J.Spin

Yeah, B&W is especially fantastic for snow photography – if there’s any weird color cast from poor white balance, strange natural lighting, or whatever, you immediately ditch that and it nails the perfect white once you’re done with level adjustments. The auto balancing in Photoshop is pretty fantastic at nailing the white balance in color photos almost all the time anyway, but going to B&W is basically fool proof in that regard. Beyond the technical side though, B&W is just perfect for contrasting light and dark, and that’s such a huge part of so many snow photos. Storm days, late days, low light days, and certain parts of the mountain are basically B&W to begin with, so going that route is a natural fit. B&W really just fits so well with the typical snowy, winter vibe of the mountains around here.

With Monday night’s continued snowfall on the back side of the system, Bolton Valley reported 18” for their storm total in the morning. Since I’d missed out on the chance for any lift-served turns on Monday due to the power outages, I popped up to the mountain for some runs yesterday morning since power was fully restored and the lifts were back in action. The resort is still somewhat in early season mode though, and they’re not running all lifts on weekdays, but the Vista Quad was running, which serves the bulk of the main mountain’s terrain. I haven’t been up to Vista at all yet this season, so this was a chance for me to see how the snow was doing up there. The resort obviously got a boatload of snow from this most recent storm, with another excellent shot of liquid equivalent for the snowpack thanks to all the dense snow that fell on the front end of the storm. Even with all the snow, there was a ton of terrain that was roped off yesterday morning. The snow report indicated that between the warm front end of the storm and winds that came through, there were areas of water bars, melting and scouring that need some work to be safe for skiers. I’m sure ski patrol will be working hard to open as much terrain as they can as they have time to sort it out. The standard snowmaking/groomed routes off Vista were definitely the main pipeline of open terrain, and the snow report noted that nothing else had been groomed. While so much terrain was roped off, there were some gems that had made the cut, such as Vermont 200 and Glades. I think Vermont 200 is sheltered enough that it holds the snow despite strong winds, and let’s just say, without any grooming, it was a great example of how spicy the terrain is out there. Vermont 200 normally has a lot of contour with plenty of rocks and ledges and stumps and dips and all that, but it feels exaggerated 10-fold with the current snowpack. There is plenty of snow in there though, and it’s a wild ride. Glades was another gem because the Mid Mountain Chair wasn’t running, so getting to the top entry of Glades meant a bit of skating was required across the Mid Mountain Flats, and most people weren’t interested in that. So, the top of Glades had seen very few skiers and held a lot of fresh powder. Lower down, people were coming in from Upper Glades/Moose Run, so the conditions were more tracked, but still excellent. The snowmakers were out working hard on Spillway, so that seems to be where they’re putting their efforts for additional manmade snow at the moment. Even with all this new natural snow, Spillway still needs that snowmaking base because it’s wide and exposed to the wind so that it’s constantly getting scoured. Additional snow is falling today with the cold front and northwest flow squalls that are coming through, and then it looks quite for the end of the week before a potential larger storm affects the area Sunday night into Monday. The models still seem to have some sorting out to do with that system though.

With the addition of that backside snow from last night, I put together the north to south list of Vermont ski areas snow totals I could find for this most recent storm. Similar to what the modeling suggested, the spine of the Northern Greens seemed to do the best with accumulations. As the numbers show, even for a northern area like Burke, the storm total fell off substantially since they are so far east of the spine. Snowfall dropped off rather sharply for the Central Greens as well, and then there was sort of another tier of drop off south of Killington into the Southern Greens. Jay Peak: 18” Burke: 8” Smuggler’s Notch: 17” Stowe: 14” Bolton Valley: 18” Sugarbush: 8” Pico: 8” Killington: 8” Okemo: 2” Bromley: 4” Stratton: 4” Mount Snow: 2”

Happy to help with the snow reports - I'm heading out anyway and I'm always poking around to get a sense for the new snow, base depths, snow density etc., so it only makes sense to pass along the beta as much as possible for others that might want to hit the slopes around here.

