J.Spin

Per the discussion in the NNE Winter Thread last night, our most recent winter storm system started up yesterday afternoon. Snow levels were up above 1,000’ to start, but they gradually came down in elevation, and the valleys were reporting a mix of rain and snow in the evening. By 7:00 P.M. we started getting initial slushy accumulations on elevated surfaces down here at the 500-foot elevation, and it took a bit more time for the temperatures to drop below freezing, but within a couple of hours they’d fallen enough that the accumulations really started to take hold. Although we only had an inch or two of snow accumulation here at our site, we picked up 0.40 inches of liquid equivalent from the system, so the snow for the local mountains probably had at least a half inch of liquid in it. That’s definitely enough to get into the realm of a modest resurfacing. When I saw Bolton Valley’s initial early morning report of 3 to 4 inches of snow, I decided that mid-fats were the practical play for today’s skis. My younger son had the day off from work, and I’d planned to get him up if the morning snowfall numbers were substantial enough, but 3-4” was modest enough that I decided to let him sleep in and I headed up by myself to sample what the storm had brought us. Heading up the Bolton Valley Access Road, the elevation dependence of the snowfall was stark: I had ascended above 1,000’ before there was really more than a trace of new accumulation in that area. And even after that, accumulations were slow to increase; it wasn’t until I hit the Bolton Valley Village at 2,000’ that I really felt the accumulation were substantial enough that they were going to make a big impact in the skiing. I did find 3 to 4 inches of new snow at 2,000’ when I did some checks around the Village, so that was encouraging – if the main base had that much new accumulation at that point, it was likely going to be more in the higher elevations. The Wilderness Double Chair was scheduled to start running at 10:00 A.M., so my plan was to kick off the day’s ski session with some touring before Wilderness lift access was available. I ascended up to ~2,700’ to one of my usual transition points by the time lift-service was underway, so my initial descent was from there. My descent was via a combination of Cougar and Lower Turnpike, and the powder turns were excellent. On low-angle terrain, the new snow was substantial enough that it easily provided 100% bottomless powder turns, and on medium-angle terrain I’d say it was in the range of ~80% bottomless turns. The new snow was medium weight powder in probably the 8% H2O range, and just dry enough that you could keep moving fine on even low-angle terrain. When I’d descended to the base of the Wilderness Chair it was one wind hold, and they suspected it would be about 30 minutes before it would be back up, so I checked out the other lift offerings. The Snowflake Chair offered some great turns with a few inches of powder over a groomed base on Sprig O’ Pine, and off the Mid Mountain Chair, Beech Seal had excellent natural accumulations that had resurfaced even the manmade snow on the skier’s left to a good degree. Off the Vista Quad Chair, Sherman’s Pass is finally open, so I used it to make my way back over toward the Wilderness terrain, which delivered great natural snow turns as usual. Riding the Vista Quad, I found that the winds were howling above 3,000’, and temperatures were dropping well into the 20s F. It was getting bitter up there. In terms of snowfall and accumulations, there was at least light to moderate snowfall during my entire ski session, and it was pounding 1-2”/hour snowfall for a while just as I was starting the initial ascent of my ski tour. With continued snowfall and rates like that, it wasn’t surprising that accumulations had jumped up a bit from the initial morning report. Here’s the approximate snow accumulations profile I found from this event as of about midday when I was leaving the mountain: 340’: T 500’: T” 1,000’: T-1” 1,200’: 0.5-1” 1,500’: 1-2” 2,000’: 3-4” 2,500’: 5-6” 3,000’: 6-7” It was really windy up at the Vista Summit, and I couldn’t get access to the usual protected spots I like to use to gauge depth, so what I’ve put down is my best estimate. Overall though, isolating depths for the snow from this most recent storm was relatively easy because we had some warmth earlier this week that consolidated the top of the snowpack. Like with the last storm though, it’s not a rock-hard subsurface – it’s a spongy interface and the new snow has bonded well to it, so that’s great for the skiing. For the elevations below 1,500’, those depths reported above are actually more than what was there when I initially ascended the access road in the morning, because the heavy snowfall during the morning had added accumulations there that hadn’t been present earlier. I was surprised that the base of Timberline at 1,500’ only had an inch or two of new snow, so even being where the precipitation fell as all snow wasn’t quite enough to get solid accumulations that would dramatically affect the resurfacing of the slopes; you really needed another 500 feet or so to get into the best stuff. The continued snowfall today was definitely having an effect though, as evidenced by some of the midday updates to the Bolton Valley Snow Report: 10:30am Update: How's about a couple of rope drops? Glades, Swing, Fanny and more have joined the ranks since we opened this morning, and the snow is still coming down. 12:15pm Update: The ropes keep dropping - we're adding Bolton Outlaw, Peggy Dow's, Cougar, Old Turnpike, and Lower crossover to the mix! This storm was a great way to kick the conditions up some notches as we head toward Christmas, and with a couple more clippers on the way in the coming days plus cold temperatures for the foreseeable future, it looks like conditions will be improving throughout the coming week.

