J.Spin

People are constantly bemoaning the winters of the 1980s in this forum, so I finally decided to take a look into what went on around here in NVT. It really seems as though there’s some sort of local bias coming into play with regard to that decade. I don’t remember the winters being especially “unwintry”, and that was in the Champlain Valley, where snowfall and snowpack are far less consistent than out in the local mountains. Some of my most vivid memories from that era are of hating with a passion the brutal cold and wind that would plague us as we’d make our way the roughly ¼ mile to the bus stop each day. There was no shelter where we had to stand, and we’d do our best to sort of huddle behind the sign marking the entrance to our neighborhood to attempt to get at least a slight respite from the brutal weather. That’s easily chalked up to recall bias based on how painful those days were, and even above average is still quite cold in winter here, but that, not a lack of winter, is what immediately comes to the fore when I think of the winter weather in the 80s. Average annual snowfall at BTV for the 1980s is 71.62” vs. the long-term average of 72.8”, so it would be surprising if there was any statistically significant difference between them. And for the 1982-1987 stretch you mentioned above, the average annual snowfall is 77.7”, so that really doesn’t speak to overtly painful winters for a winter weather enthusiast unless there was some sort of outrageous variability that’s not apparent in the data without some further digging. Based on the other NNE-related numbers and comments that I’m seeing in the thread, it’s starting to look like the issues for winter weather enthusiasts in the 1980s might have been more localized?

I agree, the foliage up here declines quite quickly once you hit peak, and if you get an autumnal storm system around that time, it can really expedite the leaf drop. It was on this forum where I heard that apparently they get much more protracted foliage seasons in general as you head farther south toward the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern U.S. And it’s great that PF pointed out the personal preference on peak foliage – my preference for peak is when there are still some green deciduous around (and indeed the evergreens are always there as Tamarack noted). I typically find that once you’ve got what might be maximal fall leaf color in this area, you’ve already got too many bare branches for my taste. The quick leaf drop we see here in NNE is one reason it’s nice to have the snow come in quickly. A bit of stick season is certainly appreciated because it’s got its own sort of unique somber, late-autumn mood, but it’s not too long before most folks would like to see the ground white. I can remember when I lived down in the Buzzards Bay area of Massachusetts, I didn’t anticipate white Thanksgivings, and it was always fun to head out on fall walks in the woods with the grandparents and expect dry ground, crunchy leaves underfoot, and reasonable fall temperatures. I’m not sure if we ever had a white Thanksgiving, and I certainly didn’t expect it. Up here in the mountains though, I’ve definitely learned that white Thanksgivings aren’t uncommon at all. I just checked my data, and occurrence of snow on the ground here at our site is almost 2/3 of the time (64.3%) in my 14-year period of record. And, that’s for down here in the valley bottom at ~500’, so the occurrence is only going to be greater in the higher elevations. I have to think at Phin’s elevation, the occurrence of white Thanksgiving would have to be at least that much as long as he gets in on the typical upslope snows. It’s hard to complain about the amazing weather we’ve got right now, but change is certainly on its way…

The pandemic-related ski discussion has been informative, and indeed it’s going to be a potentially interesting season up here this year. It’s just a small sample here in the forum, but the talk from skiers planning to focus close to home because they’re unsure of the what’s to come must be fairly prominent in the rest of the population. I’d put the “bread and butter” analogy a bit differently in that I’d say Alberta Clipper-style storms are actually the best fit for the bread and butter role up here. Each of those can have and upslope component, and some Great Lakes moisture infusion as well, so that make them more prodigious than they’d be in places without those enhancements. You’ve essentially got a consistent source of moisture enhancement, and a forcing mechanism locked in place up here in the northern mountains, so it just seems to make the systems more potent and reliable. And, you also get the ones that seem to ramp up a bit and drop a foot of fluff for the higher elevations. The reason those systems are such a good fit for the “bread and butter” analogy is that we’ll go through long periods of the winter where we’ll essentially get them every other day. If I look at the average number of accumulating storms we get here at our site, it’s probably 10 to 15 per winter month, and many of them are simply those bread and butter Clipper-type storms. A notable thing about these systems is that they’re almost always bringing snow, not rain or mixed precipitation, since they’re not wound up enough to really pull in much warm air. It’s that consistency that makes them our bread and butter for snowfall. A winter pattern I think is productive in this area is one like we saw in 2007-2008. With the combination of latitude and altitude up here, there’s a strong case to be made for simply “give us the moisture and the snow will come”. The 2007-2008 season felt like that – we were just right in the moisture train. Yeah, being right in the pipeline meant that we had some mixed precipitation on occasion, but it was typically buried under snow quite quickly as the back part or the storm hit us. It will be fun to hear thoughts from @powderfreak on this as well.

