NNE Winter Thread

[MBRI]

over the hill at Bosebuck camps  1/2 way between here and the Burg

 

 

[mreaves]

57 minutes ago, Hitman said:

 

Last year it was on the south side of the heavens gate lift shack and it was drifting like crazy.  It seems this season to be less drifty.  Wondering if they moved it.

You mean the one that now seems to sit in a hole and has been dubbed "Drifty McDriftface" by some here?

[eyewall]

Looks like I will take one for the team and miss the biggest snow of the winter on Thursday being away. I had a feeling that might happen.

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[ono]

30 minutes ago, mreaves said:

You mean the one that now seems to sit in a hole and has been dubbed "Drifty McDriftface" by some here?

It's true- it does seem to sit in a hole, and some people have called it that.  SB is closing in on 150" for the season. Basically on par with Alta. Side note- Jackson Hole at 240" already, 85" base up top- pretty nuts for the intermountain zone so early on with another storm cycle starting up,  and their snowiest month is January, usually. That's a solid holiday setup.

[powderfreak]

11 hours ago, Hitman said:

Did u see where the snow cam is?

They claimed 4" of new snow this morning which was physically impossible.

Including 3" of 1"/hr wind drifting yesterday afternoon.

Only place in the state reporting snowfall.

Thats bad man.  I doubt there was even a half inch at most then rain.  The hole was filling up an inch per hour with no radar echoes for 30 miles.

[ono]

10 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

They claimed 4" of new snow this morning which was physically impossible.

Including 3" of 1"/hr wind drifting yesterday afternoon.

Only place in the state reporting snowfall.

Thats bad man.  I doubt there was even a half inch at most then rain.  The hole was filling up an inch per hour with no radar echoes for 30 miles.

The people at SB claim it's accurate. Gotta get called out, eventually. 

[borderwx]

busiest I have ever seen or town garage, looooong line up for sand this morning.  At this point I am actually just hoping the sun stays out and helps to penetrate the 1" of ice in the drive. Feels wrong having a warm wind out of the NW. Happy New Year NNE!

[J.Spin]

31 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

They claimed 4" of new snow this morning which was physically impossible.

Including 3" of 1"/hr wind drifting yesterday afternoon.

Only place in the state reporting snowfall.

Thats bad man.  I doubt there was even a half inch at most then rain.  The hole was filling up an inch per hour with no radar echoes for 30 miles.

 

20 minutes ago, ono said:

The people at SB claim it's accurate. Gotta get called out, eventually. 

 

Well, as PF has said, this will certainly be an interesting experiment in any event.  If Sugarbush suddenly starts sticking out like a sore thumb from all the other resorts in the Central and Northern Greens with respect to seasonal snowfall, and they’re pulling off 400+” seasons when other areas aren’t, it will look suspicious to people in the know.  And if the deviation is large enough, even more casual observers will eventually wonder what’s going on.

 

Their issue with collecting in a depression is definitely a subtlety though that could be missed if they are new to running a stationary snow measurement board in the way they are.  Even with all my experience in snow collection and measurement, I wouldn’t have immediately thought of that being their issue.  My main elevated board is above the level that our snowpack attains most winters, and my ground boards are of course reset atop the snowpack at each clearing, so that issue never comes up there.

 

I can think of one snowpack condition where I’ve had to accommodate that drifting potential though, and it was always very obvious to me that it needed to be avoided.  If we’ve got a foot of light champagne snow atop the snowpack and I’m resetting my ground boards, I can’t simply lay them down atop the snowpack – they crush the delicate snow and end up in a depression, with the walls of the depression potentially caving in around the edges of the board.  With dry snow like that, I always have to take the board and use it to sweep out/compact an extended area around where it’s going to sit, to ensure it’s not in a depression.  If you don’t do this, it’s easy to see the increased accumulation/depth around the edges of the board where either surrounding snow caved in, or new snow drifted in.  And, if the issue is big enough, even the center of the board will collect more snow than it should due to depression-based drifting, and there are no locations on the board with an accurate snowfall depth.

