J.Spin

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.

Wow, how are there not some sort of flood warnings out there? I just drove from Burlington to Waterbury and it was like driving through a blizzard with the incredibly low visibility from extremely heavy rainfall. Even the fastest windshield wiper speed was no match for gaining visibility. There was ponding on the roads in many places, with several inches in a few low spots, and people had to drive really slowly. I’m just not sure where all this water is going to go around here, because this heavy rainfall is certainly not all that localized. The rainfall was nonstop heavy all the way from the Champlain Valley, into the mountains, and my wife said she had the same thing heading out to the Mad River Valley.

I agree, things seem right on their usual track. I know Tip went off with a big post about how incredibly early the color was, but that’s got to be some sort of more localized thing because I’m really not seeing it in my travels around our area.

Maybe… up in the air… along with my hands… in utter disgust.

LOL, so very this! What’s the hang up about gorgeous weather in September, and even October? If anything I would think it’d be skiers like us up here in the north that might have a bone to pick with a pleasant October, since October snows can sometimes dish out those fun early season powder turns. Indeed although we do get some snow just about every October, I still consider it a bonus and don’t really plan on it. October is great with pleasant days, crisp, colorful leaves, outdoor activities, prepping the yard for winter. I love having nice days to do that stuff vs. trying to dodge 35 F rainstorms to clean up wet leaves, finish final mowings, etc. It is easier to put up with that stuff when you know its dumping at elevation, but it’s still a pain.

Things really are moving along there – the combination of daylight, temperatures, and whatever other factors are involved clearly lets the trees in that area know that their time for potential snow is getting close.

Those houses up there at Bolton Valley really are quite affordable – back when I was in grad school a bunch of the guys (Andor, Shawshank, etc. from SkiVT-L) had a place up there, and if grad students can afford to live there, you know it’s pretty reasonable. Ironically, none of us really skied at Bolton Valley back then because it was the era of the $299 “Big Pass” (Stowe & Sugarbush), and that was really just too good a combo of resorts for anyone to pass up at that price. But those guys would have parties up at that house, and it was a blast going sledding, hiking on the mountain etc. with all the snow. I definitely contemplate what it would be like to move to one of those places up there, more for the ability to simply pop on the skis and hit the powder than for the weather, although documenting the snowfall and annual precipitation at those elevations would be a blast. There are those downsides though of always having to deal with the mountain road, not being able to pop to the store in just a couple minutes, and just generally being farther away from so many conveniences. The commute to Burlington really isn’t bad though, and lots of people do it. For someone who works up there in the Village, or maybe is retired or works from home and doesn’t have to be up and down the road too often, it’s a no brainer if you want to be close to all that recreation and snow. Indeed I remember back when you lived in Jonesville, which is generally going to be a step up from the Champlain Valley in snowfall, but you’d just get hit so hard with downsloping sometimes. I still find it hilarious that we ended up getting our place right here along the spine the way we did, since we had no clue about the distribution of microclimates around here. Being just a mile in either direction (certainly to the west down in Bolton Flats) would likely see a decent drop in annual snowfall.

That’s a good point; that top house up there on Snow Drift Road appears to be just a touch over 2,300’, which is definitely high elevation for a house in this area. It doesn’t have the open views of those houses at Stowe, but it is slopeside, and you literally walk off the edge of the yard and you’re at the Five Corners area of the Bolton Valley alpine trail network. That’s actually quite a prime slopeside spot on the trail network because you can ski right down to the main base via Lower Villager, or the Timberline Base via Timberline Run. It’s a five trail intersection, so you’ve got three additional trails (Timberline Lane, Five Corners, and Upper Villager) starting right there that you can skin up for runs as well. It’s a pretty sweet spot for a skier, or just somebody who likes snow. I’d guess the snowfall average there is pushing 250” a season? With respect to the spine of the Northern Greens, it’s going to have western slopes snow climatology vs. probably a more eastern slopes snow climatology at the houses PF pointed out, but both can obviously be awesome depending on the season.

Preach it Ginx! I guess it could be in the 70s up here, but either way, that’s dreamy weather. People can get so caught up in “seasons in seasons” that they forget to “think outside the box”.

LOL, it was just some fun trolling; there are many places up here where even snowfall one S.D. below average still means substantially more snowfall than one S.D. above average in SNE.

We were battling the same thing – we were on and off cooking on the fire pit this evening and had to dodge some of the light showers. Just when I’d see that the upstream radar was finally clear, a shower would develop out of nowhere up against the spine. Generally I find it’s a pretty minor inconvenience though for all the benefits that the mountains bring, like cooler temperatures, weather variety, moisture to keep the lawn happy all summer, ridiculous amounts of snowy days, tons of snowfall, etc., etc.

I hadn’t thought about it, but that’s quite true regarding the sky visibility in NNE. I’d say our current location here in Waterbury is probably the best of anywhere we’ve lived, and that includes our time in Montana. When we first moved here, I was amazed at how much the Milky Way stood out in the sky. In Montana, we lived in a couple spots in Hamilton, but both were within town limits. Here, we’re 2 to 3 miles outside town, and Waterbury is definitely smaller than Hamilton. Another factor that I think plays into it is the topography around here – we’ve got these narrow valleys and hollows that quickly get you away from any town lights. With the typical broad, flat valleys in Montana, you don’t necessarily get shielded from city lights just by getting out of town. This far north in NNE we don’t really have any big cities (I guess Burlington is the largest up here?), so that’s going to contribute to less overall light pollution.