As of their 4:00 P.M. update, Bolton was reporting a foot of new snow so far from this current winter storm, and I’m sure they’ve cruised right past that mark with the way it was snowing up there when I left the mountain this afternoon. The early morning report from Bolton was 6 inches new up top, so my wife and I planned to let a few more inches accumulate and then head up in the afternoon for some lift-served runs. That plan quickly changed around 11:30 A.M. when we noticed that the webcam image was frozen. We checked their website and they’d updated the snow report to indicate that they’d lost power. They were working directly with Green Mountain Power and hoped to get it back up in an hour, but it was very much up in the air. About an hour later with no change in status, I figured it was time to head up for some ski touring to get out in the new snow, since the potential for lift-served skiing was just too uncertain. When I first arrived up at the mountain, the snowfall was steady but I’d say only moderate in intensity. I did some quick depth checks around the Village to get a sense for how much new snow was there, but it was tough to gauge. In many areas, the new snow is so well blended with the old snow that it was hard to determine where the interface was. Overall, that’s a great sign because it indicates that the snowpack wasn’t hit too hard by the warmer temperatures on the front end of this system. In some spots I could find a thicker layer below the new snow, but even at that point I was often getting surface snow depths of 12 to 14 inches. Whatever the accumulations, there’s plenty of new snow and it’s coming together nicely with the underlying snowpack. I skinned up to the Wilderness Summit, and touring traffic at that point seemed very light – there were just a couple of tracks down Peggy Dow’s. As I ascended, the intensity of the snowfall increased, and when I was up above 3,000’ on Wilderness it was definitely in the 1-2”/hr. range at times. I know it’s really dumping by how quickly my gear takes on snow accumulations during touring transitions, and this was one of those times where I was constantly having to brush off the snow. Fat skis were the call again today, and this snow is on the denser side, so you want some pitch for the best turns. In terms of density, at 2,000’ the snow seemed to be a bit above the 10% H2O range, and up at 3,000’ it’s definitely drier; it’s got the feel of something in the 7 to 8% H2O range. The turns are great anywhere at elevation of course; it’s simply bottomless powder everywhere with this storm putting down plenty of liquid equivalent. I was worried about some of the water bars getting blown out with the warmer front end of this storm, but in general they seemed similar to how they were before. The snowfall didn’t actually slow down when I descended back to the Village, so it wasn’t just 3,000’+ that was getting hammered at that point – the intensity of the snowfall had definitely increased in association with the back side of the storm. The mountain had been running at least the Snowflake Chair when I started out on my tour, so my plan was to swap over to mid-fats and get in a few lift-served laps to finish off the session. Well, when I arrived back at the main base, power was out again everywhere, so that plan was out the window. There was an easy solution to that though; I just slapped the skins back on and kept touring. I was initially thinking a nice little tour up to the Snowflake Summit would be a great way to finish off the session, but when I got to Five Corners I suddenly thought about hitting the Timberline Summit. I haven’t been up to Timberline at all yet this season because the snow depths at the Timberline Base are still a bit lean compared to the stronger snowpack above 2,000’, but that part of the tour gave me a chance to check out Timberline’s higher elevations. There’s been hardly any skier traffic over there, so it’s nearly untracked everywhere. Heavy snowfall continued to pummel the area right through to the end of my ski tour, and my car had been loaded with snow in just the couple hours that I was out there. It took me probably 10 minutes to clean off the snow. The temperatures had definitely dropped as I was heading down the access road, and the heavy snowfall didn’t start to abate a bit until I was below 1,500’. We’ve been accumulating better even down in the valley now that the temperatures have dropped below freezing.

It’s a busy weekend for me and I wasn’t certain if I was going to get out for turns, especially since I was unsure if surfaces were going to be soft with temperatures in the 30s F, but your comments helped tip the balance. If we’ve had a notable thaw-freeze, then 30s F isn’t really going to cut it to soften things up, but the snow hasn’t really cycled above freezing for a while – it’s already in such good shape that it doesn’t need to soften. With the next storm moving in today, Saturday also seemed like the better day to hit the slopes, so that helped motivate us to get out while the weather was relatively stable. My wife and I headed up in the midafternoon period, and we were a bit leery about parking because the snow report indicated that Bolton had already filled their upper lots and people were parking down at Timberline. We were late enough that plenty of spots were opening up though as others finished their day and headed home. The resort is definitely humming as they start to move to every day operation this week. They had all the lifts going except Timberline, where I don’t think they’ve made much snow yet, and the natural depths down at 1,500’ aren’t quite there to support lift-served traffic. Patrol has opened up just about everything else though – low angle, moderate angle, steeps, trees, people are skiing it all. Some steep, and even moderate natural snow terrain requires various levels of negotiation around the usual patches depending on whether you’re using rock skis or not, but you really can ski just about anything. The snow quality we encountered was fantastic, soft and carvable but not sticky at all, and there’s no ice anywhere to speak of because of the huge resurfacing we got from those recent storms. The resort has all of Wilderness open with zero grooming, so they’re just letting people have at it as nature intended. That means that there’s plenty of uneven terrain and occasional water bars to negotiate, but the snow quality is so good that it’s simple to deal with any obstacles you encounter. My son was up with a bunch of friends from UVM, so while we were waiting to meet up with them at the bottom of Wilderness, I walked around the Village a bit and grabbed some additional photos. It’s been a few days since the last storm, but there’s tons of snow all over the place up there that’s piled up and sticking to things. The snowpack is certainly in good shape for early December, and we’ll soon see what this next storm does for the slopes.