We've been mixing for a while as well down here at 500 feet, and there's a bit of slushy accumulation on the elevated snowboard. The temperature is falling faster now around here, so more snow is mixing in and the snow line is definitely coming down.

After the relatively warm midweek storm moved across the area, we picked up an inch or two of snow in the valley between the back side of that system and the lake-effect snow that followed it. While the storm wasn’t quite a net gain for the snowpack here at our site, we only lost a couple tenths of an inch of snow water equivalent in the snow on the ground, so it was fairly inconsequential in that regard. It did mean a thaw-freeze cycle for the snowpack though, so once temperatures came down, the snowpack was solid with just a bit of fresh snow on top. This was the first notable consolidation event of the season at our site, so we finally transitioned to a much more robust snowpack down at the house now vs. what was there before. It had slowly been settling and consolidating on its own, but it was still somewhat dry, and you could dig down to the ground fairly easily. That midweek storm was likely a net gain for liquid in the mountain snowpack, but I assumed off piste surfaces would be quite hard after the thaw-freeze, similar to what we experience down in the valley. I’d been hearing some good reports out of the mountains with regard to the backside accumulations from the storm, but it was hard to image it would be enough to really get the off piste and backcountry conditions back to where there were earlier in the week. With that in mind, my wife and I headed up to Bolton Valley for some snowshoeing on Saturday. We always find that snowshoeing is a nice change of pace if the snowpack is likely to be punchy, crusty, or icy, since even Nordic skiing with those conditions can be unpleasant if the snow is too firm. We figured we’d mostly be using the crampons on our snowshoes during the tour as we expected something in the range of a dust-on-crust snowpack, but that wasn’t the case at all. I was amazed to find that at around the 2,000’-2,200’ elevations where we toured, there were 6 to 10 inches of powder above the base layers. And, the base wasn’t even rock hard, it was a crumbly interface with the powder above it that made for excellent touring. We couldn’t believe that we were actually having to use the floatation of our snowshoes because of the depth of the powder, and the crampons were needed only occasionally in packed areas. The resort was reporting 8 inches of new snow in the past 48 hours, and it really wasn’t just eye candy, all that new snow set up some very pleasant snow surfaces. The only major issues we noted on Saturday were that some of the water bars had been blow out by the rain. Those areas required some extra navigation, and we could see that people had established routes around them on popular ascents like the Bryant Trail. I’d say our observations were right in line with the big washout on Gondolier at Stowe that Powderfreak talked about – the snowpack itself wasn’t damaged all the much by the rain, the more notable effects were on drainage/water bars. Experiencing the quality of the snow on Saturday, it was obvious that the powder skiing would be great on low to moderate angle terrain, so my son and I headed out for a ski tour on Bolton’s Nordic & Backcountry Network on Sunday. We toured up the Bryant Trail to about the base of the Big Blue area. We wanted to stick to more moderate and low-angle terrain that was a best fit for the depth and density of the powder, so we began our descent in the lower reaches of Big Blue, then worked our way through the relatively low-angle terrain between the Bryant and Coyote trails. Later on the descent we crossed to the west side of Bryant, skied the upper sections of the Cup Runneth Over glade, and finished out with turn on the untracked areas of World Cup. The resort hadn’t set formal Nordic grooming tracks up in those areas of World Cup, but there was a track line that had been made by skiers, and the rest of the trail was untracked powder. Those areas of World Cup were very open and provided some of the most consistent powder turns of the day. The pitch was also perfect for the depth and consistency of the powder, and my son said those sections were actually his favorite turns of the tour.

VT-WS-19 is the number for our reporting station through CoCoRaHS, and all the data are publicly available through their site – PF often posts their maps of rain, snowfall, snowpack, etc. here in the forum. A number of people in the forum are members: https://cocorahs.org/ It’s not as involved as being a reporter for an NWS Coop site – there are fewer of those. And I believe CoCoRaHS likes morning observations with a preference for reporting somewhere in the 6:00 A.M. to 8:00 A.M. range (the preferred specific time to submit CoCoRaHS precipitation data is 7 AM, but you can report whenever works for you, and many people do). If I recall correctly, I think Tamarack has his own time for reporting during the day, to keep his data consistent with what he had been doing for years.

