at Timberline on Sunday, and the boys were both off work so they were able to join us. Temperatures were about 10 F warmer than Saturday, but I didn’t notice too much change in the variety of ski surfaces that we’d seen – the direct, west-facing trails were decent corn snow, but there were still some sticky spots on other aspects, and some firmer snow on terrain well out of the sun. We sampled most of the available terrain off Timberline, and folks had some different favorite runs. My wife liked Twice as Nice the most, while I liked Spell Binder the best because it seemed to have seen less traffic and offered some of the smoothest corn snow surfaces below the headwall. A few more shots from Sunday:

I’d say it’s a couple months early in a weather sense, and think the same thing happened last year, although this might earlier? In any event, if it’s just a practical forum logistics thing to avoid continuing very large threads that are harder for servers to deal with, it serves its purpose and the exact title doesn’t really affect that.

I don’t see March 2020 on that list, so I don’t know how it went down there, but my data are rather interesting for March up here at our site, with a couple of key points: 1) As of March 3rd this season, we’d already picked up as much snowfall as the entirety of last season (142.1”). We’ve of course had additional snow since that point, so we’re already going to outperform last season with respect to snowfall, it’s just a question of by how much. 2) As of March 14th this month, we’d already picked up (within a tenth of an inch) as much snowfall as the entirety of last March (12.9”), so any more snowfall this March will actually push it past last March. I guess those trends are for this area, but if people are concerned about the lack of snowfall this March, what was the situation last March?

Yeah, fantastic out there yesterday. We headed up for an afternoon session at Timberline with its classic western-facing afternoon sun. The temperatures were quite pleasant, but despite the decent warmth with temperatures in the 40s to around 50 F, there were still different surfaces out there. Terrain right in the sun on the main part of Timberline was mostly good corn snow, but up around 2,500’ or so, snow that was not in the sun was still in a more frozen, winter-like state. In some lower elevation areas that were only partially in the sun, there were also some areas of mushy/sticky snow because it had not been cycled enough yet for complete corn. I think we’re planning to head out for another afternoon session today – it’s even warmer, and we did get another freeze-thaw cycle overnight, so that might change the dynamics of which areas have which types of snow surfaces. A few shots from yesterday:

PF is the expert on this, but having some rain and warmth is a normal part of the spring ski season around here. In terms of effects on the snow, there’s really no comparison when it comes to getting rain in late March or April to rains and warmth at Christmas – this is an entirely different type of snowpack. Whether it’s typical spring rains, or typical spring warmth, the trails with marginal coverage are going to be getting thin in either case. The only way that process is going to be slowed for the lower elevations as we move toward April is with below average temperatures. If a resort around here has its season ended by a spring rainstorm, then they either have to be a resort that is running 100% on natural snow, or that’s the approximate planned closing date for the resort anyway. These resorts aren’t just guessing when it comes to how much snow they put down on their trails – they put down a required amount of snow to hit their target date with appropriate coverage under normal New England spring weather. In all my years of skiing, I’ve just never seen the resorts that plan to stay open get shut down around here due to spring rains. I’d be much more worried about snowpack loss if we had a week of early heat like we did that one season – that really seemed to make a substantial dent in the snowpack that spring. Hopefully PF will weigh in, since he’s in mountain operations and knows what they watch for with regard to the spring snowpack progression.

I’m not sure why folks are so worried about getting into the warm sector of a storm at this point in the season? The relevant sections of the snowpack have pretty much gone isothermal at this point, so it’s not like warmth is going to ruin any pristine midwinter surfaces – it’s all spring snow now. The only thing to even concern oneself about with regard to rain at this point in the season is the potential inconvenience that arises if you happen to have to ski plans on the specific day it rains. Other than that, rain on this type of snow is pretty much irrelevant, the snowpack just stays as corn snow (or frozen granular if temperatures are below freezing).

That’s right, there’s still a long way to go on the potential snowfall front up here in the mountains of NNE. Even down here at our elevation, average snowfall from this point out is still ~15 inches, and it should be even more up at your elevation. It’s just a matter of when we get back in the storm track.