Thanks for passing that along. With touches of that 18-24” shading along the spine of the Northern Greens, that seems to jive fairly well with the BTV NWS high elevation point forecasts I’m seeing. Since that map is out through Wednesday morning, it should certainly be including any back side of accumulations from the system.

I see that Ginx already passed along the updated BTV NWS Storm Total Snowfall Forecast map, and I’ve added the updated alerts map below. In the BTV NWS forecast discussion they mentioned that most remaining areas with Winter Storm Watches were converted to Winter Storm Warnings, as the map indicates. Checking out some of the local point forecasts, I see that down here in the valley our snowfall projection is in the 8-16” range through tomorrow night, and the nearby mountain forecasts are topping out around 24”. There’s none of that next tier accumulations shading showing up along the spine, but the current Storm Total Snowfall Forecast map only goes out through 7 PM tomorrow.

The BTV NWS forecast discussion mentions the potential for a few inches of upslope for Monday night on the back end of this upcoming storm. The 3K NAM has it going through about midnight before a bit of a short break, and then potentially some lake moisture visiting the area on Tuesday. After that, the next potential systems in the pipe are a polar front on Wednesday, and then a similar one on Friday night/Saturday. We’ll have to see how this upcoming larger system plays out of course, but 3 to 4 systems affecting the area over the course of roughly the next week seems like a good Northern Greens style regime to potentially keep the snow surfaces refreshed. The BTV NWS forecast discussion also noted that the northern/central areas were removed from the flood watch due to cooler thermal profiles, so that’s good.

The Winter Storm Watch here has been converted to a Winter Storm Warning, and the BTV NWS forecast discussion suggests totals topping out in the 10-20” range for the Central/Northern Greens. The latest maps are posted below. Area Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Burlington VT 349 PM EST Sat Dec 9 2023 .SHORT TERM /SUNDAY NIGHT THROUGH MONDAY NIGHT/... As of 342 PM EST Saturday...Upgraded winter storm watch to warning acrs most of VT, where confidence is highest for warning criteria snowfall. Very little change has occurred with our storm total snowfall thinking localized 10 to 20 inches central/northern Green Mtns of VT.

About an hour ago I received a text alert that we’d been put under a Winter Storm Watch, so clearly the BTV NWS is seeing something at this lead time that has them concerned about the potential snowfall with this upcoming system. Current maps have been added below:

I was busy through most of the afternoon, but still wanted to get out to the mountain today to check out the additional snow that fell on the back side of our most recent system. As the temperatures dropped yesterday, the density of the snowfall fell to 10% H2O by the afternoon, and finally down into the 3-4% H2O range overnight. Bolton Valley was reporting another 5 inches of accumulation as of this morning, and that drier snow atop the substantial amounts of denser snow from the earlier part of the storm would likely set up some excellent turns. Since I was starting my tour around dusk, I fired up my headlamp because I knew I’d need it on the descent. What amazed me this evening was the number of people who were out touring by headlamp as well. I knew that folks got out for Wilderness tours after dark because I’d sometimes see them on their way up when I’d be finishing a late descent, but I had no idea just how substantial the numbers were. During the course of my relatively short tour this evening I saw at least a couple dozen skiers out there for headlamp touring, and most of them were actually ascending or just starting out at the parking area. Indeed, the Village parking lot was teeming with skiers, more than I’ll typically even see for a morning session. I guess that part of local ski culture is clearly alive and well. And I can’t blame folks for getting after it this evening, it was dead calm with temperatures in the 20s F with new dry powder atop a substantial base. I can remember a couple decades ago when folks would need to set up these elaborate, heavy battery packs to run their powerful halogen lamps to have enough light for skiing at night, and that all seems pretty irrelevant now with modern LED headlamps. My little LED headlamp was more than powerful to enough to provide light for me to ski, even on its lowest setting. I did use the brightest setting on the descent since I figured I might as well, and it was potent. In terms of the snow, with settling I generally found 2 to 4 inches of the new drier snow in the 2,000’ to 2,500’ elevation range. In some spots it was easier to distinguish the demarcation between this drier snow and the denser snow below as I probed around, but at higher elevations where even the base snow was drier, it became more and more difficult to separate the new snow from the old. In any event, the quality of the skiing took a nice notch upwards with the addition of the new powder. I’m sure the earlier snow dried out a bit as well, but with this new snow on top, turns were much silkier than yesterday, and lower angle terrain was much more in play and enjoyable since you were gliding through fluff instead of sinking into the denser stuff. There’s excellent midwinter skiing to be had out there right now in the Northern Greens, whether you go during the day… or at night.