Yeah, the endless summer crew has been engaging in the usual…

They’d probably start the thread early regardless, but I find it helpful because the first touches of winter can start quite early in the mountains of NNE. Heck, as Phin alerted us, the Whites already had sub-freezing temperatures and rime back at the end of August more than a week ago. Yeah, the focus at this point is often on the overall pattern potential for the season, but they’ll touch on the early stuff as well, which can actually mean enough snow in the mountains to get out for turns.

Yeah, the signs are unquestionably there at this point. I was going to comment as well because when I was out on my ride yesterday morning there were tons of ferns that had changed to more autumn hues or gone totally brown, and some of the sumacs had sections that have turned red and are dropping leaves. Our old butternut out back starts losing some leaves in early August, but that pace has started to pick up again. And of course you can see those yellows popping up in the local hills around here as PF’s image shows – those weren’t there a couple of weeks ago.

Liquid Totals August: 4.63” (+0.63”) Jun-Jul-Aug: 14.76” (-1.04”) Calendar Year: 34.42” (-1.29”) Water Year: 49.52” (-0.17”) With August finishing up, I see folks are getting their liquid totals in, so I’ve got the data for our site listed above. This August was actually the second wettest in my records going back to 2010, so it certainly can’t be considered overly dry around here right now. All the totals above are running within ± roughly an inch from my averages, so they’re pretty typical.

Now that Phin has brought sub-freezing temperatures to his back yard in August, I’d say he’s on the right track with respect to figuring out the NNE lifestyle. But Scooter bringing SNE weather north just to retaliate against the ACATT people? – some things should really not be tolerated.

Yeah, I see that they’re currently reporting sub-freezing temperatures up on Mt. Washington with freezing fog, so all the higher summits were probably iced up. The latest reports show summit temperatures around 30 F. The record low for the date is 26 F in 1989, but it makes sense that they haven’t reached anything that low today with this big August heat.

People are probably just jumping the gun on your big heat, maybe it starts tomorrow? I recommend checking your local forecast to be sure.

Yeah, PF and I have talked about it before, but the mountains can definitely bring you to another level in terms of precipitation amounts and consistency. Our site here is the perfect example: we’re down in the Winooski Valley at fairly modest elevation, but in terms of snowfall and total liquid, this area punches way above its weight. It’s in large part due to the proximity of the local mountains (with maybe some extra help from being downwind of the Great Lakes). Compared to BTV at roughly the same elevation ~15 miles to our west, we seem to get about a 50% increase in annual liquid, and >100% increase in annual snowfall due to the higher ratios of upslope snow. Mother Nature is still rolling the dice of course, so nothing is guaranteed in the short term. But it’s sort of like playing with loaded dice, and over the long haul you get a big boost in snowfall and total liquid equivalent. It certainly helps protect the area from those dreaded New England “droughts”.

Yeah, I can’t imagine needing A/C at this point in our climate, and the fact that a window units interfere with normal use of the windows is another huge disincentive all summer long. While we were in the 70s yesterday, was I reading it right in the main threads that SNE was getting into the 90s? That’s nuts. Thank god we live here, or glad we don’t live there, or however that goes. Our forecast of highs generally struggling to reach 80 and lows struggling to be above 60 is fine by me. My older son and I went for a long ride in the Adams Camp complex yesterday and the weather was excellent – that’s a direct example of the benefits of the current weather because we wouldn’t have done that on a day with temperatures approaching the 90s with potential humidity. Hopefully visitors to the area are appreciating the weather as well for their activities. The only thing it’s really not great for is swimming, which was a bit evident as we passed one of the pools along the Mountain Road and I saw a guy obviously having to keep himself warm as he stood beside the water.

