Boston Bulldog

Tour de Mansfield today. Began with a dawn patrol skin up Nosedive. Upon reaching the top of the quad and turning down the toll road, we began an adventurous skin across the Amherst Trail before linking back up with the Long Trail. Views were impeccable, but much caution was needed to remain on route through the thick krummholz.

Profanity was wind buffed and skied very well (no reaction in ECT tests). Banner day up high, certainly didn’t feel like April! Was getting sticky and thick down low in the trees, probably a great corn harvest this afternoon in the bumps.

Nasty little band has set up over Sunapee NH, thumping snow up here right now. 

Looks even heavier south of here in Newbury, Goshen and Bradford.

2 hours ago, powderfreak said:

Wait what, Josh has 27-54”?

Yeah it’s from his latest blog post from yesterday. I’m a fan of his work and always appreciate the optimism, however he can get a bit carried away at times to say the least. Regardless I will be at MRG no matter how the storm pans out!
 

“Mountains: Some wet snow early, more powder Thursday, Friday and into early Saturday with 27-54 inches.”

Lots of hype flying around with this system. Funniest forecast I’ve seen is Single Chair weather going with 27-54” above 3K. Tight range!

Anyways, it's definitely right to be skeptical of this upcoming PNA driven period being productive for the vast majority of the forum given climatology and a blowtorched Quebec.

Well if it's going to act like April, might as well ski like it's April! Fantastic day up in Tuckerman Ravine. Trekked up to Hojos in stubborn mist and fog. As we approached the ravine floor, the sun was showing signs of emerging but in general the bowl was still a cauldron of fog.

As we began booting up Left Gully, skies began to brighten a bit up high...

Upon reaching the top of the Ravine, clouds were thinning with the summit beginning to emerge to skiers left. Suddenly the bowl rapidly cleared and we had clean sightlines for the descent.

By the time we finished the line, it was a spectacular bluebird day out on the Rockpile

It's low tide up there for sure, not many skiable lines outside of the gullies right now. The sherburne is open all the way to the parking lot, but I don't expect it will be for much longer. Go get it while you can!

1 hour ago, MRVexpat said:

HRRR looking at least slightly intriguing for a light refresh in the northern Greens tomorrow. Here's to hoping!

GFS and EURO backing off from 18z yesterday has been a bit of a bummer, hoping the mesos are onto something! The dense nature of any snow that falls should bind well with the base and provide some relief.

14 hours ago, GCWarrior said:

Good to see the quad going at Magic tomorrow, it’s been a long time. I was there yesterday and they were running it on and off all day testing. 
 

Not 2’ like up north sadly. The skiing was super “sporty” and very dangerous.  Ice, rocks, roots, dirt and water bars skiing all on very thin cover.  I personally love the challenge. Light, quick feet, jumping through rock gardens and landing (very small) airs on to ice! Both me and some how my skis survived unscathed. 

Welp they delayed the opening of Black, surprise surprise. Hopefully they have it up and running before the weekend.

BIG news out of Southern Vermont: 

"Black Line Quad passed its load test on Tuesday. And yesterday it passed State Inspection. A few punch list items to take care of today and getting it some run time before it launches Monday! The Quad will open to passholders first on Monday morning! So long and farewell to lift lines at Magic!" (From Magic's Snow Report today)

After 4 years of construction woes, mishaps, and some bad luck, Magic Mountain is finally opening their Black Quad! This is a game changer for several reasons. Red is aging quickly and it every year seems like a high wire act to get it approved by the state for the season. Having Black online will take significant pressure off of that workhorse lift and help extend its life. Lines at Red have gotten crazy in recent years due to the mountain hopping on the Indy Pass, so tripling capacity to the summit will go a very long way to increasing efficiency.

Some may worry about additional congestion on the trails, but this should be negligible as the mountain is broad enough to disperse skiers. Until they finished Black, Magic seemed to be on tenuous footing due to aging infrastructure and limited finances (exacerbated by this albatross of a lift project). Happy that they seem to have finally figured it out.

It snowed. Nice!

Wet bulb temps never dropped below 33F on Tuesday down here in Manhattan so we never accumulated very well… as such tomorrow is trending towards being our biggest of the season 

Coming down at a decent clip here in the UES, streets slushy, avenues wet. I am a bit concerned about Manhattan getting stuck in between the deformation band over NNJ and the WCB goods pushing into Long Island. Mesoscale analysis does have me optimistic that subsidence shouldn't be too much of a problem however, as it really isn't consolidated over a pivoting band to our northwest.