As I mentioned in my recent mountain report, things have been busy between skiing and work, but this most recent system has helped with a little downtime to get some numbers together. For the winter season thus far at our site, the only thing holding it back from really tracking with some of the top dogs has been November. Snowfall for November here in the valley was about a foot below average, so that really set things behind. You can see this in the blue line in the first plot below – the cumulative snowfall plot was rather flat with only minimal accumulations from various warmer/smaller storms until the end of the month when it finally began to rise. It certainly wasn’t a bottom of the barrel November, but it’s been a decade since we’ve had a November with less snow than this one, so that says something. I don’t really track temperatures, but it was pretty warm for a good chunk of the month. Last season, the tenor of November was vastly different. The snowstorms began churning from the first of the month, and of course the cumulative snowfall plot started climbing right from that point as well. You can see that in the red line in the second plot below. We never really blasted well away from average November snowfall pace, but we stayed at or above it for the whole month and overall, it at least came in as a solid/decent snowfall month. You can really see the contrast in snowfall between this November (blue) and last November (red) on that second plot though; this November just started really late. With all that said, this season did give us our 9th white Thanksgiving in a row here at the house. That’s the longest white Thanksgiving streak in our data set, and it now bumps the average/odds for white Thanksgiving here close to 80% by the numbers. In contrast to November, this December’s snowfall has been strong thus far. That immediately jumps out if you look at the blue line on either the first or second plot – it simply takes off after November 30th, and you can see how it crosses the 2023 red line and pulls well ahead of average snowfall pace (white dotted line). We had over 30 inches of snow here in the valley in just the first 10 days of December this year, and it’s easy math to see where the month would end up if snowfall stayed at that pace for 30+ days – that would take the top spot in my December records. Obviously, it’s hard to maintain that snowfall pace for an entire month as our most recent system shows, but the thing is, this December’s snowfall thus far came with no large storms – it was just that modest bread and butter pattern that the GFS showed as we talked about a week or two ago. We’ve had six storms during this season’s initial December stretch, and the largest was only 8.2 inches. Although not directly relevant to this season, the second plot really shows how December played out last season – snowfall just tanked after mid-month, and you can see that nearly flat red line that quickly dropped behind average snowfall pace. In just its first week, this December’s snowfall surpassed last December’s snowfall for the entire month. The third plot below has the cumulative snowfall data for our site for the past five seasons, since you were wondering how we are doing compared to other years. You can see that this season is actually outpacing all of the previous four after this early December run. So, if it’s felt like the first 10 days of December put on a good showing – the data say that they did. And again, that’s with no massive synoptic storms or stationary closed lows sitting to our northwest, just a steady diet of bread and butter. Bread and butter is just that, sort of the typical, staple pattern, so imagine if the mountains just simply had that for an entire season. And finally, the fourth plot below has all the data from my data set so that you can see where this season sits with respect to all the others. This season actually stands in a solid position (fourth overall) at this early stage, but the real big dogs are typically ones that couple together a solid November and December, and you can see those topping the chart. Anyway, the current ongoing precipitation has already changed over to snow here in the local mountains, and snow levels should be dropping to the valley floors over the next couple of hours, so we should continue tacking on to the current December snowfall numbers. For the local resorts, I’ve got the updates on their snowfall progress similar to what I posted a few days ago. Jay Peak is currently at 99 inches of snowfall on the season, so they’re running at 99”/54” = 183% of average snowfall pace. Bolton Valley is reporting 55 inches of snowfall on the season, so they’re running at 55”/49” = 112% of average snowfall pace. Jay Peak has dropped back a bit from where they were when I last checked, of course they were running around 200% of average, and it’s going to be incredibly hard to keep up a pace like that. Bolton has actually picked up their pace from the last update, since they were at 105%.

Between so much great skiing and being extra busy with work, I haven’t been able to keep up with mountain reports, but I’ve finally had a chance to put together the report on Sunday’s outing at Bolton. My older son and I headed up together for some turns, and since the resort has been offering lift-served skiing off Wilderness now, we decided to do some touring down at Timberline. With Timberline’s lower elevations, the snowpack wasn’t really reading for touring earlier in the season, but with day after day of snow during the week, and the depth at the Mt. Mansfield stake pushing 40 inches, the snowpack depths just continued to climb at all elevations. At our house at 500’ in the Winooski Valley, the snowpack had hit 14 inches, so we knew Timberline at 1,500’+ was more than ready to support some quality ski touring. Indeed, Timberline was ready for prime time – at least in terms of overall snowpack depth if not yet its subsurface base depths or the density gradient of the snowpack. Down around 1,500’ at the Timberline Base, the snowpack depth was 20 inches, so that was plenty of snow for skiing. But unlike much of the snowpack up at the main mountain, there wasn’t really any settled base below that snow. So, there was a bit less flexibility in terrain choice, assuming you wanted to ski reasonably safely or didn’t want to risk damaging equipment, but it’s more than enough coverage for the mowed/maintained trails. The only other issue with the snowpack was that the powder was of roughly equal density throughout its depth. It certainly wasn’t upside down, but without a density increase as you go down, skis are prone to sink quite far, and you can get bogged down or experience tip submersions. We’d both brought 115 mm fat skis, so that really helped to mitigate that issue in terms of overall floatation and the ability to have fun on any lower-angle terrain, but it’s something to consider when you’re choosing which equipment to use for an outing. We saw some folks out on snow surfers, and I bet these were fun with decent floatation as long as they were on slope of sufficient pitch. We got out in the morning because we knew that there was the chance for temperatures to go above freezing later in the day, but if temperatures did go above 32 F, it seemed to be just marginally. I’ve mentioned in some of my recent reports that we’ve needed a consolidation event for the snowpack in certain areas, so in that respect this warmer storm that came into the area today has been helpful, but getting an inch of liquid as dense snow would of course have been superior to getting it as rain. I can’t say if this will be a net gain for liquid in the snowpack down here at our site yet, but if it’s questionable here in the valley, it could easily be a liquid equivalent increase for some of the elevations. The mountains are expected to switch back over to snow shortly, and then the snow is supposed to work its way down in elevation over the next few hours, so we’ll have a chance to see how things settled out by tomorrow.

