J.Spin

August Precipitation: 3.88” 2019 Precipitation: 41.46” 2019 Water Year Precipitation: 59.93” August was just a touch below, but essentially average on precipitation. With the comfortable temperatures, the month was really just how you’d write it up around here. With 1 month to go, the water year precipitation is right around 60 inches, and it looks like we’ll add a bit onto that as we head into September.

Heh, I find the jabs flagrantly amusing, at least where they’re well deserved. It’s really just a “When in Rome” thing, since that’s the way the place seems to work – especially in the off season. The “discussion” thread has literally been the banter thread all summer as far as I can tell. In the winter I do try to keep stuff in the NNE thread for the most part – poor PF typically takes on the mantle of being the main upslope delegate to the masses.

People tried so very hard to tell them, but when you have a specific climate-defying troll script that you’re required to follow, I guess you have to keep going until the whole thing eventually crumbles around you and you’re left in a pile of senseless dust. Of all the fancy slogans the dew crew had for the month, the one that really ended up fitting best was “Augbust”.

Yeah, the benefit of the orographics is frequently discussed with respect to snowfall, but the mountains are permanently there, helping with moisture throughout the year. At relatively similar elevations, my data show that we seem to average 25%-50% more rainfall than BTV to the west, or MPV to the east. Coastal has expressed his distaste for the potential clouds associated with the mountains, but it’s hard to have it both ways when it comes to moisture. If you want predominantly sunny weather, you’re typically going to have to deal with irrigation or vegetation suffering through dry periods. Around here, one rarely has to even think of watering to keep the grass green. My more typical struggle is finding a large enough window for a nice dry mowing, but this summer has been great – plenty of moisture and plenty of dry windows as well.

At least in terms of accumulation, that would probably be a bit on the early side as it’s a month ahead of the average first accumulation date and 2.0 S.D. ahead of the mean. So, only about 2.3% of seasons will have accumulation by that date, but 1967 and 1986 did it. The odds of just getting “flakes” in the air without any measureable accumulation are of course higher, but we don’t really have a lot of observational data to use for an estimate there.

Indeed as the accumulation maps show, that storm was really just a typical October event this far north and west. As PF noted, he had about an inch and a half, and my records show 1.2” for a storm total. It was one of those infrequent occasions where we headed south for powder turns. We went down to Pico for a ski tour, where there was about 15” at the summit. I found it more notable that your largest storm that season came in November (unless there was something in the spring that you consider outside the cold season). That 11/23 storm was certainly in the top five over here, but we also had January and February events that must not have been as notable farther to the east: 1. 22.7 inches (2/24/12-2/26/12) 2. 11.7 inches (1/12/12-1/14/12) 3. 11.0 inches (11/23/11) 4. 9.7 inches (12/27/11-12/28/11) 5. 5.1 inches (12/25/11-12/26/11) That fact that a 5.1”-storm made the top five list does say something about that season with respect to receiving larger storms. The only other season to do that in my records so far is that abysmal 2015-2016 season, and even in that case it was a 5.0”-storm, essentially on par with the one listed from 2011-2012.

There was 0.2” for new snow on 8/28/86. The next new snow entry for that season was 9/15/86 when 4.0” was reported, followed by 2.0” on 10/6/86 and 1.0” on 10/7/86. That was it until things started picking up again on November 2nd.

A comment in the main discussion thread had me pull up some of the first snowfall of the season data for Mansfield, but I’m putting it here for archival/discussion purposes as well. In a few more weeks and we’ll definitely be watching for those first dustings in the peaks around here in NNE. The earliest recorded accumulations on Mt. Mansfield are actually only a week from today (see inset in the graph below), and of course on Mt. Washington it can happen at almost any time. I ran the early snowfall numbers for Mt. Mansfield a few years back and found that first snows occurred in September at an average rate of about twice a decade, and only about once a decade do we not have that first snow by October. I recently assembled the actual numbers though, and I’ve plotted those below. The occurrence of first snow by October is actually a bit higher than 90% though, so the absence of snow by October is closer to once every 15 years vs. once a decade. First snows are potentially a bit more frequent than the numbers indicate too, since there are some seasons with chunks of autumn data missing, and with the ephemeral nature of early season snow and the variability in personnel making those observations, some occurrences of snow could have easily been missed.

