J.Spin

I saw from my webcam that snow started up this morning at our place in Waterbury similar to here in Burlington, but I hadn’t seen any accumulation yet down at these elevations. I see now that we’re just starting to get accumulation at the house at 500’. Bolton Valley at 2,100’ at the main base looks like they’ve picked up an inch or so thus far via their webcam.

I see that it’s snowing now here in BTV - some of the flakes are a bit granular with rime on them.

Regarding tomorrow’s snow, I’ve got the latest projected accumulations map from the BTV NWS as of today’s afternoon update. They’ve got the mountain valleys around here in the 4-6” shading, which is probably a bit higher than what our point forecast would suggest, but this does include the additional potential snow on Friday, where they’ve increased PoPs associated with that snow shower activity. .SHORT TERM /FRIDAY THROUGH FRIDAY NIGHT/... As of 302 PM EST Wednesday...A shortwave will act to reinforce the eastern periphery of the upper level trough as it moves through the North Country on Friday. This will act to reinforce large scale ascent throughout the day with strong convergence ahead of this feature. In addition, temperatures in the boundary layer and through the entire column will continue to cool throughout the day. This will yield increasing low-level and mid-level lapse rates that will lead to additional snow shower activity throughout the day. Based on the latest guidance, PoPs have been increased across the forecast area to account for scattered to possibly widespread snow showers on Friday.

We’re starting to close in on this next potential snow event, and the BTV NWS is putting out their latest projected accumulations. Our point forecast currently suggests something in the 3-5” range from Thursday through Friday. The short term discussion below suggests accumulations a bit leaner than that down at our elevation, but it presumably doesn’t include any snow from the upper level shortwave behind that system that comes through on Friday. .SHORT TERM /7 PM THIS EVENING THROUGH THURSDAY NIGHT/... As of 336 AM EST Wednesday...Polar front and weak systems traversing along its periphery is on track to bring the first widespread snowfall to many parts of interior New England. Based on the latest data, about a 0.5"-2.0" are possible across the valleys, with 2-6" across higher terrain with locally higher amounts at the peaks. .LONG TERM /FRIDAY THROUGH TUESDAY/... As of 336 AM EST Wednesday...Friday morning should start out mostly dry with polar air advecting into the region. A subtle upper shortwave will dig behind the departing system. With sufficient moisture and 50-100 J/kg of CAPE, anticipate the development of snow showers on Friday afternoon. Dry adiabatic lapse rates extend to 700mb, so a few of these snow showers could produce brief, moderate snowfall with 25-35 mph gusts that could cause brief drops in visibilities.

Happy to help; just holding down the fort alone while you’re out of town. Hopefully they can get folks that are having difficulty cleared out of the notch before too long. You can see that there’s certainly more upstream moisture that could push into the area this afternoon, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see the elevations pick up some additional accumulation:

I bet a lot of the valleys around here are getting their first accumulations of the season today. It sounds like we’ll be in the flow for much of the afternoon/evening, so there should be continuing chances for rain/snow until some weak high pressure builds in overnight: Area Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Burlington VT 1204 PM EST Sun Nov 3 2019 .NEAR TERM /THROUGH MONDAY/... With the mid-level trough passage, weak high pressure builds ewd across the North Country tonight with chances for rain/snow showers diminishing below 10% early. Will see some breaks in the clouds overnight, but prevailing WSWLY flow will maintain some stratus at times. I just checked the gauge and thus far we’re at 0.2” snow/0.06” liquid for the event, which I’ve got in my records as “Weak mid-level trough moving in from Great Lakes bringing lake-effect moisture on WSW flow”. It’s starting to feel much more like one of those cold season days with the mountains grabbing moisture in the flow - we’ll get a bit of sun and it will seem like things are tapering down, and then it will quickly cloud up and start pouring mixed precipitation with a change in wind.

I thought today was just going to be a bit cloudier version of yesterday, but to that I can give a definite “nope”. This morning I’d raked a few remaining leaves into some small piles that I was going to collect later today, but about 15 minutes ago the wind picked up to the point that it was starting to scatter them. I quick ran around and collected the piles, but of course with the wind came a bout of heavy mixed precipitation that got everything soaked pretty quickly and brought another round of transient accumulation: If we’re getting into the frozen precipitation down here, I figured the elevations had to be getting hit even harder, and indeed I checked the Bolton Valley Live Web Cam at ~2,100’ and there were flakes flying and a coating of white: With bouts like this happening we’ve definitely turned a bit of a corner in the weather here as we’ve move into November relative to the past month or two.

October Precipitation: 6.08” 2019 Precipitation: 52.47” I meant to post the October monthly precipitation a couple days ago, but I’m getting a chance to catch up on it now. October is our second wettest month here behind June, but this one was even a bit above the October average. Moving on to November, it’s typically one of our drier months, but it’s off to quite a roaring start with that event we had a couple days ago bringing almost 3 inches of liquid.

Yeah, absolutely. It’s funny, I’ve got that same excitement for Diane that I have for when an avid skier from the big city finally makes that decision to move out west or up here to live at a resort. Of course, the thing is, she essentially is living at a ski resort. Transitioning up from the south after the way the past several months have been down there has got to be one of the more dramatic examples though. With the elevation they’ve got there, it would be surprising if they don’t see some sort of snow this week.

I’d been occasionally looking outside to see if there was any precipitation this morning, since with that flow off the lakes and temperatures around the freezing mark, it felt like we’d have our first chance at something frozen down here in the valley. And indeed at around 8:00 A.M. we got a graupel shower with a pulse of moisture pushing through the spine: As is often the case with the density of graupel, it quickly accumulated to bring the first measurable of the winter season. We’re actually past the mean dates of first frozen trace (10/20 ± 6 days) and first accumulation (10/26 ± 11 days), but this event is falling well within the 1 S.D. range of the latter, so we’re on track in that regard. The next benchmark I have in my records is the first event of ≥1”, which is (11/8 ± 16 days). There’s quite the variability with the date of that first 1” event, spanning from late October well into November, but we’re certainly in a pattern where we’ll be having some snow chances. At mass this morning my wife was talking with some friends who live up on Blush Hill and they’d already been out earlier making snow angels in their dusting. Oh those NNE snow sickos!

I just looked out my window here in BTV and there’s obvious snowfall crashing out along the western slopes – radar is showing it as well along the spine.

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.

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.