Alerts came out early this morning for our next Winter Weather Advisory – the current BTV NWS maps are below:

Bolton Valley started their lift-served ski season yesterday, and I headed up this afternoon for a few runs to check out the conditions and get some exercise. It’s becoming a bit hard to keep track of the snow that’s falling because it’s nearly continuous with all these bread-and-butter systems passing through the area, but the resort is reporting 14 inches of new snow in the past 48 hours. They have a very interesting assortment of lifts and trails available right now that is atypical of what they usually have going at the start of the season. The Snowflake Chair isn’t running, and Sherman’s Pass isn’t open, and those are often early season staples. Instead, the Wilderness Chair is running, and they appear to have the entirety of the Wilderness terrain open on natural snow. With neither Sherman’s Pass nor Bear Run open, there’s no beginner terrain currently being served off the Vista Quad or the Mid Mountain Chair, so the only beginner terrain is off the Mighty Mite. And, the only way down from the Vista Summit is Hard Luck, which is a steep black diamond run. It’s a very unusual collection of early season terrain. I decided to sample all the lifts that were available, and I started with a Beech Seal run off the Mid Mountain Chair. The skier’s left side had manmade snow, and the skier’s right was natural snow, and the quality was of course night and day. The right side was a little thin in a few spots, but the snow quality was excellent since it’s entirely natural snow that has never undergone a thaw-freeze cycle. I headed to Vista next, and Hard Luck was disastrous. Coverage was fantastic, but being all manmade snow, very steep, and the only way down from Vista such that it got all the skier traffic, the quality of the snow was horrible. I’m sure racers would love it, but that’s about it. I watched multiple people try to turn and simply kick out, fall, and begin to slide down the slope because there’s just nothing to hold onto with your skis. Thankfully, about halfway down you can cut over to the Show Off trail, which is currently all natural snow. The coverage is a little thin in spots, but easily manageable and all the snow there was excellent packed powder. There was lots of snowmaking going on with temperatures in the 20s F, so I’m sure they’ll be opening more of the traditional early season terrain soon.

I didn’t receive the usual text announcement, but apparently, we’re under a Winter Weather Advisory for this next Clipper coming into the area. The BTV NWS maps for this event are below:

I’ll try to find some time this weekend to put together my usual snowfall progression plot for our site – but it’s easier to get that done when the skiing isn’t as good. With a quick look though, Bolton Valley should be at roughly 38 inches of total snowfall as of today (12/6), and they are reporting 40 inches on the season, so they seem to be right around average or just slightly ahead (105% of average). Jay Peak should be at ~42 inches of total snowfall as of today, and their current season total is 83 inches, so they are way ahead of average pace. They’re essentially running at 200% of average snowfall, which is impressive for a place as snowy as Jay Peak. It really seems like it was that recent lake-effect period that hit them incredibly hard and pushed them so far ahead of the other resorts in the Northern Greens. The moisture stream just sat there for quite a while.