Down at our elevation we only had a half inch from that mid-May storm, so our distribution of top storms was more typical, with the largest storms from Dec through Feb. Of course, the top five events were woefully low on accumulation in general just due to the tenor of the season. The top five storms for ’15-‘16 here were: 1) 1/18/16: 11.2” 2) 1/12/16: 7.3” 3) 12/29/15: 6.6” 4) 2/8/16: 5.4” 5) 4/6/16: 5.0”

Yeah, the status of that ’15-‘16 season was simply unmitigated. I didn’t think we could even get snowfall numbers that low. My data set indicates the snowfall that season was 2.25 S.D. below the mean, which is roughly the bottom 1% of seasons. I’m still confused/amazed that it’s not down there in the basement for SNE though – before posting I had checked Kevin’s web page for the ’15-’16 totals, and nobody in SNE even reported 50” for the season. The majority of folks reported snowfall totals in the 30s, and some were even lower. Hubb is even listed as 30.5”, so are the numbers there not correct? I guess those numbers are what gave me the impressions of such a bad season.

I know folks can fret unnecessarily about early snow and its “effects” on the rest of the season, but doesn’t ’15-‘16 sort of fly in the face of that? Isn’t that literally the dud to end all duds that puts these other seasons to shame? It didn’t have any of that “special” early snow did it?

Yeah, there’s New England winter, then there’s NNE winter, then there’s NNNE/microclimate/mountains winter. We’re not in an especially hefty snowpack preservation spot for around here, and even we average close to 5 months with snow on the ground each winter. It’s not that we don’t have nice summers (I guess unless you want lots of heat and humidity), but you really want to have an interest in cold weather or “weather-independent” activities or the winters would probably seem interminable.

Yeah, the microclimate stuff is really fun. Both our sites are in upslope land, and Alex’s site has something like 1,000’ of extra elevation as a snowfall perk, whereas we’re lower down but have the “Northern Greens first dibs” thing going on with respect to the upstream moisture sources. What we really need are for more posters to move up into these snowy NNE microclimates so it’s not just the half dozen of us documenting and discussing so many of the storms. Of the 64 storms we had up here last season, it would be interesting to know what percentage of them were even a blip on the SNE radar.

Yeah, you said it; that’s exactly the thinking going on at our place this time of year. It’s funny because indeed it’s getting those afternoon temperatures up that we find makes the difference for us. On these cool fall evenings, we can shut the windows if needed, but even if they’re cracked the temperature doesn’t drop off much. We have lots of nice windows on the south side to take in some passive solar and help warm the house, but if those daytime temperatures don’t get up into that 65-75 F range, that’s the deal breaker. The house never gets that daytime reset, the indoor temperatures start to slide, and you have to start playing the game of when to hit the heat.

I was up at Bolton Valley this afternoon for some hiking and backcountry recon, and it was 55 F at 2,000’ in the Bolton Valley Village. The brisk fall feel was in full effect, and it was great weather for hiking around. Early fall color was very obvious in the hills above the Village. The boys had home soccer games at Harwood yesterday, and the early color was even evident there in the hills above school.

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.

Indeed, it’s right smack in the middle of the August to October triumvirate of months that I really like for weather. September is probably hands down the best chance at hitting that sweet spot of low dews while still having comfortable highs, but August can definitely deliver up here in the mountains of NVT, and boy did it deliver this year. I know we were probably below average on August temperatures around here this year when all was said and done, but even an average August will still be quite good. October can be more of a wild card of course, but even up here we can get those great Indian summer periods. The other end of the October spectrum isn’t necessarily bad though when we get that mountain snow and foliage still remaining in the valleys.

The total was 1.55”, and it was thankfully delivered at a nice steady pace without all the runoff issues that can come from the way thunderstorms deliver similar amounts.

Good call, indeed it looks like we're a bit over 1.5" here for the event. That's a good start to moisture on the month, and puts us over 60" for the 2019 water year. The forecast suggests that we’ve got some great late summer/early autumn weather coming up.

Yeah, the forecast up here was right on track indicating a perfect day for indoor stuff, so there was really no reason for anyone to be surprised. The boys and I were online much of the day with friends having a blast getting some video game stuff done. Temperatures weren’t all that bad though if folks wanted to be out for kayaking or something else that isn’t too dependent on dry conditions. Just bring your rain gear and go at it. I don’t know how those families do it that come up from the city every weekend throughout the year. They’re constantly having to play that game of when to leave with regard to weather or other obligations, and that’s quite the nagging feeling. We even see it at times when friends come up to visit, whether they have kids or not. It must be brutal on those snowy Sundays when you have a drive that is literally made more difficult by the stuff that is going to make Sunday afternoon and/or Monday morning skiing spectacular.