Season snowfall through today at our site is 148.4”, which is about 7 to 8 inches ahead of average, but well within the average range. That current total is actually average seasonal snowfall for our site at the end of March. If the season ended with this total, then the snowfall would come in below average, and the grade would probably have to be less than a C (average), so perhaps something in the C- range. Indeed, we had a great stretch of snow preservation and nice ski conditions in the January/February period, but we also had that relatively slow early season through some point in January. November through January is a solid chunk of the season that can have some great skiing around here if base builds at a normal pace. Using the seasonal snowfall average for Jay Peak that they currently report on their website (359”), and scaling proportionately using my running average, they should be over 300” of snow by now. They’re currently indicating 259” on the season, so I’d argue they’re behind average pace. There’s still a good 4 to 6 weeks of potential snowfall season to go though (which doesn’t include May since it’s really a wild card), so we’re certainly not at the point up here where we should consider any of these seasonal totals final just yet.

That seems about right from what I’ve been hearing in the forum. And indeed, it is probably harder for us in Northern Greens upslope land to have total dud seasons with respect to snowfall, since that potentially “more reliable” snow is probably a bigger component of our annual snowfall than it is in most other spots in the region. It might even be a bit more than just the upslope too, because it seems like the Northern Greens also have that factor of being well positioned (in a windward sense) for those general bread and butter Clipper systems to get something out of most of them. At the same time, it also seems very tough for us to have totally outrageous, well above average snowfall seasons. All those extra little bread and butter systems and upslope deliveries are already baked into the climate numbers, so getting extra storms, and that “little bit extra” snow out of every storm is par for the course. So it takes a special pattern over a prolonged period to really get well above the already somewhat amped up snowfall numbers. As much as having the ability to experience incredible “way above average” snowfall seasons might be nice, that consistency/reliability factor is far superior for one’s typical season-long ski experience. And, not getting huge, above average snowfall seasons isn’t really a big deal anyway if the status quo climate snow is already way up there on the quality scale.

Seeing your nice images and catching Bolton’s report of 4-6” in the past 48 hours was definitely enough to convince me to head out for some turns yesterday. And of course, watching it snow huge flakes down at the house and on the Bolton Valley Webcam reinforced that sentiment. I wanted to head up before that colder air was supposed to move in later in the afternoon, so I hit the mountain in the late morning. With those strong winds blowing from the northwest, it wasn’t at all surprising to see in the snow report that the Vista Quad and Wilderness Double, being the highest elevation lifts, were on wind hold. With that in mind, I decided to make it a hybrid outing of both riding the lifts and skinning to get efficient access to the fresh powder. The Mid Mountain Chair was running, so I ended up using that for a quick elevation assist over to the Wilderness area. I followed some folks that were using a nifty access route around the mid-mountain snowmaking pond to get to Wilderness. I generally found powder depths topping out around 6” just like the snow report indicated, aside from wind scoured or drifted areas, or trails that had been groomed during the storm. Low angle terrain on fat boards was what I’d been planning to hit, and that definitely delivered. The lift assist from the Mid Mountain Chair was just right for cycling the bottom half of the Wilderness terrain, which had the kind of pitch this snow called for. Anything with moderate pitch or above was just too steep for the available snow, and you’d be hitting the scratchy subsurface unless you were in a drifted area. The BTV NWS forecast discussion said that the precipitation would be somewhat cellular during the day, and indeed that’s just what I experienced out on the mountain. At times it would be whiteout conditions with near-zero visibility, and at other times that snowfall would wane and it would almost look like the sun wanted to break through. Temperatures started out in the 20s F, but were down into the teens F by the time I was leaving, so that colder air was moving in as scheduled. A few shots from yesterday’s outing:

Event totals: 3.9” Snow/0.12” L.E. Details from the 2:00 P.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.6 inches New Liquid: Trace Temperature: 28.9 F Sky: Flurries Snow at the stake: 10.0 inches

Event totals: 3.3” Snow/0.12” L.E. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 1.2 inches New Liquid: 0.06 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 20.0 Snow Density: 5.0% H2O Temperature: 29.8 F Sky: Flurries Snow at the stake: 11.0 inches

Event totals: 2.1” Snow/0.06” L.E. Details from the 12:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 2.1 inches New Liquid: 0.06 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 35.0 Snow Density: 2.9% H2O Temperature: 26.4 F Sky: Snow (2 to 6 mm flakes) Snow at the stake: 10.0 inches

Speaking of systems, I just looked outside and I see that we’ve got some snow falling in association with this next one moving into the area.