Of the 11 winter storms we’re recorded at our site so far this season, 3 have delivered more than a half inch of liquid equivalent here at our site in the Winooski Valley, and they’ve had a notable upward trend in L.E. The November 21st storm brought 0.72” of L.E., the November 26th storm brought 1.14” of L.E., and this most recent storm that began on December 3rd brought more than 1.40” of L.E., with snowfall continuing through the overnight period. These storms have really helped to build the mountain snowpack, and the snow depth at the Mt. Mansfield Stake is now more than a foot above average. Bolton Valley was reporting another 14” of snow in 24 hours, and I popped up to the mountain yesterday afternoon to check it out. Elevation has had quite an impact on the snow from this most recent storm, and the snow depth profile coming up out of the Winooski Valley is quite extreme. There’s really no snow aside from leftover piles, all the way up above 1,000’, and then the depth begins to ramp up. Here’s the snow depth profile I found on yesterday’s ski tour: 340’: 0” 500’: 0” 1,000’: 0” 1,200’: T-2” 1,500’: 6-8” 2,000’: 16-20” 2,500’: 20-24” 3,000’: 24-28” It was more challenging to get depth readings in those upper elevations since the pack is getting pretty deep and there are a lot of different layers with varying consistencies, but that general trend I’ve seen of almost an inch of depth increase per 100’ of elevation gain seems to generally be holding. The depths I was getting at 3,000’ also seem generally in line with the current reading at the Mt. Mansfield Stake of 33” at 3,700’. I arrived up in the Village in the early afternoon to a maelstrom of huge flakes coming down in association with the back side of the storm system, so the mountain continued to tack on more to the snow totals. Fat skis were unquestionably the play for today. The accumulations from this storm definitely came in denser than the previous one, and while fats were of course great for stability, they were also really nice for planing on lower angle slopes and getting additional turns out of that snow. Even though you were only sinking maybe 6 to 10 inches into the powder because of the density, it was still slow going if the slope angle got too low. Steep slopes indeed offered the best turns, and the base is so dense and deep that even on those pitches there’s not much to worry about in terms of coverage on the upper mountain.

Down here in the valley at 500’ our precipitation has generally been snow, but the temperatures have been marginal, so thus far we’ve had less than an inch of accumulation. It’s been a different story at elevation though. We’d been watching the Bolton Valley Base Area Webcam since this morning, and more often than not it’s shown moderate to heavy snowfall with some big fat flakes. Even from the webcam you could tell it was accumulating, so I waited until the afternoon to let some of new snow build up, then I headed up to the mountain for some runs. Coverage has mostly melted back at the base of the Bolton Valley Access Road at 340’, and the precipitation there was a mix of rain and wet snow, but cars coming down from the resort had at least a couple inches of fresh snow on them. As I ascended, somewhere in the 1,000’ to 1,500’ range, the precipitation instantly flipped to 100% snow, and you could tell that you’d hit a critical temperature threshold. Up in the Village at 2,000’ it was pounding big flakes. There were visibility issues just like yesterday, but while yesterday was due to thick low clouds and fog, today it was due to the snowfall. Liker yesterday, I skied again off the Mid Mountain Chair, and you could tell that the base snow had stiffened up where it had been groomed, at least up around 2,500’. From about 2,200’ and below, there was a notably softer base. At those higher elevations where the base was starting to tighten up, the new snow was definitely helping to take the edge off, but with on piste skier traffic, the fresh snow had been pushed around a lot, and you had to move off the groomed terrain to really take the best advantage of the new snow. In areas that hadn’t been groomed, there was no demarcation between the new snow and more recent layers below it, and my off piste adventures generally yielded turns in 12-14” of powder. The powder did get a bit denser as you dropped in elevation, but it was still quite manageable. I was on mid-fats and never even felt the need to switch to alpine turns; the snow was dry and consistent enough that Telemark turns were still comfortable all the way. The freezing level was slowly dropping in elevation while I was out on the mountain, and by my last run it was only right down at base elevations where the groomed base still had that initial softness I’d encountered. Driving down the access road at closing time was a bit hairy with the pounding snow and fresh accumulations. The road accumulations finally started to abate around 1,500’, and road surfaces switched to just wet below that. The snowfall rate was easily an inch an hour at times, and even thought it occasionally slowed down for periods earlier in the afternoon, it looks like it averaged around that inch per hour mark because the resort was reporting 4 inches of new snow as of 4:00 P.M. closing. If the snowfall keeps up for a while this evening like it did this afternoon, they’ll have another great shot of snow to cover up the slopes by the morning.

