J.Spin

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.

I’m not sure it would make any difference with respect to what they’re calling a “storm” though – the sort of systems that become a bit more challenging to break into discrete events don’t even come up on people’s radar as either events or non-events; they’re for the most part ignored as snow showers, or end up being nothing at all outside of the mountains. I use the BTV NWS forecast discussion to assign the specific storms exactly as they describe them, and I’ll only occasionally have to go to the models to dissect the situation myself if they don’t detail the specific breakdown of the systems in the AFD. I generally break down storms into the smallest definable units possible, so if anything, that would bias the numbers toward smaller events, not larger ones. You can see from the list below that I pasted in my response to wxeye – the vast majority of those storms were quite well defined, and over half of them were even notable synoptic storms that earned a name at the national level. The least defined storm in that list is maybe the 11/15/2020 one? But even that one had a defined surface low. The example you provided above would never be defined as an individual storm in my view, in that I’d never just group multiple days of similar “pattern” snows into some sort of system. There would at least be a defined upper level low creating the precipitation, and more than likely there would be discrete shortwaves involved, and they would each get defined as an individual system if at all possible. Most places just don’t get winter weather like we do here, where it actually does snow for days and days, and one system often blends into the next. It’s dramatically different from the sort of systems they typically seem to get in SNE and father south along the coastal plain, and I can understand why Phin says it requires a change in mentality. You can see the list of all this season’s storms delivering greater than 3.5” at our site below though, and I agree that it’s surprising that wxeye would have missed out on all of them post 12/17? I’m not sure how he records his storm data, but I don’t think anyone limits an actual full storm total to simply the 24 hour segments broken up by arbitrary observations times. That would obviously break many storms in half artificially if the bulk of their snowfall happened to span the observations time. 12.2” 1/16/2021 Winter Storm Malcolm - Midwest low forming triple point low over New England 10.2” 2/2/2021 Winter Storm Orlena - slow moving system along Northeast coast 8.4” 1/21/2021 Weakening low pressure tracking through southern Quebec 8.2” 2/9/2021 Winter Storm Roland - weak wave of low pressure passing south of the region 7.7” 2/19/2021 Winter Storm Viola - low SE of benchmark with multiple shortwaves in deep SW flow 7.4” 2/5/2021 Winter Storm Peggy - deep, mature cyclone moving north through the Great Lakes 7.1” 11/1/2020 Surface/upper-level trough + upslope from low departing near Northern Maine 6.0” 3/2/2021 Well-defined shortwave trough moving into the area 5.9” 12/26/2020 Lake-effect snow band extending northeastward off Lake Ontario 5.8” 1/1/2021 Winter Storm John - low to our west redeveloping over Gulf of Maine 5.5” 11/15/2020 Broad trough with surface low passing through central Quebec + backside LES/upslope 5.3” 11/2/2020 Clipper/upper-level shortwave 4.9” 12/17/2020 Winter Storm Gail - coastal storm tight to NJ coast heading eastward 4.5” 2/15/2021 Winter Storm Uri - low pressure moving through New England with mixed precipitation 3.8” 1/26/2021 Winter Storm Nathaniel - low pressure tracking south of New England 3.8” 12/5/2020 Winter Storm Eartha - compact coastal storm tracking near Cape Cod + departing upslope

I do recall a period a few years back when PF was monitoring a stretch where hadn’t had a warning-level event for quite some time, but I’m not sure if I’ve ever looked into periods without hitting storm totals of a certain threshold the way you guys have this season. It could be due in part to the snowfall climate over here in the Northern Greens – I’m just used to recording very frequent, modest storms. I think it would probably take a long time before I noticed something like that. It might come to mind though in a season that was way behind average snowfall though, being curious about what was missing. Looking into my data for the season, we’ve had 16 storms with snow totals >3.5” this season, and most of them are post-12/17. We may be somewhat behind average pace on larger storms this season though, in that we typically average one storm of ≥20”, and two storms ≥15”, and we haven’t had any storms hit those thresholds yet. We also average three storms of ≥12”, and we’ve only had one that just barely made the cut. We seem to be roughly on track (±1) for storms in the 6-10” range though, so perhaps even around here it’s just one of those seasons where the snow comes in more modest doses than usual. We can still get some very large storms in March though, so we’ll have to see if Mother Nature does anything to fill that in. 12.2” 1/16/2021 Winter Storm Malcolm - Midwest low forming triple point low over New England 10.2” 2/2/2021 Winter Storm Orlena - slow moving system along Northeast coast 8.4” 1/21/2021 Weakening low pressure tracking through southern Quebec 8.2” 2/9/2021 Winter Storm Roland - weak wave of low pressure passing south of the region 7.7” 2/19/2021 Winter Storm Viola - low SE of benchmark with multiple shortwaves in deep SW flow 7.4” 2/5/2021 Winter Storm Peggy - deep, mature cyclone moving north through the Great Lakes 7.1” 11/1/2020 Surface/upper-level trough + upslope from low departing near Northern Maine 6.0” 3/2/2021 Well-defined shortwave trough moving into the area 5.9” 12/26/2020 Lake-effect snow band extending northeastward off Lake Ontario 5.8” 1/1/2021 Winter Storm John - low to our west redeveloping over Gulf of Maine 5.5” 11/15/2020 Broad trough with surface low passing through central Quebec + backside LES/upslope 5.3” 11/2/2020 Clipper/upper-level shortwave 4.9” 12/17/2020 Winter Storm Gail - coastal storm tight to NJ coast heading eastward 4.5” 2/15/2021 Winter Storm Uri - low pressure moving through New England with mixed precipitation 3.8” 1/26/2021 Winter Storm Nathaniel - low pressure tracking south of New England 3.8” 12/5/2020 Winter Storm Eartha - compact coastal storm tracking near Cape Cod + departing upslope

I was just checking our BTV NWS point forecast here, and it’s got close to 2-5” for tonight’s edition. They had 1-2” here for last night’s system, which seemed right on track, so maybe they’re seeing something that makes this next one a bit more robust in our area. Our forecast for this next one is through Sunday night, so it may be the duration that helps. The summit point forecasts are in the 5-9” range up near Jay Peak, but that’s a bit more than they suggest in their discussion. Area Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Burlington VT 649 AM EST Sat Mar 13 2021 NEAR TERM /THROUGH SUNDAY/...Next embedded shortwave trough in northwest flow arrives tonight with strong 700-500mb height falls noted. Should see widespread light snow shower activity develop after 03Z Sunday, and persist through the overnight hours. Orographic ascent and developing shallow daytime instability should allow scattered snow showers to persist thru Sunday across the higher terrain, especially for the central and northern Green Mtns. Should see snowfall amts of 0.5"-1" across valley locations, with snow-to- liquid ratios a fluffy 20:1. Orographic ascent brings 1-3" snowfall to the higher terrain, and possibly locally higher for the summits from Mt. Mansfield to Jay Peak (3-5") by late afternoon on Sunday.

Whoa, whoa… whoa… pump the brakes there Mr. slantstreaker. Your neighbor reported back-to-back 6”+ snowfall days on 2/2 and 2/3, so “soon to be two months” is a bit of a stretch. Also, he just reported 2.2” in this morning’s CoCoRaHS submission, so unless it really fell off over toward your place, you’re going to have to stop bragging about your fancy schmancy snowfall streak to all the SNE guys.

Event totals: 2.1” Snow/0.06” L.E. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 1.3 inches New Liquid: 0.03 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 43.3 Snow Density: 2.3% H2O Temperature: 21.0 F Sky: Mostly Clear Snow at the stake: 10.0 inches