My older son was off from work yesterday, so the two of us decided to head up to Bolton for some turns. With the generally unconsolidated snowpack, it was a bit tough to tell how much new snow fell from the Clipper, but based on the resort’s snow report, it seemed like they picked up a few inches, similar to what we received down here in the valley. With today being their opening day, yesterday there was a lot of activity on the mountain as they made final preparations for opening. At the base, one of the patrollers asked if we could stay off Wilderness for touring and instead head over to the Nordic and backcountry network, so we were happy to oblige. Although there’s no snowmaking on Wilderness, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were going to potentially be doing some grooming and prep work like obstacle marking over there anyway, so I suspect they wanted to minimize skier traffic as much as they could. I wouldn’t normally have defaulted to touring on the Nordic and backcountry network at this stage of the early snowpack, since the Wilderness trails are just a safer bet for quality turns; they have been mowed and have a more substantiated base due to some skier traffic packing it down. But since I’ve been out on Wilderness for a few ski tours now this season, getting out onto the nearby backcountry terrain gave me a nice opportunity to compare the quality of the turns in both places. For overall skiing and powder turns, the experience was unquestionably better on piste at Wilderness. It’s not an issue of overall snow depth; snowpack depths were closing in on 20 inches when I was out for my ski tour on Tuesday, and that was before the Clipper and the cold front brought a lot more snow to the area over the past couple of day. The depth of the snowpack has gone up substantially at this point – as of today the depth at the Mt. Mansfield stake is at 30 inches. What’s needed off piste to really improve the quality of the skiing is some consolidation. There is some base snow in the snowpack below the fluff, and it’s a decent base for on piste turns, it’s just not enough to sufficiently cover the contours of your typical off-piste terrain yet. Although a storm with above-freezing temperatures isn’t going to be great for snow quality, it would help in that consolidation. Alternatively, a nice dense snowfall storm would also help, and of course that would be much better for snow surfaces in general. It would temporarily ruin the current dry powder and might give us a bit of an upside-down snowpack, but it would really help set things up long term. The only other alternative would be to continue to get the type of dry snow we’re getting and wait a while for settling over time as the lower layers get compressed. This just takes a lot longer and requires a lot of snow, going the route of a continental/Colorado type snowpack. It's not that the off-piste skiing is horrible, it’s just that you need to stick to places that have seen a bit of skier traffic, or you know are well manicured with minimal hazards underfoot.

It’s solid, but nothing outrageous for around here based on eyeballing the snowboards out back – if I had to guess it’s in the 0.5-1.0”/hr. range. I cleared the boards around 6:00 P.M. and there’s 1.5-2.0” on there now, so that would average in the ~0.5”/hr. range overall, but much of it has fallen in the past hour or so since things have picked up, so the current snowfall rate is above that. The radar has had some of that good look though where the echoes don’t push through the spine but instead keep regenerating along the western slopes.

I hadn’t been up to the mountain since Saturday, so I was eager to get out for a ski tour when I had time today. There’s been no specific synoptic storms in the area, but the snow has been piling up the thanks to the continuous feed of moisture off the Great Lakes and the upper-level low pressure to our north. Seeing the snowpack depth at the Mt. Mansfield stake quickly jump up to near 20 inches is a strong sign that it’s been snowing around here. Having that closed upper low over Hudson Bay with broad upper level troughing is a great setup when you have a 4,000’ wall of mountains sitting downwind of a moisture source like the Great Lakes. Even without data from the Mt. Mansfield stake to go on, I know it’s been snowing because we’ve recently had several inches of new snow down at our place in the valley, so the snow is hitting all elevations with the current temperature regime. Indeed, I found that snow depths were up substantially at all elevations during today’s tour. I toured again using the Wilderness Uphill Route, so I was able to check snowpack depths from the valley on up and compare them to what I’d last seen on Saturday. The updated snow depths are below, with Saturday’s depths listed first, then today’s depths following in bold. The depths I found up at 3,000’ and above are certainly consistent with what is being reported for the snowpack depths at the Mt. Mansfield stake. 340’: T-1: --> 1-2” 500’: 1” --> 2” 1,000’: 2” --> 3-4” 1,200’: 2-3” --> 4-5” 1,500’: 3” --> 6-8” 2,000’: 6-8” --> 8-12” 2,250’: 8-10” --> 10-14” 2,500’: 10-12” --> 12-16” 2,750’: 11-13” --> 14-17” 3,000’: 12-14” --> 16-18” Concomitant with the increasing depths, the quality of the powder skiing even jumped another notch relative to the already great conditions we experienced on Saturday. In fact, even though it’s excellent right-side-up powder that is beautifully dry, it’s getting deep enough that it’s starting to be a bit too much for the lowest angle slopes if you’re in fully untracked snow. I’d brought my 115 mm fat skis for today’s tour because they had already been a good choice on Saturday, but I was glad to have them for planing more efficiently on the lowest angle slopes today. Indeed, it was snowing today during my tour akin to what’s been happening for the past several days, but today’s snowfall was lighter and less consistent than what I experience on Friday or Saturday. Our next Clipper system is coming into the area though, so snowfall should pick up with that. We’re under a Winter Weather Advisory here along the spine of the Northern Greens, the latest BTV NWS Event Total Snowfall map currently has some areas of 8-12” and 12-18” shading.

I was recently alerted that we’ve been put under a Winter Weather Advisory for the next system coming through the area. Here along the spine of the Northern Greens, I see that the BTV NWS Event Total Snowfall map currently has some areas of 8-12” and 12-18” shading.

Nice, it’s great to see what Jay Peak can do with that lake moisture, even at that distance from Lake Ontario. It’s been fairly quiet around here this morning with respect to snowfall, but it’s picked up a bit now with the recent surge on the radar. I’d been seeing that feature that eduggs brought up, and it looked interesting; it’s not something we typically see with these as far as I know (the orientations of the moisture bands are typically more east to west vs. north to south), so I’m not sure if there is a specific cause, but we’ll see if the BTV NWS decides to mention it in their discussion at some point.

