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NNE Spring Thread

dryslot

By dryslot,
in New England

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J.Spin

J.Spin

Posted
Posted

Below I’ve got the north to south listing of available snowfall totals for the Vermont ski areas from this most recent storm.  It’s not quite one of those obvious north to south gradients with respect to accumulation, but the northern half of the state was definitely the focal point:

 

Jay Peak: 10”

Smuggler’s Notch: 10”

Stowe: 13”

Bolton Valley: 9”

Mad River Glen: 8”

Sugarbush: 14”

Pico: 6.5”

Killington: 6.5”

Okemo: 2”

Magic Mountain: 0”

Stratton: 1”

Mount Snow: 1”

 

We spent the morning at Bolton Valley yesterday, and I’d say they were actually a bit conservative with the 9” value at the top of their accumulation range.  More typically I was able to find about 11” as a general depth of the surface snow at most elevations.  The powder from this storm was even drier than what we found from last weekend’s storm – most folks would be hard pressed to complain about the snow even in midwinter, because it was midwinter dry.  It wasn’t Champlain Powder™ fluffy, but that was probably more a function of flake structure than any above-freezing temperatures.  As I noted in my earlier post, it was well below freezing at all elevations the entire morning.

 

As much as I mentioned all the underutilized powder we encounter last Saturday, this Saturday was even more extreme.  For much of the morning you could literally ride the Timberline Quad, count the number of tracks on a trail, and then on the next lap you’d be able to see exactly how many (if any) additional riders had been down it.  It was hard to pull ourselves away, but eventually we decided to call it a morning and head back to the main base.  The big event of the day at the main base was the Rock The Hills Snowmobile Hill Climb, so there dozens and dozens of sleds on the mountain and the Village lots were filled with trucks and snowmobile trailers.

 

I’ve added some images from yesterday below, and more are available in the full report.

 

08APR17H.jpg

 

08APR17O.jpg

 

08APR17F.jpg

 

08APR17E.jpg

 

08APR17N.jpg

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wxeyeNH

wxeyeNH

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, dendrite said:

That scale makes 40S look snowier than it really was. 

Never thought of that.  Really very little snow south of the Mason/Dixon line.  They should have used much  lighter shadings for areas under 1 foot.

Great day today.  60F felt SO nice.  Lost most my snow in the open fields but down below me where my road goes through the woods deep snow remains.  Picture from around 2pm.  Ways to go yet.

20170409_135220.jpg

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Angus

Angus

Posted
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1 hour ago, alex said:

Could see Jay, Stowe and Sugarbush from Cannon today. Just awesome. 

I lapped Vista Way today, it was awesome. Last run of day, I hiked up to the observation deck on the true summit and took in that view. Franconia Ridge was beautiful today.

 

 

 

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Hitman

Hitman

Posted
Posted
On 4/8/2017 at 3:38 PM, powderfreak said:

Interesting about 1500ft.  We had a solid 8" at that elevation when it tapered off.  

I've noticed that when folks just glance and see the Stowe and Sugarbush totals they seem fairly similar but I measure about where they take their mid-mountain readings.  I feel like we've doubled them on most events in that 1500-3000ft range but they always have some big summit totals.  

I'd love to see their season total at the base and their 3000ft mid-mtn spot.  

155" at the base and 237" mid.

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powderfreak

powderfreak

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2 hours ago, adk said:

It's heaven this AM in BTV.  Just heaven. 

Was 57 and sunny when I went out for a 6am run. Windows are open. Birds are chirping. GIMMIE ALL OF THIS. 

 

I just realized the low at BTV was 56F while it was 28F at MVL.

Holy crap...scraping windshields here while it's a July morning at BTV.  28 degree difference between those two sites.

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powderfreak

powderfreak

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, Hitman said:

155" at the base and 237" mid.

Pretty cool gradient.

Should try and map it...i.e. 4000ft there is equal to 3,000ft here which maybe is equal to 2,000ft at Jay?  If that makes any sense.  

Likewise SB mid-mtn snowfall is similar to the base area here and then even lower down at Jay.

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tamarack

tamarack

Posted
Posted
On ‎4‎/‎9‎/‎2017 at 11:28 AM, wxeyeNH said:

I just saw this posted.  C/NNE is sure the place to live for snow lovers.  Being close to the ocean and not far from a major cities/ Boston/Montreal make it a great place to live.

 

Season Snowfall 2016-2017.png

That NW Maine snow "drought" may be due more to lack of obs locations than anything else.  It appears that Pittston Farm stopped reporting after a January that was 90% "M", leaving nothing between Jackman and Fort Kent. 

(And I've long concluded that the latter site under-measures consistently.  Almost anyone who lives in that general area would say that FK gets more snow than CAR, but the numbers say otherwise, by about 18" per winter.  In my 9 full winters there, the FK-CAR difference was 20", and I measured 36" more per winter than did the co-op.  Tossing my back settlement years [adding 460' elev is certainly a bias!], I still had 24" more per winter.)

