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NNE Cold Season Thread 2021/2022


PhineasC
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19 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

It's a full on powder day above mid-mountain.  We found 6" at 3,000ft High Road Plot and piling up.  It skis like it too... dense with some body.

277465055_10104759501058590_241446718798

That’s great to hear.  It’s been a bit slow over the past week as you’ve noted, with just a couple inches here and there, but this should give us a bit more to play with.  It’s the Northern Greens, and it’s only March, so it’s good to see an uptick with still April to go.

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39F  light snow shower

We have some friends that live about 1 mile south of me and around 1600 feet elevation.  They offered to share their webcam with me.  They look NW over Newfound Lake as I am 500 feet lower and face SW.  I am really going to like this new cam especially with thunderstorms and snow levels.  Nice view even right now.  Can't see my house but is around the X mark.

house.jpg

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1 hour ago, PhineasC said:

Conditions today are sort of like old freezer-burned ice cream left out on the countertop to thaw for a while. Would be pretty good if it was 70 and I was in a t-shirt though. 

9 years ago our bud TB lol. No way was I taking my shirt off. He, burned 87 degrees in the sun.  We call that snow condition butter

 

FB_IMG_1647905521657.jpg

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5 hours ago, powderfreak said:

It's a full on powder day above mid-mountain.  We found 6" at 3,000ft High Road Plot and piling up.  It skis like it too... dense with some body.

I headed up to Bolton for a midday session, so I can pass along some snow observations.  I started out with a tour up to the Wilderness Summit at ~3,150’, and someone had also broken trail up Ricker Mountain, so I followed that for a bit and probably topped out around 3,300’.  The powder skiing was great, so I hung around for some lift-served laps as well.

It was snowing all the way down to the valley floor, but accumulations didn’t start until ~1,000’.  Here’s the accumulations profile I found around midday:

340’:  0”

1,000’: T

1,200’:  1”

1,500’:  2”

2,000’:  4”

2,500’:  5”

3,000’:  6”

3,300’:  6”+

Once above the 2,000’ level, there weren’t any massive increases in accumulations that I saw, just sort of slow, steady increase, as the profile shows.  The powder was meaty like you said, so powder turns were great.

The snowfall ranged from huge, pounding flakes, to lighter episodes where the snow continued, but the sky would brighten.  It was really pounding when I left, and made me want to stay for another run or two.  I’m not sure if it can keep up at today’s snowfall pace overnight, but tomorrow would obviously be another great day if it did.

I’ll put together some images and a bit more info when I get a chance.

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18 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Looks blocked on BTV even at higher tilts. Probably changes tonight though.

It’s super blocked right now.  Just flurries leaving the mountain and can see all the way to the ridge line.

VAD usually tells the story… most veering in the lowest 4,000ft with sharp NW flow under a more general W to even slightly SW flow aloft.  Not a strong flow either, just gently sloshing air in the Champlain Valley off the flat lake plain and into the foothills… but enough to rip out some good precip there upstream of the barrier.

01BE6622-9842-4F18-82C9-4A50258DF78A.gif.9e1496790a0dc910488d732e1254c590.gif

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1 hour ago, eekuasepinniW said:

I don't keep the best records, but I can't think of any other year when my backyard was virtually snow free by March 25th.

Kind of wild to compare now to this time in 2008.

29F with snow squalls.  About 1/2"

2008 was a special year.  Over 130" of snow in my area.  Many roof collapses.  We had to keep shoveling our roof.  I made some videos from that winter see below.  The first one is from March 1 and then there are more in March and April.  Still so much snow even in April.  We feed the deer that year as they couldn't barely get through the snow.   

 

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2 hours ago, powderfreak said:

It’s super blocked right now.  Just flurries leaving the mountain and can see all the way to the ridge line.

VAD usually tells the story… most veering in the lowest 4,000ft with sharp NW flow under a more general W to even slightly SW flow aloft.  Not a strong flow either, just gently sloshing air in the Champlain Valley off the flat lake plain and into the foothills… but enough to rip out some good precip there upstream of the barrier.

01BE6622-9842-4F18-82C9-4A50258DF78A.gif.9e1496790a0dc910488d732e1254c590.gif

Ok…can you explain this to the lees knowledge (me)…I get the blocked flow and Froude number, but what am I looking at?

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37 minutes ago, bwt3650 said:

Ok…can you explain this to the lees knowledge (me)…I get the blocked flow and Froude number, but what am I looking at?

You're looking at the velocity aziumuth display (VAD) from KCXX. It's an attempt by the radar to estimate horizontal wind over time at different heights above the radar. You look back in time to the left and height increases as you go up. 