Indeed, it’s been great to have the on and off snow over the past few days. I haven’t seen anything too crazy in terms of snowfall rates down here at our site in the valley, but it’s been nice to have flakes in the air and keep things white on top of the snow from the Thanksgiving storm. And as usual, the mountain elevations have been kicking it up a few notches with respect to the snowfall and accumulations from the moisture that Lake Ontario has been sending over. We’re certainly lucky to have that additional moisture source upstream to improve the ski climate/conditions around here, and the past few days have been a nice example of that benefit. Stack that on top of what our mountains do with typical northwest flow, plus synoptic systems, and it’s a good recipe for consistent snows. Things seem generally on track with respect to the discussion that bwt and I were having about what the GFS showed in the coming week or so, and coincidentally, the synopsis from the BTV NWS forecast discussion happens to touch on an assortment of our common snow sources including LES, northwesterly flow, and a clipper: Area Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Burlington VT 658 AM EST Sun Dec 1 2024 .SYNOPSIS... A lake effect snow band will continue to bring periods of heavy snowfall to southern St. Lawrence County and portions of the western Adirondacks through today. If your travel plans include driving along Highway 11 in southern St. Lawrence County and areas to the south, travel will be difficult. Lake effect snow will come to an end tonight. After a mostly dry day Monday, northwesterly flow snow showers will develop over higher terrain Monday night before a clipper type system brings gusty winds and more snow chances to the North Country around Thursday.

I told my wife about how good the skiing was yesterday, so she was interested in getting out and the two of us headed up to Bolton Valley today for another tour. Thanks to the ongoing lake-effect snow from Lake Ontario, surfaces have been getting some nice refreshers. Since my report detailing the snow during yesterday’s tour, we’ve had another inch or two of additional snow down at the house in the valley, so I’m sure Bolton has had at least that much as well. It was really dumping when I left yesterday afternoon, so that period alone should have contributed some nice accumulations. Between settling and the additional snow that’s been falling, snow depths seemed to be just about where they were yesterday, so just refer to the detailed snow depth profile I posted in that post for approximate snow depths that were out there today. Temperatures were in the mid-20s F out on the mountain early this afternoon, so it was just a bit cooler than yesterday, and consistent with that, the snow was a bit drier. Whereas yesterday I estimated the upper layers of powder in the snowpack to be in the 8% H2O range, today I’d say we were hitting powder that was more in the 6 to 8% H2O range. My wife is notorious for getting out on the snow one day too late when conditions aren’t as good as the day before, but that wasn’t the case this time. While there were a few more tracks out there today than what I found yesterday, the dry air and drier snow falling kicked the quality of the powder up a notch. The existing base snow, the continued settling of the lower layers of surface snow, and new rounds of dry snow coming in have set up some beautiful right-side-up powder. The drier nature of the powder was evident in the way it was even easier to ski lower-angle slopes; I’d brought fat skis to help in that regard, but my wife was on mid-fats, and she had no issues maintaining speed on even the mellowest pitches. So once again, essentially any mowed terrain from roughly single black diamond pitch down to gentle slopes was in play for great powder turns today. In terms of the ongoing snowfall, today was much like yesterday with continued light snowfall of varying intensity throughout our tour, and it was steadier when we were finishing up our descent, but not nearly as heavy as when I was leaving yesterday. The direction of the more intense incoming moisture from Lake Ontario seemed to be a bit more to our north today, but it sounds like the Jay Peak area has been doing well from that setup.