 

The one board that I do leave in place for entire storms (or even multiple storms depending on our available time to clear the snow off the back deck) is my web cam board.  I don’t typically do my official measurements off that board because it’s closer to the house than I’d like, but it does help with remote snowfall monitoring and correcting for settling etc.  Anyway, that board can get into a bit of a depression as I clear it, and the rest of the snowpack on the deck is still in place.  You can bet that after watching the setup there at Sugarbush, I’ve been making an effort to be extra diligent in clearing farther around that board this season to ensure that it’s not sitting in a large depression.

 

It’s going to be interesting to see where Sugarbush goes with their board, but I can absolutely see why places like Snowbird would use the adjustable board and camera setup.

[wxeyeNH]

Wind is absolutely howling this morning.  I'm surprised to see how light it is in other NNE stations.  Lots of small branches down.  I am protected from W to NW wind and my Davis always seems low.  Still I just measured a 38mph gust which is impressive for me.

Driveways just a sheet of ice with a water layer.  Snowpack taking a good hit at 46F.  Pack down from 7" yesterday to 4 to 5" right now.  We need a refresher.  Anything in the cards...lol....

 

[ono]

36 minutes ago, J.Spin said:

Well, as PF has said, this will certainly be an interesting experiment in any event.  If Sugarbush suddenly starts sticking out like a sore thumb from all the other resorts in the Central and Northern Greens with respect to seasonal snowfall, and they’re pulling off 400+” seasons when other areas aren’t, it will look suspicious to people in the know.  And if the deviation is large enough, even more casual observers will eventually wonder what’s going on.

 

I shot them a message to see what was their take on things with drifting. The main gist:

"It actually wasn't wind drifts, as we do have barriers surrounding the stake, which is in a very protected area. It was snowing until about 9pm last night ...We report snowfall totals but do not do so in terms of net-gain/loss. Some resorts do report net totals. "

Setting up barriers... the problem seems to be resorts do this with snow fences to retain snow/create catchments- ideally an area for measurement  doesn't require such a setup, right? If you watch the time lapse from the past 24 hours, there's a whole bunch of needles/small branches falling onto the pad.  If it's catching that kind of detritus... it's capturing material being blasted off trees by wind.

 

[Hitman]

32 minutes ago, J.Spin said:

 

 

Well, as PF has said, this will certainly be an interesting experiment in any event.  If Sugarbush suddenly starts sticking out like a sore thumb from all the other resorts in the Central and Northern Greens with respect to seasonal snowfall, and they’re pulling off 400+” seasons when other areas aren’t, it will look suspicious to people in the know.  And if the deviation is large enough, even more casual observers will eventually wonder what’s going on.

 

Their issue with collecting in a depression is definitely a subtlety though that could be missed if they are new to running a stationary snow measurement board in the way they are.  Even with all my experience in snow collection and measurement, I wouldn’t have immediately thought of that being their issue.  My main elevated board is above the level that our snowpack attains most winters, and my ground boards are of course reset atop the snowpack at each clearing, so that issue never comes up there.

 

I can think of one snowpack condition where I’ve had to accommodate that drifting potential though, and it was always very obvious to me that it needed to be avoided.  If we’ve got a foot of light champagne snow atop the snowpack and I’m resetting my ground boards, I can’t simply lay them down atop the snowpack – they crush the delicate snow and end up in a depression, with the walls of the depression potentially caving in around the edges of the board.  With dry snow like that, I always have to take the board and use it to sweep out/compact an extended area around where it’s going to sit, to ensure it’s not in a depression.  If you don’t do this, it’s easy to see the increased accumulation/depth around the edges of the board where either surrounding snow caved in, or new snow drifted in.  And, if the issue is big enough, even the center of the board will collect more snow than it should due to depression-based drifting, and there are no locations on the board with an accurate snowfall depth.