Right on cue some bands are infilling just over the Hudson in Jersey, so at this hour there doesn't appear to be a deformation mega band to the west that will have the city dealing with bright clouds and exhaust. There will be consolidation at some point with these bands as the fronto gets cranking, still question of where this will happen who will get the pivot point.

Sampled the goods across multiple spots in Central and Northern VT over recent days. There is a bit of a gradient in snow conditions between the haves and have nots to this point in terms of both rain avoidance and upslope production.

Burke had soft snow with a few inches of fluff on top of a hard packed (but not very crusty) surface.  Seems as though they were just far enough north and east to mitigate rain crust from the cutters earlier in the month. Despite this, the base wasn't particularly deep as they failed to cash in on the upslope bonanza of this past week.

Smuggs was fantastic. Deep base, minimal crust, and tons of fluff. The northern spine is in amazing shape, can only imagine how great Jay is skiing right now.

Wrapped up the north country swing with a chilly tour up two different zones at Brandon Gap. Given the more southern location, a more prominent rain crust was lying anywhere from 3 to 10 (in drifts) inches below the fluff. Certainly more soft stuff on top than at Burke due to upslope, but in general conditions at Brandon were more variable than elsewhere. Still lots of fun turns to be had, though the lighter touring skis did struggle a bit with the crud

Overall, great conditions for mid-January. A few shots from Brandon today:

1 hour ago, bwt3650 said:

It is beyond good out there right now. The last 18” or so is pure powder fluff and the woods are absolutely loaded with the light mid week traffic. Has to be some 3 foot stashes. Groomers are soft and carvable on top with a firm, groomed in hard layer underneath. Almost all trails have powder banks along the sides. The wind wasn’t overwhelming today either, so 4 degrees on the lower mountain was very manageable, almost comfortable. Def recommend being careful in the woods and back country as winding up in a hidden gully or well could be tricky right now.







.

You nailed it earlier this week regarding the upslope look. Looks like the spine from Stowe to Jay got blitzed last night

Initial offerings from BTV for this weekend are a bit more paltry than the last storm. There does appear to be a significantly better upslope setup than what we are experiencing right now, so accumulation should continue in favored zones beyond this point on Sunday.

7 hours ago, klw said:

BTV snowfall totals map

Ha, this is essentially a topographic map. You can clearly make out the individual ranges within the High Peaks region of the ADK, the spine of the Greens is lit up, and even Mount Ascutney is clearly visible just W of the CT river. Mount Sunapee, Mount Cardigan and Kearsarge are also very obvious as well.

Even some key passes and valleys in N-VT are clearly visible.

3 minutes ago, klw said:

BTV snowfall totals map

Definite over-performer in VT. Very similar look to the 90th percentile map from BTV last night 

59 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

The 1/19 system has a rapidly building western ridge with it....so I would keep an eye out on that one potentially ramping up into something bigger....but I'd agree if we're going for the full I-95 KU kill-shot, then it's probably likely to happen when that PV moves closer to the 50/50 position and we get some sort of PAC firehose southern stream vort trying to slam up into it. I don't know if we'll get that shot, but conceptually that would be more classical than trying to use a PV lobe itself....those tend to be more New England-centric as redevelopers.

Agreed regarding the 19th. If the ridge indeed builds to the modeled amplitude over the West, it’s reasonable to conclude that the downstream response has lots of room to dig deeper and orient into a more favorable position for redevelopment.
 

Based on 12z OP runs, we would need the ridge axis to split the difference between GFS and Euro positioning to open the door to something bigger.

https://operations.nysmesonet.org/~nbassill/loop/index.php?map=WINTER

Some big gusts showing up on the NYS Mesonet just west of the Tug Hill. Pretty big numbers being put up over the Finger Lakes region and Southern Tier as well.

Sugarbush and MRG are about to get blasted. Would have to think VT-17 across the App Gap is a ridiculously difficult drive right now

18z GFS coming in 2mb weaker at 72h over Illinois. No change in surface high intensity over QC

Coming down pretty nicely in UES, correlation coefficient suggests the mix line is about to reach the southern extent of Staten Island

Now look at how the different handling of vorticity changes the trough orientation 12 hours later. No wonder 0z pops to the coast.

Big differences at 500mb with shear vorticity over the plains

1 minute ago, DJln491 said:

The 10th looks different.  I know we’re still way far out but curious to see the opinions on that. 

500mb trough takes longer to go negative for the 0z run than in 18z. Lobe of shear vorticity over the plains seems to be trailing more at 0z rather than getting wrapped up as much.