With the Thanksgiving winter storm wrapping up overnight, today was clearly a day to get out for some skiing, but I wasn’t initially sure where I was going to go. The storm seemed to be more potent further south based on observations that I’d seen, as well as images from mountain cameras like the Okemo snow stake webcam and the Sugarbush snow stake webcam – they both showed about a foot of new snow at elevation. We’d been watching Bolton Valley’s webcams throughout the storm, and the resort was certainly getting some decent accumulations, but Bolton doesn’t have a specific snow stake webcam and it was a bit difficult to get a feel for just how much they’d received from the wider views. This morning, I perused a variety of mountain webcams from around the state, and in the end, there didn’t seem to be all that much difference in practical base area accumulations and coverage between what I was seeing at Bolton and the various resorts father south. I also checked on how much liquid equivalent was in the new snow, since that has such a big impact the quality of the skiing, and while the Vermont CoCoRaHS numbers seemed to be around 1.00 inches of liquid to our south, we’d picked up over 0.6 inches of liquid in the snow that fell at our house in the valley, so I’d expect Bolton Valley to have picked up at least that much. With some base snow already in place at Bolton, that felt like plenty of snow for some good touring and turns. Overall, the decision ended up being relatively easy, and I headed up to Bolton around midday. Down at the base of the Bolton Valley Access Road at 340’, new snow accumulations were just spotty, with areas of grass visible, but by the time I hit the Village at 2,000’, I found 6 to 8 inches of fresh snow, so the skiing prospects were looking good. I ascended by the Wilderness Uphill Route, and the skin track was nicely set. I probed snow depths throughout the tour, and by the time I hit the Wilderness Summit at roughly 3,150’, depths were in the 12 to 14-inch range. Above 2,000’ there was already existing snowpack in place, so the higher-elevation snow depths I measured on today’s tour weren’t necessarily all from this most recent storm, but here’s the detailed snow depth profile from today: 340’: T-1: 500’: 1” 1,000’: 2” 1,200’: 2-3” 1,500’: 3” 2,000’: 6-8” 2,250’: 8-10” 2,500’: 10-12” 2,750’: 11-13” 3,000’: 12-14” Although the precipitation from this storm was 100% snow even at our site at 500’ in the valley, temperatures were around freezing down low, so the accumulations were quite dense. That wasn’t the case up on the mountain though – the snow was considerable drier, and the powder was of good quality. It was clearly sub-10% H2O powder, and if I had to guess it was probably in the 8% H2O range above 2,000’. I’d brough mid-fat skis today since I was initially unsure of how deep the powder was going to be and how good the overall coverage would be, but one could easily go with fatter skis if they wanted. With some existing dense base snow in place, even black diamond terrain was easily in play today. You’ll still want to be on mowed, on-trail terrain though – I suspect that venturing onto anything with too many obstacles would find you hitting things below the base. And the trees are still not ready yet – the base isn’t deep enough to cover the typical obstacles in the woods. Today’s powder turns were great though, and the snow was dry enough that even low-angle terrain was fun. Fat skis could help there for a bit more planing and speed if you’re on the fence about what width to shoot for. Thanks to our upwind friend Lake Ontario, snow was falling the entire time I was out touring. For most of the tour the snowfall was of varying light intensity depending on whether a larger pulse of lake moisture was hitting the spine or not, but it jumped up to borderline heavy snowfall when I was leaving a bit before 2:00 P.M. There was a good shot of moisture hitting the mountain at that point and the top half of the Bolton Valley Access Road had taken on enough accumulation that people were really taking their time on the descent. With the lake effect snow event taking place right now, we’ve had about another inch of new snow down here in the valley, so I suspect they’ve had at least another couple of inches up at the resort. And there’s more moisture pushing into the area this evening based on the radar, so there should be some additional freshening of the powder surfaces for tomorrow.

#1 on that list of potential upcoming events finished up overnight, so we’re moving on to #2, and that should be the activity to watch over the next few/several days. It looks like that event is starting to move into the area – precipitation was just some flurries here this morning at observations time, but the snowfall is starting to pick up a bit and the radar shows some moisture moving toward the Greens.

This is probably the only thread that gets much discussion about the weather nuances in the Northern Greens, so I hadn’t even heard mention of much in terms of a bread and butter pattern, but I scrolled through the past couple of runs of the GFS, and it does have that look. The past couple of runs show the following parade of systems: 1) Nov 28-29: System passing through SNE 2) Nov 29-Dec 4: LES 3) Dec 5-6: Clipper 4) Dec 6-7: Clipper 5) Dec 9: Clipper/Coastal System 6) Dec 11-12: Coastal System 7) Dec 13-14: LES There aren’t too many days in there without snow. Of course, those later events from a deterministic model are subject to plenty of change, but the general idea is there. A vertically-stacked low pressure system sitting over Northern Maine or the Canadian Maritimes is certainly a favorite setup around here, but those don’t happen every day, and they don’t often sit for too long. Having that closed upper low over Hudson Bay with broad upper level troughing is also a great setup when you have a 4,000’ wall of mountains sitting downwind of a moisture source like the Great Lakes. The BTV NWS is talking about it in their short-term discussion: Area Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Burlington VT 852 AM EST Thu Nov 28, 2024 SHORT TERM /FRIDAY NIGHT THROUGH SATURDAY/... As of 419 AM EST Thursday...The closed upper low over the southern part of the Hudson Bay along with broad upper troughing across the Eastern US will be our main weather driver in the short term and beyond. West-southwesterly flow will continue to bring a lake effect snow band over `Dacks and the northern Greens, with the southeastern parts St. Lawrence County seeing a snow band persisting throughout Saturday and even into Sunday. You never know quite what we’ll get over here in the Northern Greens out of the potential LES setups, since the wind direction is critical and you have to have enough moisture to carry the distance, but it never hurts to have Mother Nature spraying plentiful moisture in the general direction of your local orographic wall. And the temperatures of the lakes are apparently nice and warm, so that’s good. The long-term discussion continues with mentions of some of the potential winter events in the queue: LONG TERM /SATURDAY NIGHT THROUGH WEDNESDAY/... As of 419 AM EST Thursday...Lake effect snow will continue into Sunday before the Lake Ontario band slides south of the CWA as the flow shifts to the northwest as the broad troughing finally moves eastward. With the northwesterly flow, snow showers in the high terrains will continue through the first half of the week. Global models show an upper trough sliding out of Central Canada and into our region late Wednesday and into Thursday which looks to be our next impactful round of snow. Temperatures will be unseasonably cold as daytime highs will be in the 20s and low 30s with overnight lows in the teens to low 20s for the long term. As I’ve mentioned before, I find the GFS seems to represent these bread and butter patterns well with respect to the Northern Greens – it just seems more cognizant of the terrain presence/influences than the other global/medium-range models for whatever reason. One doesn’t need to dig too much into it, just pop open the GFS, run through the panels, and you have a good idea of when some of the best days will be with respect fresh snow so that you can plan ahead with respect to your ski schedule.

