J.Spin

Well, the tenor of day changed pretty quickly around here. We’ve had snow all day, but it’s generally been light with a few transient accumulations. I was out taking care of a few leaves, and around 3:00 P.M. the switch was flipped and it quickly ramped up to heavy snowfall with huge flakes. The snowfall was heavy enough that I eventually had to stop and head in because I just couldn’t see the ground sufficiently to even get any work done. I checked the snowboard around 3:30 P.M. and there was already about two inches on it, so the snowfall in there was indeed near 4”/hr. It’s slowed down now, but you can see the look of the radar when that came through here:

We’re getting some additional accumulations here during the more vigorous bouts of precipitation as the temperatures start to come down. The precipitation I’ve seen is still generally graupel, which helps it achieve those transient accumulations. The temperatures should continue to cool though: Area Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Burlington VT 631 PM EST Mon Nov 16 2020 .NEAR TERM /THROUGH TUESDAY NIGHT/... As of 540 PM EST Monday...Any rain showers will transition to snow as temperatures cool after sunset. The bulk of the activity will occur through about midnight, with coverage becoming more isolated and tied to the terrain thereafter. A weak cold front will sink south out of Canada later on Tuesday, and this may allow some additional showers to develop, especially over the northern mountains. As you showed, the radar has that westerly flow with areas of varying precipitation intensity, but the precipitation is generally frozen:

It’s been very similar here to what you’re seeing, and we were able to get our first measurable accumulation out of this system down here in the valley. In our case it was sleet (it seemed way to dense to be graupel), but similarly, it’s the sort of stuff that can survive the flight down into the warmer air from above. The boys and I were out splitting some wood and got hit with some rounds of frozen, with one round hitting the 0.1” threshold for accumulation. It looks like there are additional chances for snow/frozen into Wednesday as the models had suggested.

Nice PF, thanks for the visual update. There’s nothing new to report down here in the valley aside from the trace of sleet and snow that I mentioned earlier. That’s not too surprising with the current temperatures, and indeed the snow line looks pretty high. I do see flakes flying down at 2,100’ at Bolton’s main base, and there’s a coating of white up above 3,000’ at Vista.

Well, PF and I are obviously just joking around with our posts. I don’t really have much of an opinion about how winter is going to go in SNE. The same thing goes for up here in NNE. We just know that snowfall in NNE is generally greater, and has lower variance, so even in the worst of seasons, there’s going to be a certain amount of snow. It’s not really worth worrying about it. I find the long-range forecasting stuff pretty pointless anyway. I guess it’s fun for people to do as a hobby as the techniques get refined to a point where it might be more accurate. But, even then, what’s the rationale for these broad brush multi-month forecasts anyway? Even if someone “nails” a long-range winter forecast of this type with incredible accuracy, who cares? Aside from energy markets and related interests where subtle “trends” may play a role, I just don’t see the utility. Whether some spot is forecast to get 40 inches of snow over the course of a season, or 80 inches during that period, who in the public is going to do anything differently with respect to their daily lives? “Oh man, it sounds like we’re going to get 80 inches of snow this season vs. our usual 60 inches, which could mean four snow days for our local school instead of just two. I’d better change jobs now in preparation for being able to stay home and take care of the kids on those extra days.” The greatest utility in these types of forecasts might simply be to feed the fears, hopes, dreams, etc. of weenies.

Thanks for the updates PF. The mild weather was nice, but we’ve definitely shifted into that mid-month period of cold and snow chances that the forum has been talking about. We were outside here at the house getting some chores done, and we got hit with a round of sleet that eventually transitioned to snow. We did get accumulation, especially with the sleet, but nothing that hit the 0.1” threshold, so only a trace of frozen was recorded. Like you said, nothing major is expected with these next rounds of snow, but if it’s in our forecast even down here in the valley, the mountains are certainly likely to get something.

Yup. Didn't pay a dime for my doctorate. Taught undergrad lab courses which earned me the tuition waiver and got a 20K stipend every year from my advisor for 5 yrs. I actually lived a pretty good life financially while in grad school. Yeah, your experience is probably more the norm; it’s what I experienced, and it’s the case for just about every student I’ve known. I definitely disagreed with some of Powderbeard’s comments, but it looks like he’s coming from a perspective of going a more non-traditional route, in what sounds like a very expensive place to live. For the typical Ph.D. student in the biomedical sciences, the standard stipend is plenty to get by on and have a pretty good life as you note. I think the stipend for our students next year is around $32K, which is plenty to live on in the BTV area when you’re single, in your early 20s, have a couple roommates, etc. It’s just not a number that you’d want to live on if you’re going to raise a family, own and maintain a house, set yourself up for retirement, etc., etc. The system isn’t really set up for that sort of situation.

