J.Spin

Measurable snow by then shouldn’t be remotely surprising for the mountain valleys around here. Mean (as well as median) date for first measurable at our site is 10/20 ± 11 days, so the 11/8 would be well past 1 S.D. and actually closer to 2 S.D. Not that we couldn’t get measurable snow before that, but 11/8 for first accumulation would be in the bottom 4 to 5% of seasons based on the data set thus far.

Relative to averages, it’s been a bit of a slow start to the snow in my area since we’re already past the mean dates of first frozen trace (10/20) and first accumulating snowfall (10/26), but October can of course be quite the wild card in the snowfall area. Unless the models are totally off their rockers though, that first week of November would offer multiple chances for snow with the combination of temperatures, flow off the lakes, and minor disturbances. Even at our place down in the valley we average more than a foot of snow in November, but the S.D. is high, and snowfall can be very lean in certain patterns, so it’s still tenuous. Snow chances showing up in the models inside of a week now is a good sign though, and it’s not the sort of stuff that’s dependent on some big storm forming, it’s just part of the expected flow and minor ripples. Those setups can be pretty reliable for some flakes at longer lead times, but we’ll still want to see that the models hold onto that general scheme over the next few days. With no imminent chances, I’ve been holding off on getting all the snow measurement stuff set up for the winter, but this is probably the week to get moving on it.

It won’t be long now, but can we get things rolling like last November?

It’s definitely not worth trying to push it when it comes to health – I wouldn’t think twice about it if I was in that scenario. Right around 60 F is what we find as a reasonable threshold when we’re just having fun to see how far we might push it in the fall, and last week we were down in that 58-59 F range without any obvious daytime warmups, so it was an easy call. Below about 60 F we find that “room temp” tap water starts to have a chill that makes it tough to use for dishes or whatever, and that’s one of the first places I notice the temperature issue. Also, if I’ve got to work on my computer, grading, or whatever, I’ll turn it on because even borderline temperatures are frustrating if you have to sit still for a while to work vs. moving around.

Thanks for the update on the temps, I guess it has seemed pretty typical. We did put the heat on for a few days last week, but I turned it back off because we haven’t really needed it this week, and that’s often how things go. For fun, we always try to see if we can make it to Halloween before having to turn on the heat, but even in the warmest Octobers we never really get there. There are generally those stretches where it gets cloudy and rainy, and once the house isn’t naturally getting up to 60 F in the day is when we typically make the call. The weather has really been fantastic for soccer season, and that Columbus Day weekend period was insane with the combination of foliage and weather – the levels of visitors and traffic around here definitely spoke to how everything came together. We got that typical October snow during the chilly period last week, and your mountain updates were great. It’s always nice when we can get one of those slightly more robust October events that give you enough to get out on the boards for some early powder (although I’m sure some folks got out on the junkboards and rock skis for the last one), but it doesn’t look like we’re getting one of those this year. The next shot at snow seems to be around the end of the month/beginning of November. 10/20 is the average date for first frozen precipitation at our place, so we’ll definitely be later than average this season. It’s quite the difference from last year at this time – last year we already were onto our third accumulating valley snowfall of the season by this point.

Thanks for the afternoon update PF; your intimate knowledge of the elevation markers at the resort always makes it especially informative for those of us that love the details of snow levels. As I typically try to do, I put up a post on my website to document the October snowfall, with reference to the posts and pictures in here. Thanks again!

That’s great to see PF, thanks for the snow update!

Well, I was just looking out from my office, and there’s a bit of an upslope wall of precipitation look along the western slopes of the Northern Greens. It’s the first time I’ve really seen it this fall, so I looked at the radar and it’s got that appearance too. With the temperatures just a bit above freezing along the ridgeline, I suspect there’s some mixing up there as the radar suggests:

I believe the expression you’re looking for is “incredibly loud”.

2 people with loud voices?

I’m assuming he’s busy with foliage/pre-season stuff, but we need a bit of PF infusion into the main October thread. The SNErs are trying to wish away the potential for some traditional October snow near the end of the month due to that crazy voodoo curse about October snow and a poor snowfall season. That’s not a thing up here – we love our October powder days whenever Mother Nature wants to send them! The family waxing up the boards with the cable radio Halloween station playing in the background is an honored tradition.

