J.Spin

Here’s the north to south listing of available snowfall totals I’ve seen from the Vermont ski areas along the spine for this event. The focus for this storm was certainly the Northern Greens, with lesser amounts in the Central Greens, and not much reported out of the Southern Greens. Jay Peak: 12” Smuggler’s Notch: 9” Stowe: 7” Bolton Valley: 9” Sugarbush: 3” Pico: 3” Killington: 3” Okemo: 0” Stratton: 0” Mount Snow: 1”

I stopped off at Bolton today for some turns, and here are the general accumulations I found from this latest storm starting from near the Bottom of the Bolton Valley Access Road: 500’: 0.5” 1,000’: 2” 1,500’: 5” 2,000’: 7” 2,500’: 8” 3.000’: 9” The biggest jumps in accumulation appear to be in the 1,000’ to 2,000’ elevation band. The resort is reporting 9” in the past 48 hours on their snow report, so that seems in synch with what I found up at the main mountain.

Event totals: 2.0” Snow/0.58” L.E. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.6 inches New Liquid: 0.01 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 60.0 Snow Density: 1.7% H2O Temperature: 22.8 F Sky: Flurries Snow at the stake: 0.5 inches

Event totals: 0.8” Snow/0.56” L.E. Frozen precipitation began to mix in at our site not too long after midnight last night, and it was obvious because I could hear the sleet hitting off the windows and checked outside to see what was up. I suspect it stayed mixed like that much of the night because there was nothing more than a trace of frozen accumulation this morning at observations time. Looking up into the local hills, the accumulating snow line seemed to be around 1,000’ or so. The precipitation changed over to snow not long after observations time, and it snowed all the way in to Burlington today. The snowfall intensity actually kept increasing as I headed into the Champlain Valley, but temperatures were a few degrees above freezing so the roads just stayed wet. During the day today in Burlington we had some periods of heavy snow with huge flakes during that banding, and it accumulated to an inch or two. At the house it continued to snow, but outside the band the snowfall intensity was just too light to accumulate to more than a tenth of an inch at valley elevations in our area. We picked up most of our snow at the house with that next round of precipitation that came through in the afternoon, and we’ve been having another round of that around here this evening as well. Details from the 6:00 P.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.7 inches New Liquid: 0.04 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 17.5 Snow Density: 5.7% H2O Temperature: 33.1 F Sky: Flurries Snow at the stake: Trace

As suggested, the Winter Storm Watches from the BTV NWS have been converted over to Winter Storm Warnings and Winter Weather Advisories. Updated maps are below:

Whether it falls as 6”, 7”, or 10”, the most important aspect is how much of the L.E. falls as frozen as we discussed the other day. Whatever falls is going to be going to be atop a very old and consolidated spring snowpack subsurface, so we’re going to want some substantial density on the front end of the storm cycle anyway. Topping it off with some drier upslope on the back side of the story cycle as bwt mentions would be a nice way to enhance the overall turns with respect to the gradient of snow density if that’s the way it plays out. I’m still seeing numbers topping out around ~1.5” L.E. on most of the models, so a substantial percentage of that as frozen has the potential to set up some nice turns in the elevations of the Northern Greens.

I just stopped in at the BTV NWS site and saw that the Winter Storm Watches have been extended into NVT, and projected accumulations have been bumped, presumably based on what they’ve seen from the midday guidance. Elevations along the spine of the Northern Greens have been bumped up from the 6-8” tier into the 8-12" tier. Updated maps are below:

I heard on VPR this morning that there was a Winter Storm Watch up in the Adirondacks, so it was clear that there was something going on with respect to this upcoming storm. I’ve added the current BTV NWS maps below – it looks like over here in the Northern Greens they’ve got things topping out in the 6-8” range at the summits, which is right in line with what you had mentioned above.

Yeah, we’re still ~48 hours out from the onset of precipitation, so we’ll have to see how everything shifts around, but it’s hard to think the storm is just going to go “poof” into nothing with all those various models suggesting something is afoot. It’s the mountains of NNE, so it’s hard to imagine those elevations can’t pull at least some snow out of this system. Along with PF’s input, we’ll start to get a sense for whatever potential there might be as the BTV NWS experts begin to digest it and weigh in – the ‘dacks and Northern Greens are literally right in their wheelhouse.

Regarding bwt’s inquiry, I guess it all depends on anticipated frozen L.E. with this system. That’s really what will dictate the additional terrain/turn options that will be available. Something in the 0.50” frozen L.E. range would get low angle terrain into the mix, even if it had fully melted out, as long as the new stuff is dense (which I don’t think should be a problem). I’d say you’d want at least 1.00 frozen L.E. to get mid-angle terrain going, and then up near 2.00” frozen L.E. to get the steep stuff going. For terrain with existing snowpack, you can obviously get by on less than those numbers. On the 12Z GFS I’m seeing total liquid through Saturday of ~1.25” – 2.00” in the Northern Greens from south to north, with the 2.00” L.E. up by Jay Peak. The CMC looks similar, and the ICON is in that range as well, but with the highest L.E. in the Central Greens. The ECMWF seems little lower in the 1.0 – 1.5” total L.E. range, and the UKMET seems to like the western slopes with ~2.0” L.E. I guess it will come down to how much of that L.E. is frozen, but even if you get 75% of those numbers in solid form, with that typical heftiness of the base from the rain to snow transition, you’d have a lot in play up by Jay Peak. Even 50% of those numbers as frozen would make for fine turns. There’s also a follow up system with some potential additional precipitation on Saturday night into Sunday on some of the models.

I hadn’t immediately remembered that storm just based on the date, but then I went to my web page and found my storm report/trip report from 4/10/12, and I quickly saw which event it was. Looks like it was 1.69” storm total liquid at our site, very similar to what you noted for Stowe. The full report on the storm is linked above, but I added some images below:

Event totals: 1.3” Snow/0.53” L.E. We’ve mostly cleared out now, so it looks like the totals above are the final numbers for this storm at our site. Details from the 6:00 P.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.8 inches New Liquid: 0.05 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 16.0 Snow Density: 6.3% H2O Temperature: 38.5 F Sky: Mostly Clear Snow at the stake: Trace

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.