 

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4 hours ago, powderfreak said:

A dense 3.5” at the 1500ft plot at Barnes Camp to end the day.  There’s some QPF meat in this.

Its definitely back to winter in the base area.

It’s back to winter indeed.  Even with your timely snow updates providing knowledge of how much snow fell and how it was skiing on Mansfield, you really never know quite how it’s going to be until you get up there.  I’d seen Bolton’s initial morning report of 1-3” in the 2,000’-3,000’ elevation range, so when I found 2” at the Timberline Base at 1,500’ on the way up the Access Road, I knew the accumulations had been increasing through the morning.

I detailed the accumulations profile in my previous post, but this was one of those days where it was definitely nice to be able to start touring above 2,000’ with the elevation dependence.  As of midday, there was already a solid resurfacing of the low angle terrain, so aside from any scoured areas, the powder on that terrain was skiing beautifully.  Even low-angle terrain that had been skier packed was excellent, so this new snow had adhered nicely to the subsurface.  On one of my lift-served runs, I saw this in play with the quiet turns of skiers on Bear Run and Sprig O’ Pine as I passed over on the Vista Quad.

I’m not sure how much liquid equivalent has been put down at elevation with this storm, since we’re certainly not getting as much liquid down here in the valley as the mountains are.  We’ve had about 0.12” of liquid from this event down here, but based on how the powder turns felt today, the mountains had probably seen 0.3-0.5” up high as of midday?  That’s an estimate of course, and PF can weigh in with his thoughts.  Anyway, medium angle terrain was a mixed bag in terms of sufficient resurfacing.  In areas of untracked powder over at Wilderness, I was generally getting bottomless turns even up to some single black terrain.  There were some great turns in areas that hadn’t been scoured.  When I was over skiing the lift-served terrain on Vista though, you were definitely getting down to the old base on the blues and blacks – there certainly hasn’t been enough liquid equivalent put down with this event to hold up to those levels of skier traffic.

But in terms of not quite knowing what it’s going to be like until you get there, today definitely delivered.  The quality kept me around for some lift-served runs even after touring, although I was able to connect over to parts of Wilderness on those runs for powder laps.  Overall, the snow was great, and so was the scenery, since it was often pounding snow with big flakes, but the light levels were pretty high because it’s now late March.

A few shots from the day:

27MAR22A.thumb.jpg.1450cb5228b032d71e8030dd9653545c.jpg

27MAR22C.thumb.jpg.bf999436332bf81d3615870673478bc0.jpg

27MAR22D.thumb.jpg.76fcc47d075baf04d0e554b785aa80a3.jpg

27MAR22B.thumb.jpg.aa7b8293f798ca2548b0718efa06a899.jpg

27MAR22F.thumb.jpg.a07a689819e2898b21e3fd3bb3614a01.jpg

27MAR22E.thumb.jpg.aa463620cb32c2a9dcfae5d9b71cb544.jpg

 

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13 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

You're looking at the velocity aziumuth display (VAD) from KCXX. It's an attempt by the radar to estimate horizontal wind over time at different heights above the radar. You look back in time to the left and height increases as you go up. 

 

Can't beat that explanation.  It's the best tool I use in real time to associate with upslope precipitation.  There are always subtle hints in that product that explain why precip is occurring where it is.  Wind flow is 100% the key to precipitation generation around these parts on mesoscale levels.  Getting to look at a vertical slice of perceived wind directly over BTV is one helluva tool.  I've been looking at that for a decade or more and comparing it to the orographic signal... that product and vertical profile of airflow is critical to understanding upslope snow.

The elevation that the winds veer matters.

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4 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Can't beat that explanation.  It's the best tool I use in real time to associate with upslope precipitation.  There are always subtle hints in that product that explain why precip is occurring where it is.  Wind flow is 100% the key to precipitation generation around these parts on mesoscale levels.  Getting to look at a vertical slice of perceived wind directly over BTV is one helluva tool.  I've been looking at that for a decade or more and comparing it to the orographic signal... that product and vertical profile of airflow is critical to understanding upslope snow.

The elevation that the winds veer matters.

CXX for all it's siting issues is actually in a great location for the VAD and upslope snow. Like GYX is relatively useless for what is going on at Pittsburg.

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27 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

CXX for all it's siting issues is actually in a great location for the VAD and upslope snow. Like GYX is relatively useless for what is going on at Pittsburg.

Need one at MPV. Would everything from spine of the Greens east to the Whites, including the NEK and Coos. 

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