No worries; the NNE thread is pretty good about waiting until there’s actually something to talk about. It really won’t be long before there will be snow to discuss around here. Indeed the Mansfield forecast has flakes for later this week, it’s just not anything too notable at this point: It looks like the end of the month has got more potential though – I’ve been seeing it on multiple runs.

What I find hilarious is how the climate change paranoia simply gets adapted to whatever slant people want. Does your area have frequent drought issues? Well, climate change is going to make it even drier. Are floods a problem in your part of the country? You’d better watch out, climate change will definitely make them worse. Have a certain crop that you grow on your farm? You’re screwed. Climate change is going to ruin that by bringing more heat and moisture to the area. You’ll get more rain and warmer temperatures to grow your crops, but don’t worry, they’ll grow worse than before because… reasons. And don’t forget, despite the excess rainfall, your area is going to simultaneously be plagued with drought, so your crops won’t grow anyway. Oh, and if there’s an organism that frequently plagues your favorite crop as a pest, you can be damned sure that whatever the climate changes into, that pest is going to go absolutely gangbusters and eat whatever crop you put it. And you know, since it’s climate change, the modeling indicates that the pest is going to eat your house as well for good measure. Unfortunately, climate change prediction science is a field that can easily be filled with tons of model-based hypotheses that can’t be proven or refuted on a convenient time scale. In most fields, you make a hypothesis, run your experiment, then adjust your model accordingly and run the next experiment. When dealing with climate change it feels like you put together a model (which of course is done with the best knowledge available, but still can’t take into account everything we don’t know about), and then the planet’s population has to sit around for 50 years, discuss the possibilities and potentially prepare for the worst, while we wait to see how accurate the modeling actually was.

Yeah, either way you phrase it, you nailed it. There’s really not another lift-served area anywhere in the Eastern U.S. with its combination of such high annual snowfall and low skier traffic. Weekend powder mornings where you can spend the first couple of hours simply walking right onto the Timberline Quad are something you’re just not going to get at similarly snowy resorts along the spine. In the big leagues of Northern Greens snowfall, Smugg’s is probably the next closest contender, and indeed Smugg’s has got the low-speed lifts to preserve the power like Bolton, but they’ve just got a lot more overall skier traffic. Normally, when a ski area has a good thing going with respect to great powder and low skier traffic, it’s only a matter of time before it gets “discovered” and that changes, unless there are other factors in play. When it comes to Bolton, I think there are a couple of key things helping to keep it so low key: 1) The neighborhood: Bolton Valley is literally surrounded by the ski giants of the Central/Northern Greens. We’re talking about being within about an hour of the likes of Stowe, Smugg’s, Jay Peak, Sugarbush, and Mad River Glen. When you look at these neighbors, you’ve got five ski areas that in terms of snowfall, terrain, and various other factors are perennial contenders for top ten in the entire Eastern U.S. In general, people are going to have a hard time passing up all those places to hit Bolton Valley. 2) Terrain: Bolton indeed has some classic steep terrain in line with those surrounding resorts, but it’s not going to be as long and continuous. Most advanced and expert skiers really like those long, continuous fall lines that go on and on, and that’s just not Bolton’s terrain. On every main lift at the resort you’re going to find that the terrain rolls and/or flattens out in one spot or another, and that just doesn’t appeal to a lot of skiers. As a Tele skier I absolutely love that setup because just as my quads are cooked, I can rest them while making a traverse to the next line, and by the time I get there I’m ready to dive in. If I was on my snowboard though, that would be hell. A fantastic run I love at BV is the full descent of almost 1,700’ vertical from the Vista Summit down to the Timberline Base. That’s hardly what folks would call a “fall line” run, but I love it. When making that run I’m typically going to do 3 or 4 substantial traverses (or in some cases even short ascents) to piece together a combination of untracked trails and off piste areas with appropriate pitches and powder the whole way. All told the run might take close to an hour after meandering among all the nooks and crannies of the resort, and one needs a very strong knowledge of the topography and off piste areas to do it, but that’s the kind of skiing I really enjoy. Even more fun is mixing in combinations of hybrid runs that are both lift-served and backcountry with powder that seems to go on forever. That sort of stuff is certainly not going to be everyone’s cup of tea though, and in my opinion that’s part of what really helps to keep the resort so low key despite the top tier snowfall and powder skiing.