With temperatures in the 30s F today, I was unsure if snow surfaces up at the mountain were going to soften. Our younger son was up at Bolton Valley with some friends though, and when we texted him for an update, he said that indeed the snow had softened up. With that news, my wife and I headed up for a few runs this afternoon. Visibility was near zero on the mountain with low clouds and fog, but it did give the mountain that low light solstice/holiday feel. Indeed the snow surfaces were great. We’d waxed our skis pretty thoroughly just in case, but we didn’t encounter any areas of sticky snow, it was just buttery smooth spring-style snow that you could really sink an edge into. I’m not sure if the snow was stiffer up high, but we were just lapping the Mid Mountain Chair, and everything on the lower mountain was great. The Wilderness Lift was also open today, so the natural snow terrain that they’ve opened is still in decent shape. Those surfaces that have softened today will of course tighten up when temperatures drop back below freezing, but hopefully the storm coming in to the area tomorrow will do a decent job of covering up the current base. There certainly seems to be the potential for a decent resurfacing of the slopes with an inch or so of liquid equivalent in the forecast.

Just as we were headed up to the mountain this afternoon, I received a text alert that we’d been put under a Winter Weather Advisory. Related BTV NWS maps are below. The Event Total Snowfall map has us somewhere in the 6-8” or 8-12” range of accumulations through Tuesday, but we’ll have to see how things play out for the lower elevations during the warmer part of the storm.

Last night we picked up another 4 to 5 inches of snow here in the valley from the weak cold front swinging through the region, and not surprisingly, the mountains picked up twice that amount. Bolton Valley was reporting 10 inches of new snow atop the 15+ inches they’d received from the storm at the beginning of the week, and this new snow came in around 5% H2O according my morning liquid analyses. The new drier snow atop the base was a recipe for some great skiing. My older son was off from work this afternoon, so we popped up to the mountain for a ski tour on Wilderness. The Winooski Valley down by the base of the Bolton Valley Access Road did better with this event, and whereas the coverage was somewhat patchy after the last storm, it was generally continuous with a few inches present this morning. I checked snowpack depths during the tour as usual, and it’s getting tougher to get measurements as the snowpack gets deeper, but with settling through the afternoon, depth increases seemed to be as follows relative to what I found yesterday: 2,000’: 10-12” --> 15-16” 2,500’: 15-16” --> 18-20” 3,000’: 18-20” --> 20-24” So essentially, the snowpack depths I found today were about 500 feet lower in elevation than equivalent depths I found yesterday. The Wilderness Uphill Route had seen plenty of skier traffic, and there was a dual skin track all the way to the Wilderness Summit that made conversation easy while we ascended. I was hoping to bring my son over toward Fanny Hill again in line with the tour I’d done yesterday, but ski patrol had fenced off Upper Crossover. They really want touring to be confined to Wilderness, and I guess that’s not too surprising with the amount of operations they have going on Vista. With the amount of activity we saw going on all around the resort, it’s obvious that they’re going full tilt in preparation for re-opening on Friday. I’m not sure how much of the mountain they’re going to open, but with the amount of natural snow out there, they’re going to have a lot of options. In terms of the skiing, it was great. Conditions were already excellent yesterday, and now Mother Nature threw another 10 inches on top of that, so it’s about what you’d expect – lots of bottomless powder. We hit the Wilderness Summit just as sunset was approaching, so the views to the west were stupendous on such a fine afternoon. With the snow remaining deep, you wanted to shoot for intermediate pitches and above for decent turns. Based on my experience from yesterday, we did have full fat skis today, so that helped a lot with floatation and the ability to turn on those lower-angle slopes a bit more.