 

The one board that I do leave in place for entire storms (or even multiple storms depending on our available time to clear the snow off the back deck) is my web cam board.  I don’t typically do my official measurements off that board because it’s closer to the house than I’d like, but it does help with remote snowfall monitoring and correcting for settling etc.  Anyway, that board can get into a bit of a depression as I clear it, and the rest of the snowpack on the deck is still in place.  You can bet that after watching the setup there at Sugarbush, I’ve been making an effort to be extra diligent in clearing farther around that board this season to ensure that it’s not sitting in a large depression.

 

It’s going to be interesting to see where Sugarbush goes with their board, but I can absolutely see why places like Snowbird would use the adjustable board and camera setup.

I think you hit on the issue at the end, because I'd bet the camera is fixed and they can't simply raise the board so it sits on top of the snow because it will be out of the picture of the cam.  I don't think they did this purposefully to inflate the snow totals, in fact I'm pretty sure that is not the case.  If anything Win is conservative with snow reporting.  I think this is something that gets addressed in the offseason by resetting the cam to focus on an elevated board/stake like you see in the whitewater cam I posted a few days ago.  learn from experience.

[ono]

56 minutes ago, Hitman said:

I think you hit on the issue at the end, because I'd bet the camera is fixed and they can't simply raise the board so it sits on top of the snow because it will be out of the picture of the cam.  I don't think they did this purposefully to inflate the snow totals, in fact I'm pretty sure that is not the case.  If anything Win is conservative with snow reporting.  I think this is something that gets addressed in the offseason by resetting the cam to focus on an elevated board/stake like you see in the whitewater cam I posted a few days ago.  learn from experience.

doubt that they're trying to pull a fast one- just that it's a pretty ill-conceived setup- that they're using it to report there snow totals, though, seems like just a poor approach- good intentions are are great, but there's a very famous road paved with them as they say.  In the end, if it's misleading customers, it's misleading cusomters.  oh well, no skin off the back here.

[Lava Rock]

I'm sitting in the condo looking out over Rangeley  lake, sleeted most of night but went to rain now. no loss  clouds are breakingup

 

Yesterday   330 pm



 

 

Lake doesn't look that solid

[Lava Rock]

They claimed 4" of new snow this morning which was physically impossible.

Including 3" of 1"/hr wind drifting yesterday afternoon.

Only place in the state reporting snowfall.

Thats bad man.  I doubt there was even a half inch at most then rain.  The hole was filling up an inch per hour with no radar echoes for 30 miles.

Cant you or someone else call them out on the reporting? Seems like false advertising

[Lava Rock]

49.6 f. Torch fest

[backedgeapproaching]

Non sheltered locations had the snowpack completely wiped out last night and this morning with .50" RA/wind/high temps, just piles left through most of the town.  Still have a full coverage here and a few inches because barricaded on all sides by pines/hardwoods.

Thursday went from a "refresher" to now being a "base layer"  lol.

[eyewall]

I will miss this next storm only to return for next week's cutter lol perfect.

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[powderfreak]

2 hours ago, ono said:

I shot them a message to see what was their take on things with drifting. The main gist:

"It actually wasn't wind drifts, as we do have barriers surrounding the stake, which is in a very protected area. It was snowing until about 9pm last night ...We report snowfall totals but do not do so in terms of net-gain/loss. Some resorts do report net totals. "

Setting up barriers... the problem seems to be resorts do this with snow fences to retain snow/create catchments- ideally an area for measurement  doesn't require such a setup, right? If you watch the time lapse from the past 24 hours, there's a whole bunch of needles/small branches falling onto the pad.  If it's catching that kind of detritus... it's capturing material being blasted off trees by wind.

 

The problem I'm starting to see is they are being almost too defensive about it.  Which isn't going to lead to any meaningful change so it'll just take them to be the snowiest resort in the east for a few years all the sudden and people will go hmmm?

The other thing "it was snowing till 9pm"...I think that was physically impossible and maybe the NWS could verify that.  And you can see on the time-stamps that the snow fell between 12pm and 4pm.  The camera also shows that it is snowing most of the time its snowing in terms of flakes flying by and there was really none of that yesterday.