Yeah, it was a bit of a blast from the past as soon as I clicked on that link. I actually saw it this morning but only had a chance to respond about the Freedom Pass and the Indy Pass this afternoon.

I saw the link and immediately though of Bolton Valley, since our season passes there come with multiple free lift days at various other independent mountains around the country. We tend to spend most of our ski days in NVT, but we used our passes to pop down to Magic a couple seasons back and it was great. It’s interesting to note that the pass that comes built in with our BV season passes is called the Freedom Pass, and it’s different from the Indy Pass mentioned in the article, but naturally some of the resorts (like Magic Mountain) overlap. I also found it hilarious that right at the top of the article mreaves posted is a picture of our family at Bolton Valley – it’s from a photo shoot we did with them a few years back so the boys are noticeably younger.

Isn’t the concept of “choice” with respect to hazardous weather situations literally why we have tornado warnings, hurricane evacuations, etc.? Those are there to let you know ahead of time so that you can choose to get underground, get to a safe location, etc. because the situation is dangerous and potentially deadly?

Yeah, it’s a very interesting line that folks who “want” damage have to walk. I’d never really seen anything like it until interacting with a forum like this, and if you told me people like that existed I would have thought you were nuts. Even meteorologists on TWC who go out into storms to report on them and probably “love” weather, are on the side of minimizing damage. Maybe they’re internally conflicted like some of the people on this board, but have to side with minimizing damage since they’re professionals.