Ahh, I see you posted the projected accumulations map as well when I was putting my post together - I wasn't sure if anyone else would be updating on the storm because it seemed sort of dead aside from the occasional post.

I was surprised when early this afternoon we were put under a Winter Storm Warning, especially since we were never even under a Winter Storm Watch or Winter Weather Advisory in association with this upcoming Thanksgiving system, but apparently the more northerly trends in the modeling came on rather quickly. The latest BTV NWS maps are below.

This morning, I received a text alert that we’d been put under a Winter Weather Advisory. It was initially surprising and seemed a bit early for anything that might happen later in the week, but it’s been posted to cover the potential freezing precipitation that could occur with the system coming into the area tomorrow. I believe this is the first Winter Weather Advisory of the season for our county area, with the intent to keep people apprised of the potential travel issues tomorrow morning.

Snow levels definitely came down overnight in the Northern Greens as was suggested in the BTV NWS forecast discussion text I’d pasted in above. Checking the Bolton Valley webcams – there’s accumulating snow at the 3,150’ Vista Summit webcam, and it’s even snowing down to the main base at 2,100’ as seen on the 2,100’ main base webcam, although it’s not yet accumulating there. Snow levels will probably go up and down a bit in the coming days, but now that the mountain temperatures are down, the forecasts don’t show any substantial rises for a while, so they should just keep accumulating snow (or maybe frozen/mix depending on how that potential Tuesday system tracks). Area Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Burlington VT 713 AM EST Fri Nov 22 2024 .SYNOPSIS... A brief break in precipitation is expected today before more elevationally dependent snow and rain spreads back through much of the region. This time, greater precipitation amounts will be focused over central and eastern Vermont, where light snow accumulations are expected primarily tomorrow morning. Then a breezy, upslope pattern will develop, supporting several inches of snow through the weekend in the northern Green Mountains.

I know we had that most recent snow less than a week ago, but I’m surprised this current system and upcoming snow potential isn’t getting any discussion beyond your mention here. It looks like this storm is the start of a substantially different look in the models, but even just the next several days in the more immediate period with this system and soon after show a lot of snow potential. The local mountain forecasts have it really stacking up at elevation - the point forecast periods for above 3,000’ in the Mansfield area are coming in with 8-16” just through Saturday night. Even down at 2,700’ in the Bolton Valley area the numbers are 7-14” for that same period, so not much of a fall off dropping to that elevation. Then there’s snow in the forecast for most periods right out through Thanksgiving, and the medium range models keep it going right into the beginning of December. That’s pretty good timing with the Thanksgiving holiday week period kicking off tomorrow, and if even the low end of the accumulations come through, it’s going to be stacking up to the point that the usual natural snow terrain is going to come into play quickly. I guess we’ll see, but here’s some of the BTV NWS forecast discussion through the weekend, and there's more in the long term where they talk about the additional potential right through Thursday with varying snow levels: .NEAR TERM /THROUGH TONIGHT/... As of 653 PM EST Thursday...Webcams have shown that Whiteface Mountain and Killington have both switched over to snow with temperatures between 28 and 30 degrees. Other summit sites remain between 33 and 35 degrees but those too will be dropping shortly as precipitation continues to fall through dry air and cools off the surface. .SHORT TERM /FRIDAY THROUGH SUNDAY/... As of 240 PM EST Thursday...As both the coastal low and surface low shift further offshore late Friday night into Saturday morning, we will see wind shift back to a more climatological northwest direction which will then begin the upslope machine. Precipitation isn`t likely to be heavy Saturday or Sunday but with continued upslope flow, we could easily see 1-2 inches of accumulation every 6 hours along the western slopes that will add up over time. Snow levels on Saturday will drop to 1800 to 2200 feet which will allow for some mid-mountain snow accumulations but most of the population centers for the North Country will continue to see rain showers while the mountains get in on all the snow action. We will see snow levels drop to 1200 feet Saturday night which may allow for some very minor accumulations to occur along the foothills of the Green Mountains, but any accumulations will remain well under an inch.