As delightful as that sounds, it would be sad to miss out on those beautiful October days with white in the alpine fading to snow-covered foliage below, and those October ski days with their unique, ephemeral vibe. It’s tough to get those experiences without at least some below average temperatures and systems coming through.

LOL, indeed, when you see such an arbitrary number chosen it also creates a bit of a “who cares” feeling. Now if they’d chosen >= 60 F, that would be different. Everybody knows that when nights only drop to 60 F you’re talking just marginally comfortable sleeping, but once the temperature drops to 59 F… pure bliss.

When I look back on the winter and give it some sort of rating/grade, it’s snowfall that is the main factor, so my rating is pretty simple. Snowpack is important though, so I’ll used that a bit to tip the scales one way or another if the grade is on the edge. But like you, I absolutely expect continuous snow cover throughout the winter at our site, so lacking that would be a big deal and it would/should indeed affect the perception of the season. The mean duration for the continuous winter snowpack here is 135 days running from the beginning of December to the end of March, and even in the worst of seasons it’s only dropped to 90 days. When I just checked the data, I was surprised to see that the abysmal 2015-2016 season wasn’t the low mark for snowpack duration here. That season’s very low snowfall still produced continuous snowpack for 103 days, and instead it was 2011-2012 with the 90 days because of a relatively late start near the end of December and what must have been a very warm March melting out the snowpack early.

On that note, I’m sure many resorts will only report last year’s snow totals through the point at which they shut down, so they’ll be missing any snow that fell after that.

That’s an excellent point - New England really does have quite the winter climate gradient if you think about going from the southern coast all the way up to northern Maine, or even just the northern mountains. Relative comparisons do seem to shape one’s perception of their local weather.

What I’ve observed here in the forum is that judging the quality of a winter is very subjective. I’m sure people can bring up specific examples from last season, or other seasons, but it seems possible for people to receive near average snowfall and still rate the winter as well below average. To some degree, it seems that what people want is consistency, or they want the snow to be around when they want it to be around. Realistically, one has to go pretty far north or up in elevation to have consistent snowpack on the ground all winter. As one heads further south and winter snowfall variability increases, snowpack that comes and goes throughout the winter, and the back and forth of cold storms followed by warm storms, is actually the “average”, or even the “normal” climate. People don’t typically seem to be keen on that back and forth in the winter though, even if that’s the typical climate. In areas with high snowfall variability there can still be periods where snowfall/snowpack can be much more consistent, and I think those get incorporated into part of the climate perception, making the inconsistent periods seem worse than they actually are.

PF, you would probably love the scenery in the film Ex Machina if you haven’t seen it. I’ve heard the location is meant to be Alaska, but they shot it in Norway at the Juvet Landscape Hotel. It was quite stunning, so I looked up the location as soon as I saw it, but the first minute of this video talks about the location and shows some of the scenery:

Yeah, I always figured that season was likely to be near that bottom of what we’d typically see for seasonal snowfall around here… that was until the insanity of 2015-2016 happened.

Well just checking the layman’s listing of La Niña years, the ones during the period in which I’ve got snowfall records are shown as: 2007–08, 2008–09, 2010–12, 2016, and 2017–18. I’m not sure how to incorporate the one listed as just 2016 (did it just happen during part of the year or the summer? Which “winter” does it go with?), but for the rest of them, snowfall at our site was as follows: 2007-2008: 203.2” 2008-2009: 179.4” 2010-2011: 197.0” 2011-2012: 115.3” 2017-2018: 167.2” There are some pretty heavy hitters in there, and only one below average season in the group. The average snowfall for those winters is 172.4”, which is more than 10% above the overall snowfall average in my data set.

In my experience in this area, upslope snow can be tough to quantify specifically because of the way storm cycles often simply transition from the more synoptic snows into “upslope” snow without an obvious demarcation. To try to give a sense for the relative amount of upslope from one season to the next, we usually just have to go by some subjective level of “feel” based on our experiences over the course of the season. PF is pretty good on that though with the way he is out on the mountain almost every day during the winter. In general, I feel as though I’ve liked La Niña seasons up here – some mixing in systems, but we’ve often had lots of moisture passing through the area. I can look at my data to get some numbers though – which seasons are we considering to be La Niña (and does weak/moderate/strong matter)?