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NNE Cold Season Thread 2021/2022


PhineasC
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“Only” down to 1 here this morning but should get below 0 tomorrow morning. Anyways did some snooping around on Wundermap this morning looking at some of the typically coldest stations I am aware of across the entire northeast. The Tug Hill plateau, several areas in the Adirondacks, Diamond Pond NH and the Saddleback base area ~2600’ are always contenders off the top of my head. I took a screenshot of the coldest I found. These two stations are located around 2200 feet on Cascade Road coming into lake placid sandwiched in between a couple 4000+’ peaks. Perfect recipe for frigid temps. 

A373E1A9-356D-4204-A1AC-B760E63F5C98.png

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1 hour ago, PhineasC said:

Not trying to get ahead of things here, but that Wednesday clipper has been looking healthier on the models too. Could be a nice refresher of cold smoke on what falls Monday. By the end of this week NNE should be well pasted. 

Dense base snow plus clipper refresher could set things up nicely.

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-9F for the low here. We've had as many sub-zero mornings this week as we had all of last winter. Looks like plenty more to come, too.

Not going to fret over the NAM with an event that is still 48 hours away, but man...that is a warm look. At face value we'd flip to rain at 35F by midday Monday. The gfs and Euro are certainly colder, so I would imagine the NAM will adjust as we get closer, but it's hard to brush it off completely when we've had such rotten luck these last two seasons. It has become quite easy to look for ways to be disappointed lol.

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1 hour ago, PhineasC said:

Not trying to get ahead of things here, but that Wednesday clipper has been looking healthier on the models too. Could be a nice refresher of cold smoke on what falls Monday. By the end of this week NNE should be well pasted. 

Yeah, first there’s this larger system from tomorrow night into Monday to think about, and that could be the synoptic system we’ve needed to get a huge portion of the moderate to steep natural snow terrain in play around here.  Most of the models show at least a half inch of liquid equivalent here along the spine of the Northern Greens from that system, although something like the latest GFS run with over an inch of liquid equivalent through Tuesday would be really nice.  A shot like that would have a huge impact on the snowpack depths for the natural terrain.

As you can see from Matt Parrilla’s Mt. Mansfield Snow Stake Depth Plot below, the snowpack depth at the stake is currently 28”.  That’s certainly below the average 40” snowpack depth, but nowhere near the basement as far as seasons go.  It’s not 28” of fluff either; it’s substantial, and essentially primed for whatever comes next.  The ~24” mark is about where people typically start skiing the natural snow terrain (lower and moderate-angle stuff), and indeed, that’s what I’ve seen at Bolton over the past week or so.  I suspect PF and bwt have been seeing similar things at Stowe and Jay.  The snowpack reaching the 40” mark at the stake (The Northern Greens 40-inch rule) is where you’ll find most natural snow terrain (even the relatively steep stuff) reaching practical utility.  With a current 28” depth at the stake, we are absolutely within striking distance of that 40” mark with a good storm or two, and it’s hard to express what a game changer that would be – trail counts and available acreage would jump dramatically.

In some respects, it doesn’t matter whether this next system delivers snow, sleet, freezing rain, or even plain rain; it’s that liquid equivalent that we’ve been lacking because we’ve had a relatively slow trickle of smaller systems over the past couple of weeks without the sprinkling of major or even moderate systems.  Obviously, getting all the liquid equivalent as pure rain would be least optimal, but the mountain snowpack is in a robust enough state right now where it would still be substantiated by that liquid equivalent, unless the temperatures were somehow 50 or 60 F.  Straight rain isn’t currently what’s forecast, so it’s more likely that any liquid equivalent will come as snow, or some other frozen forms of precipitation.

15JAN22A.jpg.26f3b921e0504769aad0862fa8ebe9e5.jpg

And then indeed, there’s that midweek system.  From a quick look at some recent runs of the GFS, I think something in the 0.3” to 0.5” inch of L.E. range is what it’s been showing around here for the spine from that potential midweek system.  It’s up and down of course, and we’ll have to see how it changes over the next several days, but we do like the typical reliability of those types of systems:

922203861_BreadButter.jpg.1b71f8ab1eb35829f84e9329a7b56012.jpg

If the mountains ultimately pulled out something on the high end like 1.5” of L.E. from these next couple of systems, it will seriously transform the ski options.

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59 minutes ago, alex said:

Not sure I believe that 1.5” of rain would improve ski options but certainly any snow and sleet will. Amazing how much the 1-2” of sleet we got last weekend helped! Skiing has been really good this week and the heavy stuff made it possible to ski some of the glades even with thin cover. 

Don’t think northern greens and your location see that much rain.  I think we’ll be in decent shape by the end of the week.  Southern vt may be a different story.

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1 hour ago, alex said:

Not sure I believe that 1.5” of rain would improve ski options but certainly any snow and sleet will.

Well, let’s be serious here – does anyone actually think the next two potential weather systems are going to drop 1.5” of L.E. as 100% liquid in the mountains of NNE?  The second system in the modeling is a clipper-type system that doesn’t even hint at that possibility, so that’s sort of silly.  The point is that the state of the mountain snowpack is such that it could take some rain (only so much before it starts to drain through etc.) as part of the L.E., and it would likely add L.E. to it as part of substantiating the base.  Snow and sleet are certainly much better for conditions, and that’s actually all that’s currently shown in the mountain forecasts around here anyway.

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