J.Spin

Liquid Totals September: 2.79” (-0.96”) Calendar Year: 37.21” (-2.21”) Water Year: 52.31” (-1.07”) So September is complete, and thus the 2020 water year is as well. Both were about an inch below the average I have in my data set, but certainly nothing too extreme. Calendar year water is running a couple inches behind average pace, but has gotten a notable boost with 3-4” of liquid here in the past week.

Well put - I don’t think we were in any sort of real drought in our area, but a 2”+ L.E. storm would definitely take care of any short term dryness. Indeed, it brought the month to 2.79” of liquid here at our site, which is only 0.74 σ below the mean. The new water year starts tomorrow, so today’s entry concludes the 2020 water year with 52.31” of liquid. That’s really just an inch or two below average according to my data, so not consistent with any sort of longer-term drought in our area at this point.

Yeah, as people have noted, the process of going from color to leaf drop is apparently relatively quick up here in general, and this year is doing that typical progression, augmented by that cold spell to push it forward a bit. I assume Mother Nature knows that as we hit October in this area, snow can fall at any time, and the trees are hopefully on a good pace to avoid the type of fiasco that SNE faced several years back when they had that October snow with lots of leaves still on the trees. There are already some of those early shots of snow for the elevations popping up in the models.

Even as of a couple of days ago we were already past my preference for peak down here in our area of the Winooski Valley. Having some fallen leaves on the ground is a nice look, but once bare trees appear, it’s past peak for me, and even as of this weekend we already had some notable areas of stick season trees. Ahead of the precipitation, the winds from this current system are bringing the leaves down like rain in the yard, so after this passes we’re going to be well on our way into stick season.

I agree, it definitely seems like a quality map – based on comments I’ve seen here it appears that it’s generally matching people’s snowfall quite well. And naturally, my perspective stems from being someone in the solid yellow area where the needle is pegged and you don’t get that additional level of detail. I think it would have been cool if they could even have just added a couple more gradations (maybe even if they covered up to 300” or 350” in 50” gradations. You’d obviously be able to get a little more sense for how things played out along the spine, up there in NNH, and that huge expanse of solid yellow up in northern Maine. In this case they’ve got the lake-effect belts in WNY/NNY on the map as well, so you’d get some detail there. It’s a great map in any case – it’s never going to be easy to effectively cover a region where the snowfall goes from roughly 0” up to 300” in one fell swoop and provide sufficient detail for everyone.

Those broader regional snowfall maps are great, but a downside of where you live now is that you’re typically going to be off scale and get stuffed into the highest gradation. The scale on that map is even nonlinear, but it still stops at 120”, which is probably well below the amount of snow that fell at your site. You can see how NNH is just one solid color, so it’s hard to get a sense for any distribution in those high snowfall areas. Unless you happen to have a numeric entry right near you, maps like that aren’t as helpful as they could be.

I was a bit too busy this week to check in on this thread, but boy that NNE microclimate discussion really exploded. I can certainly imagine Phin’s plow guy being there every day at times during the season, but he must do some sort of friendly service thing where he doesn’t charge $80 for every little visit to sweep away the upslope. I checked my snow data in line with the 2-inch number that Will tossed out there, and here at our site we average 24 days a season with 2 inches of snowfall or more, so that would run about $2,000 if he was strict on that sort of rule. I would check with your neighbors though to see what sort of plans they’re going with, just to make sure that it’s not standard around there to choose some flat rate for the season. I agree that it’s probably good to get a feel for it the first season, then eventually get a system where you can take care of snow maintenance on your own if you want to. Like PF said, we typically just drive over stuff below a certain liquid equivalent and pack it down. We actually have a decent pitch to our driveway, and I find the packed snow is totally fine if the weather stays consistently cold. It’s when there’s a notable thaw or mixed precipitation that it could start to get hairy and you have to pull out the crampons/microspikes/YakTraX/etc. When you do have a pack already down, it gives you some flexibility to let rain or freezing rain or sleet fall on it, then easily clear it away with the snow and preserve the texture of what’s underneath. If your climate is like what PF and I have over here, and what Alex probably sees as well, you can be looking at 100+ days of flakes in the air. It’s where the “snow globe” terminology comes from. Over here when tourists are confused because the forecast says “snow showers” and they end up with inches on their cars each morning, locals have given up trying to explain the nuances of upslope and microclimates and they just hand them one of these: Ultimately though, it is really nice to have some flexibility with the driveway clearing in this kind of winter climate. I’m lucky in that our driveway is only ~100’ long, so I can take care of it with the snow blower at my leisure. If it’s a powder morning and we want to zip off to the slopes for fresh tracks, I can just blow out a car’s width in a few minutes and we’re on our way. I think most plow guys get at it pretty quickly/early, but depending on how many customers they have and where you sit on their route, I guess it’s possible it could be slower after a big storm. It should be a fun experience though learning what works for your property and climate; at least you’ve gone into it partly for that snow experience so it should be a good time vs. someone who moved to a spot like that and had no clue about the climate. I’m sure you’ve seen the various versions of this classic tale: https://www.sunnyskyz.com/blog/2606/The-Diary-Of-A-Snow-Shoveler