When I checked the Bolton Valley snow report today in anticipation of heading up for a ski tour, I saw that they had updated their Monday morning total to 15” up top as well, so they must have reassessed what fell: Tuesday: We are still reeling from the season's first big snowstorm that smothered the northern Green Mountains in a heavy blanket of prime base building snow Sunday night to Monday morning. In addition to the 12-15" we woke up to Monday morning, it appears we're in for another 1-3" today here in the upper elevations and - perhaps even more importantly - the return of cold temperatures on the ol' "wet bulb" to fire up snowmaking efforts again. As we get closer to Friday we'll keep you posted on trails and lifts for this weekend, but perhaps needless to say, we will definitely be expanding terrain this weekend, including Snowflake Lift, a small buildout in the HIde Away Terrain Park and several trails making their season debut. Stay tuned on that front. No lift service today, but we've gone ahead and opened the Wilderness Designated Uphill Route so you can get some fresh pow laps in if your schedule allows. Based on PF’s comment about skiing on just the top 4”, and the density of the snow down here at our house, I brought mid-fats for today’s tour. I figured I’d be riding Sierra Cement, but that wasn’t at all what I experienced. I’ll mention more about the snow density after covering the storm accumulations and snowpack depths. There’s a very impressive elevation gradient with respect to the snow accumulations from this storm. Down at the base of the Bolton Valley Access Road at 340’, there isn’t even complete coverage on all aspects – I’d call the snowpack there T – 2”. I didn’t monitor the snowpack too closely on my ascent to the Village, but coverage was certainly continuous by 1,000’. Up in the Village around 2,000’ or so, I found 10-12” of snow, and here are some measurements at elevations during my tour: 2,000’: 10-12” 2,500’: 15-16” 3,000’: 18-20” As the numbers reveal, there’s a huge snow depth gradient above 2,000’ – you’re basically looking at the depth going up about an inch every 100’ of vertical. Now those numbers are for total snowpack depth because I’m not sure if I’d be able to distinguish exactly what portion came from this most recent storm, but much of it was from this storm (as Bolton’s summit storm total of 15” would suggest). The Wilderness Uphill Route has a beautifully packed skin track in place at this point, so travel on the snow is easy. And getting back to that discussion of snow density, it’s not Sierra Cement. In the higher elevations, the density going several inches down into the snowpack is sub-10% H2O powder – I’d put it somewhere in the 6 to 8% H2O range if I had to guess. You sink well down into it, I’d say a good foot, and it’s nicely right-side-up. As I mentioned, I brought mid-fats, but fat skis are actually the tool you want (or a snowboard, etc.). It was quickly obvious on my ascent that some decent pitch would be required for turns, so I toured all the way to the top of Wilderness. I checked out Bolton Outlaw, and it had seen enough traffic to track it up pretty thoroughly, so I continued on to Upper Fanny Hill and put the third set of tracks down there. I continued on to Fanny Hill proper and got probably the fourth set of tracks there. The powder skiing is fantastic as long as you’ve got at least intermediate pitch. Shallower than that and the powder is just too deep to keep decent momentum (and that’s another reason to bring fat skis because you can make use of that extra floatation). In terms of snow quality, it’s as I described at elevation, and of course the overall depth decreases as you descend, but the quality stays high right down to 2,000’. Only just as you approach 2,000’ do you encounter any sort of snow quality issues, and there’s a slight crème brûlée crust in there a couple of inches below the surface where there must have been a bit of warming. At that elevation it’s still quite subtle and you can essentially ignore it. As Bolton’s snow report indicates, the resort is considering expanding terrain, and moving to some of the natural snow terrain is pretty obvious at this point. We’ll have to see which terrain can hold up to lift-served traffic, but I can’t believe there’s not more talk about this storm and what it could do for the start of the season. This storm was a total liquid equivalent bomb, and not only that, the snow is good to go. This storm was an absolute season-starter. Sometimes storms like this come in so dense or warm, that the tenor will be “This is going to be a great base as soon as we get some good snow on top of it”. Well, there’s no need to wait, the snow is already good to go, and it’s currently getting covered more with the snow from today. It’s not every day you get such a base-building storm that immediately offers up fantastic midwinter skiing. We didn’t even have to wait until December for this one – it somehow snuck in during November, which is another great bonus.