The problem is you can put all the barriers you want around it but you are getting the snow to fall ONTO the board and not look drifted.  The issue is the drifting is on a larger scale.  Not just on the actual board, but the snow is coming from somewhere else.

And I agree, if you are getting pine needles and stuff on it, its definitely windy enough to transport snow even like a half mile away.  In general, its just hard to measure snow at 4,000ft as we can see by the Mansfield COOP's snowfall data.

[Blizzard118]

Hi All: 

Sorry if this is off topic but I figured I would ask since you guys are the experts in NNE. My wife and I are heading to Stowe for MLK weekend and hoping to do some snowshoeing. What are your opinions for best trails in and around Stowe? We are in fairly decent shape but don't want to do anything too strenuous. Hoping for some more snow up that way. Down here in Jersey it's been a rough winter so far. Thanks in advance!!

Scott

[ono]

10 minutes ago, Blizzard118 said:

Hi All: 

Sorry if this is off topic but I figured I would ask since you guys are the experts in NNE. My wife and I are heading to Stowe for MLK weekend and hoping to do some snowshoeing. What are your opinions for best trails in and around Stowe? We are in fairly decent shape but don't want to do anything too strenuous. Hoping for some more snow up that way. Down here in Jersey it's been a rough winter so far. Thanks in advance!!

Scott

One vote for Sterling Gorge Falls loop. it's pretty mellow, and doesn't demand too much elevation change. 

[mreaves]

2 minutes ago, ono said:

One vote for Sterling Gorge Falls loop. it's pretty mellow, and doesn't demand too much elevation change. 

That's nice. Doesn't Trapps have some good trails? And the bike path, at least for people who want a relatively easy go of it. 

[Blizzard118]

2 minutes ago, mreaves said:

That's nice. Doesn't Trapps have some good trails? And the bike path, at least for people who want a relatively easy go of it. 

Thanks for the reply! I'll have to check those two out. I don't mind doing something a little challenging. Even something off the beaten path.  Just didn't want to hike Mansfield haha

[dmcginvt]

1 minute ago, Blizzard118 said:

Thanks for the reply! I'll have to check those two out. I don't mind doing something a little challenging. Even something off the beaten path.  Just didn't want to hike Mansfield haha

You don't have to hike Mansfield itself, you can just hike up into the Notch right on the road.  You can go up to Sterling Pond from there too if you decide you want more.  Also look into Nebraska Notch, the Pinnacle, and Beaver Meadow

[Blizzard118]

7 minutes ago, dmcginvt said:

You don't have to hike Mansfield itself, you can just hike up into the Notch right on the road.  You can go up to Sterling Pond from there too if you decide you want more.  Also look into Nebraska Notch, the Pinnacle, and Beaver Meadow

That sounds pretty good actually. I'll check out hiking into the Notch. I've been up that way before in the fall and it's a nice trek. I'm assuming parking is at the base of the ski resort?

[ono]

1 hour ago, mreaves said:

That's nice. Doesn't Trapps have some good trails? And the bike path, at least for people who want a relatively easy go of it. 

Trapps requires a trail pass- does have nice trails. FYI- the Stowe Land Conservancy (or whatever it is called) has a bunch of well-mapped and signed trails like Sterling Gorge (which doesn't really go into a gorge, but contours above it- you park at a decently high elevation and walk up into it- not too bad at all, really)- the bike path is OK, though doesn't always have a ton of snow...  just depends on how things go in the valley.  Around Nebraska Notch is another option- depends on how much you're willing to walk uphill.  

51 minutes ago, dmcginvt said:

You don't have to hike Mansfield itself, you can just hike up into the Notch right on the road.  You can go up to Sterling Pond from there too if you decide you want more.  Also look into Nebraska Notch, the Pinnacle, and Beaver Meadow

Beaver Meadow is nice as well, though probably more sustained elevation gain, and more remote than Sterling Gorge (next drainage over for those not familiar).