I’d say we might as well enjoy this beautiful weather while we’ve got it, since it looks like we’ll be back to more November-like temperatures with snow chances as we head into the weekend. Area Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Burlington VT 628 PM EST Tue Nov 10 2020 .LONG TERM /FRIDAY THROUGH TUESDAY/... As of 355 PM EST Tuesday...In any case, still expecting rain showers sometime late Sunday to Monday becoming snow showers late Monday into Tuesday as cooler air pushes in behind the departing low. Thus, coolest temperatures expected midweek with highs only in the 30s. Looking back in my records, we’ve had some really tame Novembers around here, like November 2010 with 2.4” of snow, November 2015 with 2.0”, November 2009 with 0.2”, and November 2006 with zero snow for the entire month. I don’t know the pattern details from those Novembers, but this one is clearly different. Yeah we’ve already had over a foot from those couple of storms early in the month, but even without that, the pattern just doesn’t look quite as benign over the next couple of weeks.

Yeah, that’s been interesting. The snow is gone on our property as far as I can tell, but there’s a bunch that is hanging around on the south bank of the Winooski down here – I see it when I’m out on MTB rides. The snow there is protected from any sun, and I assume there’s some cooling or something going on around the river. Even with the warm temperatures, I guess the low sun angle helps preserve it as well. With these temperatures, the riding has been great now that things have generally dried out. One of the stranger feelings is having the sun so low and set so early, but still having some warm temperatures with darkness coming on so early. The temperature does eventually drop once the sun is gone, but there’s a really neat period in there near dusk where it’s clearly a wintry type sun angle but a spring-like feeling in the air. All the trees being well into stick season mode also sets up a strange dichotomy.

These past couple of Novembers have definitely had early snowpack starts here in the valley – in 2018 it was on November 10th, and last year in 2019 it was even earlier, November 8th. It’s funny to think of that with the current weather. Our mean/median snowpack start here is right at the beginning of December. So roughly half the time, the snowpack starts in November, but typically not as early as these past couple of years. The data say that these past couple of seasons are around the -1.5 σ mark, putting them in the earliest 10% of seasons for the start of the continuous winter snowpack.

I was initially puzzled by the statement as well, so I’m glad Ginx threw up the question mark to get clarification. The models show snow chances starting up again as of Friday night, and even up here in the mountains you can’t really pull that off in mid November with substantial warmth.

October Totals Accumulating Storms: 2 Snowfall: 0.7” Liquid Equivalent: 4.92” (-0.40”) Calendar Year Liquid: 42.13” (-2.61”) I hadn’t yet assembled my October precipitation data, but I’ve put it together now and pasted it above. It really was a pretty typical October based on what I’ve observed at this stie. Snowfall was a couple tenths low, but pretty darned close considering the potential variability in the month’s snow. Liquid was a few tenths low, and calendar year liquid is running 2-3” behind average pace.

I haven’t been up to the mountains since Tuesday, but I can pass along some valley snow observations from the past few days from my trips to Burlington. Heading westward into the Champlain Valley on Wednesday, snow disappeared around the Richmond area, then by Thursday the last signs were around the town of Bolton. Yesterday afternoon on the way home, I didn’t see anything in Bolton Flats, and snow didn’t show up until I got near our area near the pass on I-89. There were still a few patches around here at the house this morning, but I suspect this will be the last day to report anything from our location. This weather is really nice now – things are drying out and I should be able to finish lawn cleanup, and the local trails seem to have generally dried up as well, so it could be a good time for a ride. Next weekend doesn’t look nearly this nice though; the models suggest temperatures more typical of November around here with chances for snow if any systems affect the area.

You’re probably right, but in reality, SNE should have shown some discipline and just skipped that October snowstorm. Or, even if they allowed it to happen, they could have at least ignored it and not made a big thread about it. This storm wasn’t nearly as big as that last one, so maybe this winter won’t be quite as bad as that one, but it doesn’t look good. There’s a reason everyone brings up that big negative correlation between October snow and seasonal snowfall in SNE.

I finally had a chance to put together some images from our past couple of storms down here in the valley and up at the mountain, so I’ve added those below. In terms of Tuesday’s ski conditions up at Bolton, it was certainly a fairly typical early season affair, and I’d say waiting for that second storm to put down the extra snow was the way to go. I already posted the settled snow depth profile from my Bolton observations on Tuesday, but I opted to tour up at the main base, and there were clearly at least a couple more inches of settled depth up there (~2,000’) vs. what I found at the Timberline Base (~1,500’). I could tell from the get go as I was ascending the Lower turnpike skin track and watching other skiers descend there, that the density of the snow was going to call for more moderate angle terrain vs. low angle terrain. The snow was fairly medium weight powder, which was of course good with respect to providing some base for skiing. There was obviously no existing snowpack below these storms, so if these recent snow had been 2-4% H2O champagne, there would have been a lot of dicey contact with the ground. But, this medium weight snow was dense enough that there was just too much resistance for low angle terrain – skiers and riders had to straight line their way down and/or use old tracks to keep moving on those angles. Something in the medium to low-angle range was required for solid turns, and that meant that it was a balancing act between choosing terrain that had enough pitch for turns, but not too much pitch that you were going to be outskiing the available snow depth. There was also the factor of finding relatively protected terrain – that first storm especially, had some ridiculous winds, and scouring of the exposed slopes was rampant. So, good knowledge of the local terrain was important, but once you found the appropriate setup there were some nice midwinter powder turns to be had. There was as always that exercise of not going too steep, aggressive, or rocky to outperform the available snow, so of course having knowledge of those grassier options was important in providing the best ski experience.