The snow around here today was persistent, but generally light. This evening though, it’s been ramping up to another level. Even on the basic BTV NWS radar you can see much of the spine lit up from with that WNW flow coming in. The snowfall is 1-2”/hr. at times with visibility maybe a couple hundred feet.

Here’s the north to south listing of the snowfall totals that the Vermont ski areas along the spine are reporting. The totals reported in the north and north-central areas are definitely higher than in the south, and the distribution is actually reminiscent of the north to south gradient we see with a lot of more typical storms that have upslope added in. Jay Peak: 15” Smuggler’s Notch: 14” Stowe: 10” Bolton Valley: 12” Mad River Glen: 14” Sugarbush: 13” Pico: 7” Killington: 7” Okemo: 8” Magic Mountain: 2” Stratton: 5” Mount Snow: 3”

About a half hour ago I received a text alert that we’d been put under a Winter Weather Advisory – this seemed to come on pretty quickly, just as the snow was starting up here, so I assume the BTV NWS has seen something in the latest modeling that had them go with the advisory. We are getting a bit of slushy accumulation when the snowfall intensity is high enough, but with the marginal temperatures, it seems like heavier snowfall is what it would take to get any sort of substantial accumulation down here in the valley.

Thanks Kevin; I just tested it by entering the storm totals from this season thus far, and it seems to be working smoothly as usual. The effort that goes into this resource is greatly appreciated.

The mountain snowpack that had been building up over the first half of the month melted back somewhat in the middle elevations at the end of last week, but this latest winter storm seemed to have the potential to replenish it. As of this morning, we’d picked up roughly 4 inches of new snow composed of 0.6 inches of liquid at the house, so the local mountains should have added enough new snow to set the table for more low-angle touring in the powder. Bolton Valley was reporting 3 to 4 inches of new snow overnight, and 5 inches in the past 48 hours. Assuming a similar density of snow to what fell at our house, plus whatever snow was in place before, it definitely felt like it was worth a visit. In the Winooski Valley at the base of the Bolton Valley Access Road, we found 1 to 2 inches of new snow from this most recent storm, and up in the Village, total depths were 4 to 5 inches. Temperatures this morning were around the freezing mark, with a mix of wintry precipitation types as we set out on our tour. We found that snow depths increased a bit with elevation, hitting 5 to 6 inches around 2,500’ and 6 to 7 inches where we topped out around 2,700’. The powder skiing was decent, with snow that was relatively dense but not sloppy or soggy on the upper half of our tour. The density did increase a bit more as we descended back toward the base around 2,000’, but the snow still hadn’t progressed to that spring-style sticky snow. I had freshly waxed up my skis in the morning, and that did appear to help give me an slightly easier time than my son who hadn’t. While today’s powder was decent, the snow I found while out ski touring last week was definitely superior. I think that last week there was a touch more base, the snow overall was a bit deeper, and most importantly, the snow was notably drier. All those factors came together to set that skiing above the quality of what we found out there today. This dense snow that we just received does have the water content to set up a more substantial base though, and it’s really going to be great with some additional rounds of snow on top. The models do suggest that there are some events in the pipeline over the next week, so we’ll see what the mountains get from those.

I see that the BTV NWS made a bit of a bump around here in the numbers on their Event Total Snowfall map, and that change is represented in our corresponding point forecast as well. Based on the forecast discussion, it sounds like it was due to some increases in the projected liquid equivalent from the storm. Area Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Burlington VT 657 AM EST Tue Nov 21 2023 .NEAR TERM /THROUGH WEDNESDAY/... As of 650 AM EST Tuesday... …There were also some increases in liquid equivalent amounts which favor slightly higher localized snowfall amounts for the Adirondacks and Green Mountains. Snow...General amounts haven`t changed much; still expected 2-4 inches for the Adirondacks and southern/southeastern Vermont. However, the increase in QPF has nudged the potential slightly higher for a few very localized spots to see 6 inches; can`t completely rule out these amounts. Updated maps for this event are below:

I received a text alert earlier this afternoon that we’d been put under a Winter Weather Advisory. The associated BTV NWS maps have been added below.