As I was reading this, it seemed appropriate that you were frequently putting “friends” in quotes, because I’m not sure who these people are that you’re talking about. Are we talking about born Vermonters, 7th generation types, transplants from out of state to a resort area, 2nd home owners, or something else? Everyone’s definition of “friend” is different I guess, but my actual friends would already know every detail of everything you poured out so thoughtfully in that paragraph. There would actually be no need to discuss any of it or even make it known to them – just from years of knowing me, they would already know my opinion on just about all of that and could easily assume that I was taking all those actions. People that don’t already have a feel for all that stuff, or would turn a blind eye to the issue are probably more in the realm of “acquaintances” or maybe “neighbors”, but they’re definitely something else. Yeah, it’s probably semantics, but the overall concept might be one of the confounding factors related to this issue.

Hehe, LOL, you’re right in that we aren’t your typical ski family. But, we’re certainly less unique if you compare us to other ski families around here in NVT or probably even other parts of NNE. I actually brought up the season ski rental time limitation issue though because it happened to a colleague of mine at work – he was renting for the season from Bolton for his kids, and had planned to continue using the skis to ski at places like Stowe, Smugg’s, Sugarbush, Jay Peak, etc. at the end of the season. But, he unfortunately had to return the skis when Bolton closed down at the beginning of April, so that was pretty inconvenient. I’d never even thought of that sort of limitation on season rentals until he pointed that out. Also, I wasn’t sure how serious Phin was going to get with the family’s skiing now that they’d be living so deep in NNE ski country. I see now that he mentioned a couple dozen days as a rough number, and that’s actually a pretty solid season.

I agree that it could be very dicey. I would seriously encourage anybody who has even remotely thought about getting a backcountry/skinning setup to have one on hand this season. Even if the worst happens and the resorts not only shut down lift service, but somehow revert to closing resort-based uphill access again, midwinter will still offer all the usual backcountry spots. I could imagine the more formal spots like Pinkham Notch being closed again, but it would be hard to imagine the state trying to close all public lands to access. I’m not sure how they would enforce that.

Yeah, there’s no way a regular swap format can be used. I’m really hoping they can figure something out to do some sort of swap-style events. They’re just so useful, and they’re also fundraising events for a lot of schools and organizations.

Daily rentals are always a hassle, but they’re probably going to be a massive pain this coming season. Season ski package rentals for the kids are a great option for many families, since there are some excellent perks like being able to simply have things replaced if they break (within reason), or swap out skis or boots for a larger size if the child grows a bunch during the season. We never went that route though, because buying skis for our boys was better for a number of reasons: · Most places you rent from, whether from the mountain or from a local shop, have a limited rental season. You have to wait until a certain date until they start the rentals (around November, but it can vary), and there’s a date by which you have to return them (typically sometime in April). This is obviously a huge headache if you’re going to ski the full season, and our family typically skis from October through June as long as the snow is around, so that would cut off a lot of the season. · The options for rental skis are typically limited – they’ll certainly have all around carving skis, and they’ll often have a twin tip option as well if kids would like a more park/freestyle-oriented ski, but they’re not typically going to have more specialized skis like power skis, Telemark skis, AT skis, etc. · It’s really not that expensive to buy kid’s skis of you go to the ski swaps. There are tons of ski swaps each season, and the prices for kid’s skis are often very reasonable. For just a regular pair of all around carving skis, you can easily find a used pair for ~$100 or less. We would buy a pair like that for our older son, and he would use them for two years, and then our younger son would have them for two years, so we would get four years out of that $100 investment, and you’re talking $25 a season. Then after they’ve outgrown them, you can typically recoup half the money by selling them back at a swap, so in the end, the yearly cost is really minimal. How much of this you can do obviously depends on the age distribution of your kids of course, but depending on how that works out, it can actually be cheaper than a season rental. Good powder skis are harder to find at swaps, so we would only occasionally get lucky and find something, but most of the time we had to buy those new. But, we’d still get a previous year’s model, the price would be reasonable, and we’d get four years out of them and be able to get money for them in the end at a swap. For Tele (and likely AT skis as well), forget about it, we always had to buy new. Kid’s Tele skis are not all that common as it is, and in all my years I’m not sure I’ve seen any at the swaps.