Thanks for posting the summary map PF. It certainly wasn’t a massive storm series for the mountains relative to what can happen around here, but it was a much more solid shot of snow for the valleys vs. those more typical events during this part of the season that have larger snowfall disparities with respect to elevation. I’ve recorded these past two storms separately because there was a clear enough break between them to do so, but it was a combined 12.4” total of. You actually did say on Monday that this area could pick up a foot of snow, and I assumed that was for the combined storm series, so that was a nice call. As I’d mentioned in an earlier post here in the NNE thread, November seems to be a tough month to get large snowstorms in the valley, and I had the list of November storms ≥4” that I’ve recorded here at our site in another post. Even combined, these recent events would have been our third largest November storm, so it certainly wasn’t record breaking or anything like that. What is very notable though is the early date for these past couple of storms. Being in the first couple days of the month is sort of just chance (vs. being a day or two earlier and being at the end of October), but that’s the way they played out. So, these two storms are obviously going to make their mark in my November records just by the fact that they are the largest storms we’ve had this early in the month. I hadn’t checked on the Burlington area during the event, but when I drove there yesterday, the disparity was obvious because any signs of snow had disappeared by Richmond. You can see on the map that snowfall was basically an order of magnitude higher out here along the eastern slopes, and total liquid was somewhat similar as well. That snow footprint is certainly how someone would write it up if they wanted to deliver in the Sugarbush to Stowe stretch of the Greens.

Event totals: 5.3” Snow/0.33” L.E. It looks like this second storm has finally wound down and we’ve gone to partly cloudy skies, so the totals above should represent the final numbers for the event. Details from the 6:00 P.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.2 inches New Liquid: Trace Temperature: 34.3 F Sky: Partly Cloudy Snow at the stake: 7.5 inches

It’s great to have the new mapping options from CoCoRaHS now for plotting data from multi-day periods – plotting for these past couple of events, you can definitely see those east slope total liquid numbers and the massive increase from the Burlington area just 20 miles to the west,

These days with the northwest flow banding are great when it’s snow globe flakes for a while, then the sun pops out for a couple of minutes, then you get right under the center of a band and it’s huge flakes with whiteout conditions, then it’s back to snow globe with some sun, etc. We were in Montpelier when that larger cell on the radar came through and it was a whiteout with big 1” diameter flakes for a while. It’s definitely great to be getting back into that northwest flow routine.

Event totals: 5.1” Snow/0.33” L.E. Details from the 12:00 P.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.7 inches New Liquid: 0.06 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 11.7 Snow Density: 8.6% H2O Temperature: 34.3 F Sky: Flurries Snow at the stake: 8.5 inches

Yeah, we’re getting some nice rounds of extra snow showers as well down here. You can see the streamers pushing through in line with what Phin had mentioned in one of his posts:

Regarding these past couple of storms, here’s the settled snow depth profile I observed during this morning’s ski tour at Bolton Valley: 340’: 4” 1,000’: 4-6” 1,500’: 6-8” 2,000’: 8-10” 2,500’: 10-12” 3,000’: 12”+

You’re definitely not the only one that likes the heated walkways – I love them. It’s hard to figure out people’s beef. It’s not as if they’re melting the useful snowpack - they’re removing the snow from where you’re going to remove it anyway. You don’t need salt, you’re not scraping down the masonry, and the end result is a clean look instead half scraped areas, and patches of snow and ice everywhere. The effect the heated walkways produce is actually quite aesthetic because you also get the clean edges between where the snow should be and where it shouldn’t, instead of piles of shoveled snow thrown everywhere. Shoveled piles can have a clean look sometimes as well, but there’s often some sort of dirt or salt in there, and it’s hard to beat the clean lines of the heated walkways where the surrounding snow is typically pristine/untouched.

Event totals: 4.4” Snow/0.27” L.E. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 1.3 inches New Liquid: 0.10 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 13.0 Snow Density: 7.7% H2O Temperature: 29.8 F Sky: Light Snow (2-12 mm flakes) Snow at the stake: 9.0 inches

Event totals: 3.1” Snow/0.17” L.E. Details from the 12:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 3.1 inches New Liquid: 0.17 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 18.2 Snow Density: 5.5% H2O Temperature: 29.3 F Sky: Snow (2-8 mm flakes) Snow at the stake: 8.0 inches