Another thought- If you like easier walking, and want to drive a wee bit out of town, there are a bunch of meadows with groomed trails (just local homeowner-maintained xc-ski trails- not sure I should be advertising it here, but it's open to anyone)  that gently dip into the woods on Sweet Rd right across the road (and slightly before) the trailhead to Hunger Mountain over the line from Stowe in Waterbury Center. Really nice views of the Stowe Valley and down toward the Mad River Valley- a real hidden gem. That would be my vote if you want a nice easy stroll with good sun/light all day (and sunset views) some of the other spots get shaded pretty quickly in the afternoon (Sterling, Beaver meadow, Nebraska Notch).

[dmcginvt]

37 minutes ago, Blizzard118 said:

That sounds pretty good actually. I'll check out hiking into the Notch. I've been up that way before in the fall and it's a nice trek. I'm assuming parking is at the base of the ski resort?

Yep, plenty of parking right at the resort

[Blizzard118]

7 minutes ago, ono said:

Trapps requires a trail pass- does have nice trails. FYI- the Stowe Land Conservancy (or whatever it is called) has a bunch of well-mapped and signed trails like Sterling Gorge (which doesn't really go into a gorge, but contours above it- you park at a decently high elevation and walk up into it- not too bad at all, really)- the bike path is OK, though doesn't always have a ton of snow...  just depends on how things go in the valley.  Around Nebraska Notch is another option- depends on how much you're willing to walk uphill.  

Beaver Meadow is nice as well, though probably more sustained elevation gain, and more remote than Sterling Gorge (next drainage over for those not familiar).

Another thought- If you like easier walking, and want to drive a wee bit out of town, there are a bunch of meadows with groomed trails (just local homeowner-maintained xc-ski trails)  that gently dip into the woods on Sweet Rd right across the road (and slightly before) the trailhead to Hunger Mountain over the line from Stowe in Waterbury Center. Really nice views of the Stowe Valley and down toward the Mad River Valley- a real hidden gem. That would be my vote if you want a nice easy stroll with good sun/light all day (and sunset views) some of the other spots get shaded pretty quickly in the afternoon (Sterling, Beaver meadow, Nebraska Notch).

I've been to Sweet Farm Road in the fall and the views are great there. Is the land public access tho? I don't want to be trespassing on private property. 

[ono]

9 minutes ago, Blizzard118 said:

I've been to Sweet Farm Road in the fall and the views are great there. Is the land public access tho? I don't want to be trespassing on private property. 

If it's not posted on the property line in VT, and your out of line of sight from the residence, you can travel. It's an open access law. People park and XC ski all the time in those meadows- some of the groomed trails pass people's houses - it's a community ski area, basically. People pitch in to clear trails, have put up a few bridges, even some farming "art" or artifacts ("the boneyard"). Elevation change is generally less than 50' or so between meadows on the trails.  We're talking about just past the intersection between Ripley and Sweet Rd- the meadows on the left, correct? 

[J.Spin]

I got an alert on my phone about a half an hour ago that a Winter Storm Watch was posted for Washington County, so I headed to the BTV NWS homepage and see that much of Central and Eastern Vermont is under the watch.  The watch in this area calls for a general 6-12” of accumulation, with a rough 8-12” suggested on the projected accumulations map:

 

 

[Blizzard118]

2 minutes ago, ono said:

If it's not posted on the property line in VT, and your out of line of sight from the residence, you can travel. It's an open access law. People park and XC ski all the time in those meadows- some of the groomed trails pass people's houses - it's a community ski area, basically. People pitch in to clear trails, have put up a few bridges, even some farming "art" or artifacts ("the boneyard"). Elevation change is generally less than 50' or so between meadows on the trails.  We're talking about just past the intersection between Ripley and Sweet Rd- the meadows on the left, correct? 

Exactly. That's the spot. I didn't realize there were trails there that were accessable. Thats great to know. Thanks!