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powderfreak

powderfreak

Posted
Posted
9 minutes ago, tamarack said:

That NW Maine snow "drought" may be due more to lack of obs locations than anything else.  It appears that Pittston Farm stopped reporting after a January that was 90% "M", leaving nothing between Jackman and Fort Kent. 

(And I've long concluded that the latter site under-measures consistently.  Almost anyone who lives in that general area would say that FK gets more snow than CAR, but the numbers say otherwise, by about 18" per winter.  In my 9 full winters there, the FK-CAR difference was 20", and I measured 36" more per winter than did the co-op.  Tossing my back settlement years [adding 460' elev is certainly a bias!], I still had 24" more per winter.)

I went up there to Fort Kent twice during my UVM years because we were doing case studies on the Maine Winter Sports Club, and they have a big presence up there in the cross-country skiing world (like even holding World Cup events).  Both years I went in March during Spring Break ("hey, where you going for Spring Break?  We're going to the beach."  "I'm going to the furthest north location in Maine, Fort Kent!"  "Ok dude you have fun with that.") and FK had visibly a lot more snow than CAR both times.  

Thats stuff a snow weenie doesn't forget.  Like we went to the elementary school in New Sweden (every kid gets a pair of skis for the winter) to see their ski program and I remember from there on north/NW to FK (through those Lakes up in there) was much more buried than the CAR and south areas.  

 

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tamarack

tamarack

Posted
Posted
5 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

I went up there to Fort Kent twice during my UVM years because we were doing case studies on the Maine Winter Sports Club, and they have a big presence up there in the cross-country skiing world (like even holding World Cup events).  Both years I went in March during Spring Break ("hey, where you going for Spring Break?  We're going to the beach."  "I'm going to the furthest north location in Maine, Fort Kent!"  "Ok dude you have fun with that.") and FK had visibly a lot more snow than CAR both times.  

Thats stuff a snow weenie doesn't forget.  Like we went to the elementary school in New Sweden (every kid gets a pair of skis for the winter) to see their ski program and I remember from there on north/NW to FK (through those Lakes up in there) was much more buried than the CAR and south areas.  

 

There used to be (may still be) a sign on Route 161 midway between the two towns for the St. John Valley SWCD District.  It seemed the snow NW of that sign would always be significantly deeper than to its SE.
Fort Kent has gone big time into winter sports that are matched to the terrain (hills are too small for serious Alpine skiing), with biathlon at the top.  It's that sport in which the World Cup has ventured into Northern Maine.  There have also been events at the old Loring AF base in Limestone, but the bumpier country along the St. John is preferred.  The Can-am 250 dogsled race is also well attended, a 3-day event that's a qualifier for the Iditirod.

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beavis1729

beavis1729

Posted
Posted
On 4/9/2017 at 10:58 AM, dendrite said:

That scale makes 40S look snowier than it really was. 

Yeah...it was a shockingly bad winter over much of the central & southern Midwest.  Portions of southern Iowa had less than 6" of snow for the season. 

While Chicago somehow ended up with around 26" (about 2/3 of normal), the "boots on the ground" reality was much more tame due to the extremely mild temps.  The 83-day period from December 19 - March 11 saw a whopping 0.7" of snowfall.  And, there were only 21 days in NDJFM with 1"+ snow depth...just ridiculous. :)

 

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powderfreak

powderfreak

Posted
Posted

Only 4 winters out of the past 62 had higher snow depths for this time of year.

Supports my snowfall data of the most snowfall since the record 2000-2001 winter...in that this was a high-end winter for the northern Greens. 

I am convinced that had we not seen that thaw in late February and early March that lost over 40" of snowpack...this winter would have challenged all-time snow depth records.  It was that good, IMO.  But that is what separates great winters from all-time winters.  I'm more amazed that EVERY single upslope event seemed to over-produce to the modeled mean.  It was a classic winter where if you were gung-ho, you'd win any forecast competition.  We bet in the office on every storm, write the projected totals down on the white-board and I lost most of them.  Those systems where models would argue for 6", produced 12".  The storms that looked like 12", ended up doing 20".  I honestly think my forecasting was affected by the past 5 winters...where every event seemed to under-perform to some extent.  Like the models were right or they were too high in their outputs.  This winter was the winter to ride the 3km NAM when most winters you feel like its on crack.  This was no "take 2/3rds of the NAM" type winter.

What also helps is getting a 52" storm total (45" at the COOP, which is as impressive as it gets for that collection method) as can be seen by the recovery from the thaw.

17807503_10102937810735600_5725848641334

 

What's amazing to me is that compared to last year, around 225" more snowfall was measured at the 3kft plot this year.  I mean, that's a sh*t ton more snow to fall from the sky from one year to another. 

Photo from yesterday afternoon of the measuring equipment used to collect these values.  Not an exact science high in the mountains but we try and I do think its representative of the snowfall at that elevation.

17800039_10102935529172870_3703512615942

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powderfreak

powderfreak

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, adk said:

Some serious warm air aloft. Mansfield summit stayed around 50 all night. That's better than all June.  Just a little too warm for true corn conditions.  That needs over night freeze ups. Should see that set up the next few days. 

Late week into the weekend looks perfect.  

Freeze at night and 40-50F by day.

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