LOL, not quite yet, this weekend looks like more of this fantastic late summer/early fall weather that is too good to pass up. But, a few more weeks and we’ll definitely be watching for those first dustings in the peaks around here in NNE. The earliest recorded accumulations on Mt. Mansfield are actually only a week from today (see inset in the graph below), and of course on Mt. Washington it can happen at almost any time. I ran the early snowfall numbers for Mt. Mansfield a few years back and found that first snows occurred in September at an average rate of about twice a decade, and only about once a decade do we not have that first snow by October. I recently assembled the actual numbers though, and I’ve plotted those below. The occurrence of first snow by October is actually a bit higher than 90% though, so the absence of snow by October is closer to once every 15 years vs. once a decade. First snows are potentially a bit more frequent than the numbers indicate too, since there are some seasons with chunks of autumn data missing, and with the ephemeral nature of early season snow and the variability in personnel making those observations, some occurrences of snow could have easily been missed. Will has mentioned his inclinations toward mild Octobers before, and I’m definitely with him on that. Killing off the bugs and then having Indian Summer with foliage is amazing. Up here though, the other side of the coin can also be good. If we can get those below average temperature that bring a decent early snowfall, the turns can be great sometimes. Even if the snow is meager though, you still get those vistas of foliage and white.

He actually explained it a while back, pointing out that his neighbors (I believe he focused on those with the last name of “Jones”) make fun of him if his meteorological parameter pimping doesn’t focus on the most extreme locales. It was very weird, but something like that.

We’ve got the big VAE Car Show going on right here at Farr’s Field, so they’re getting some of those classic Green Mountain orographic effects as well. Down here, temperatures are a bit warmer than at 1,500’ of course. 60s and 70s F is actually great weather for things where you have to be out in the sun, but we’ve also got those pop up showers taking place, so I’m sure those have been a bit of a nuisance for the show. I think we’ve had at least four rounds of showers this afternoon, with some nice sun in between and those rapidly fluctuating temperatures you referenced. We were moving around a 300 to 400-pound boulder out of one of our drainage areas this morning, and let’s just say that this weather has been perfect for that work. I can’t imagine doing a job like that down south right now with heat indices over 100 F that I heard about on TWC this morning. We just had one of the bigger afternoon pop-ups come through. There’s definitely an autumnal feel today though – a bit of a prelude to the approaching upslope season.

I posted the data and analysis below in the ski thread, but it’s also very much NNE snowpack related, so I’m cross-posting it here as well. 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

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…

There was definitely some intense rain in the MRV area yesterday afternoon/evening. I dropped the boys off around 5:00 P.M. for their evening soccer camp session at Mad River Park with just some light showers in the air, but within a half hour we got a text message to the tune of “S.O.S., practice is cancelled, we need to be picked up!” The major factor in canceling the session was the thunder and lighting, but apparently the downpours were pretty intense. Thankfully they have a nice pavilion there for shelter. Checking on CoCoRaHS, I see some precipitation totals up around two inches down in the southern part of Washington County.

I think they’re just awaiting your signal.

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

I was living in the Champlain Valley back then, but don’t recall what the period was like, so I did a quick check at the BTV NWS site. On their temperature extremes page, it looks like that period holds a record for days with max temperatures of 80 F or higher, so that says something about that stretch: The forecast is looking pretty good at this point with respect to avoiding excessively uncomfortable July-style heat, and once we’re into the second half of the month it gets even harder to have those sort of days. That map PF just posted of the departures up here vs. farther south revealed quite the demarcation for temperatures this month, so there’s certainly some variability around the region.

Indeed. I find the Zen of surfing and powder to be the most similar I’ve experienced. They both have that simply impeccable union and balance between chaos and control. I’d probably put whitewater kayaking next, but it just doesn’t have quite the flow of the other two for me. I have never tried surf kayaking though, which I’m sure has its own feel. I love to surf – if I’d stayed down in the Buzzards Bay area I’m sure that would be a primary activity for me. Doing a lot of growing up here in Vermont though, then living in Montana for several years and now being in Waterbury surrounded by the Green Mountains, the allure of the mountain culture and powder skiing was just tenacious. The Northern Greens are (inarguably?) the epicenter of powder snow/powder skiing in the Eastern U.S. though, so of course that’s going to take precedence around here.

Hmmm...

Yeah, yesterday offered up some really impressive air, and of course the effect was magnified because we’re coming out of high summer around here. The boys and I were heading to Stowe with the windows and sunroof open, and as we’re going along feeling the breeze, my younger son commented something along the lines of “Wow, the air temperature is perfect!” What he didn’t quite know was that a big part of that “perfect” feeling was the low dew point. We did a pretty strenuous 13-mile ride in the Adams Camp complex without a drop of sweat for any of us. That’s why people love this air. I was explaining the humidity/dew point aspect to the boys later in the day, but the thing that left the biggest impression with them was not feeling sticky or even feeling like they needed a shower after a ride like that. Indeed at the beach or pool it’s nice to have a bit of humidity to keep things comfortable, but there’s a reason so many people have A/C – they’re literally trying to turn warm, humid air into this air. As nice as Saturday was, yesterday was simply over the top with those incredible temps and dew points, so it needed its own seal.