So on that inspirational note, let’s take a look at where last season sits with regard the start of the natural snow/off piste skiing around here. As usual, I use the date of hitting 24” depth at the Mansfield stake as an approximation of that and for comparative purposes. The updated plot is below, with last season represented by the red star: Before I add a bit of context to last season’s start, here are the stats for the data set: n: 64 Mean: Dec 12th Median: Dec 9th Mode: Dec 16th S.D.: 18.8 days Entry of this year’s data point had no effect on the mean, mode, or S.D. (within a tenth of a day), but it did drop the median by one day from Dec 10th to Dec 9th. The plot would suggest a reasonably good start, but nothing insane: last year’s 24” date was Nov 27th, which is only 0.78 S.D. ahead of the mean, so well within 1 S.D. That puts it in roughly the top 22% of seasons, so about 1 in 5 seasons will have a similar or earlier 24” date. While the 24” date is a nice snapshot for the start of the natural/off piste season, there are of course a number of other factors to take into account that made last November more impressive than that number alone: 1) Near miss: If you look at the raw November stake depth data (posted below), you can see that the snow depth at the stake reached 23” on Nov 21st. That’s as close of a miss as you can get to hitting 24”, so even as of the 21st of the month, the snowpack had essentially hit that two-foot level. Getting to that level by the 21st brings a season past 1 S.D. and into that top ~15% of seasons. That’s not a huge bump in this regard, but having nearly an extra week of borderline two-foot snowpack at that part of the season could easily mean an entire additional weekend of natural snow skiing potential. 2) No going back: This is a much bigger feather in last season’s cap. Even from about mid-month, the snowpack never really took a major hit, and once it did hit that 24” mark on Nov 27th, there was really no going back. It sailed past 24” and just kept climbing as you can see in the numbers at the end of the month. I haven’t added the December numbers below, but even with the lackluster December we had, the snowpack never dropped below ~40”. That can’t be said for all of the seasons on the left side of the plot (certainly not Mr. October out there in front, which was the 2006-2007 season – he was back to 0” at the stake by mid-November). 3) Snow-depth days: I haven’t calculated this for any November with the stake data, but it will obviously be a good integrative measure of how much snow was on the ground for the start of the season. I’m sure last November would have a solid ranking if I put those data together. So, if we look into that left side of the plot, do we have any other recent seasons in there that we can use for comparison to last season? Actually, that lone star (Nov 25th) just to the left of the red star for last season is for 2007-2008. We know that was a solid season around here. The snowpack began building in the first week of November, and there was really no going back there either. Unlike this past season, that solid November was followed up by a stellar December (almost 70” of snow here at the house) and the Mansfield snowpack was hitting five feet by the holidays. With a solid December, last season certainly would have given 2007-2008 a run, but instead it was languishing at around 40” at the stake during the holiday period. With regard to some of the other stars up at that end of the plot: The two compatriots of last season on the plot, those other two stars on Nov 27th, are 1997-1998 and 1977-1978. 1997-1998 looks pretty solid with a snowpack start in the first week of November, and snowpack at about that five-foot mark by the holiday period. There’s also a nice-looking bonus stretch of snow at the end of October, with snow at the stake for almost the last third of the month, and the depth peaking at 16”. Checking my archives, I actually went for some lift-served skiing at Sugarbush on Oct 28th, so that speaks to that period snow being a bit of something special. 1977-1978 was before my time around here, but it looks a bit tamer. There was nothing in October, then snowpack began to build around mid-November and was getting around the four-foot mark by the holidays. The two stars right at Nov 20th are interestingly, back-to-back seasons of 1967-1968 and 1968-1969. Both had a little October snow, and then a snowpack start in the first week of November. Both had pretty steady climbs right through November and December, with 1967-1968 getting to around 40” for the holiday period, and 1968-1969 hitting a very robust 6+ feet of snowpack for the holidays. I guess that shouldn’t be too surprising, as that was just the start of a season that would become legend. The star at Nov 18th is 1965-1966, and the progression looks sort of like 1967-1968. Boy, that’s quite a 4-year stretch of good early seasons from ’65-’66 to ’68-’69 with those three solid starts. The star at Nov 16th is 1980-1981. That season is interesting in that the snowpack started building on Oct 20th and sailed right into November without ever going back to zero. Snowpack was 4+ feet for the holidays, but the rest of the season looks modest (relatively speaking) with the snowpack depth never getting above 6 feet. The star on Nov 14th is for something more recent: 2003-2004. I was out in Montana for that one, but snowpack started building in the second week of November, it was 4+ feet at the holidays, and hit the 100” mark in March. The star on Nov 13th is for 1976-1977. That looks like an impressive start, with snowpack taking hold in the second half of October, climbing right through November, and hitting roughly the 4-foot mark for the holidays. The stake didn’t quite top out at 100” that season, but it did pretty well topping out at 94”. The final early star I haven’t mentioned yet is the one on Nov 11th, that’s for the 1990-1991 season. It seems like the only other boom and bust start to go with Mr. October (2006-2007). There was a little inkling of snow at the end of October and start of November, but snowpack started building at the end of the first week of the month and topped out at a very impressive 45” on Nov 14th! It was a downhill slide after that though. The snowpack never went lower than 9” but there were only 12-18” on the ground for the holiday period, and on Dec 30th it dropped from 18” to 13”, so that must have been quite a dagger in the holiday week (I guess that depends on whether it was a nice spring skiing day or a nasty rainstorm). The rest of that season seemed pretty blasé because the snowpack never even hit 5 feet. I don’t recall much about that season, but I’m assuming there was nothing too remarkable. Date Depth 11/1/2018 2 11/2/2018 1 11/3/2018 4 11/4/2018 4 11/5/2018 4 11/6/2018 3 11/7/2018 0 11/8/2018 3 11/9/2018 1 11/10/2018 7 11/11/2018 8 11/12/2018 8 11/13/2018 11/14/2018 14 11/15/2018 11/16/2018 19 11/17/2018 11/18/2018 11/19/2018 20 11/20/2018 21 11/21/2018 23 11/22/2018 23 11/23/2018 23 11/24/2018 20 11/25/2018 19 11/26/2018 19 11/27/2018 32 11/28/2018 43 11/29/2018 46 11/30/2018 44

Indeed, I find that the August-September-October stretch is definitely one of the best chunks of the year. I had that list of things I like about that period the other day in my post in the NNE thread, but I didn’t even talk about the fun build up to the ski season (ski swaps, snowmaking, resorts opening, etc.). I don’t include November in that favorite stretch, at least with respect to weather, just because it’s typically stick season around here and it feels like we’re in a holding pattern for a bit before the snow hits the valleys or the snowpack starts to get deep in the mountains. Sometimes we’ll get some great early season powder days (November is sort of like October on steroids in that regard), but it can also be a tiresome stretch of only manmade surfaces. Now of course if every November could be like last season’s…

Gorgeous – you can get a great sense for the quality of that powder by the track on the left.

Fantastic!