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NNE Cold Season Thread 2022/2023


bwt3650
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13 hours ago, dmcginvt said:

I know they painted Jay as 12-18 but that was never really in the cards and the afd's called it out that the border was going to have drying issues and it did.  It took a long time for that column to saturate last night.  It was snowing over my head for 3 hours before I saw a flake.  If I dont get an inch tonight I will agree on the bust.  So far I have had everything thrown at me with no additional accum.  Freezing rain, sleet, ice pellets, graupel, and snow, damn you warm nose (who you callin warm nose). Still a weak disturbance to come through later though.  Maybe we get an inch then.    

going to finish with 8-10 and that will include what would have fallen today.  I'm going to def call it a bust. The 12-18 was before the second part and that was forecast to last into today, and really only produced another 2-3.  It just never got the burst going to produce the foot plus totals.  Not complaining tho; def a much needed refresh and produced some good skiing.  I think  @ORH_wxman @CoastalWx or someone else in the main chat mentioned the possibility of an extended period of moderate snow, rather than the heavy burst a couple days prior and that was a great call.   Looks like lots of refreshes going forward too up here, so should be some good skiing for the next two weeks.

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Super cold day, temps in the single digits in the base area of the mountain all afternoon.  It was 6F at 2pm with wind.

All three snow plots on the mountain came in with a storm total of 9" which is interesting.  In town we were 7.4" but the hill saw identical snowfall at 1500ft, 3000ft and 3,300ft with 9".

Good cold powder out there this afternoon.  Not the deepest snow but skied nicely on the smooth bed surface.

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I didn’t have an opportunity to get out on the hill yesterday to ski the new snow from Winter Storm Olive, but my younger son and his friend were out at Bolton, so they filled me in and I got to see some of their GoPro footage.  It was clear from their comments and videos that as of yesterday morning, the storm certainly hadn’t put down enough liquid equivalent for a full resurfacing of the slopes.  Low to moderate-angle terrain was skiing quite well, and I saw some really nice footage of the potential for powder turns there, but it was obvious that on the steep stuff, you were quickly down to that hard subsurface, especially if there had been even a bit of preceding skier traffic.

Our area has definitely picked up more snow since yesterday morning though.  After the lull during the middle of the day yesterday, the snow picked back up in the evening and we had continuous snowfall to varying degrees right through much of today.  There was little if any mixed precipitation that I saw at our site, although I think there was a bit of sleet in one of rounds of accumulation later in the day yesterday, because my wife said she heard some ticks on the window, and the snow was on the denser side when I ran the liquid analysis.  Here at our site, we’ve picked up over ⅔” of liquid equivalent from the storm as of this evening, and I’d say Bolton must have picked up over an inch of liquid equivalent based on the amount of new snow they’ve reported and my experience from the mountain today.  As of this morning, the Bolton Valley snow report was indicating 12” of new snow in the past 72 hours.

When I headed up to the mountain for a tour this morning, it was snowing here at the house, but the intensity of the snowfall increased notably as I headed up in elevation.  Although the flakes were fairly small, the snowfall rate up in the Bolton Valley Village at around 2,000’ was moderate to heavy.  And, that snowfall was being driven by hefty winds.  Winds were in the 30 to 50 MPH range, certainly hitting those upper numbers in gusts when I was up on the ridgeline above 3,000’.  Temperatures were in the single digits F, so between the temperature, the winds, and the snowfall, it was downright nasty out there.  I was quite comfortable while touring, but even with my hat, I kept my hood on for much of the tour ascent, so that speaks to the effects of those low temperatures and winds.  Plenty of people were arriving in the morning to ride the lifts, but that must have been rough, and I was very happy to be down low to the ground out of the winds and generating plenty of extra heat.

With its schedule, the Wilderness Chair hasn’t run since the storm started, so it was the obvious place to tour today for the best access to untracked snow.  Throughout my tour, surface snow depths I measured were generally in the 8-10” range, with no big changes with respect to elevation.  As of today, we’ve definitely moved beyond the level of resurfacing that my son experienced yesterday morning.  We’re well past just the low angle terrain now, and with the cold temperatures today and the increasing snow depths, low angle terrain was actually a bit slow.  Mid-angle terrain was probably the sweet spot today, and steep terrain was actually nice as well if it was untracked or had seen minimal skier traffic.  You’re not going bottomless on steep terrain that’s seen substantial skier traffic yet; we’re going to need to get more liquid equivalent down atop the snowpack before that happens.  But, the existing base is deep (depth is now 50” at the Mt. Mansfield Stake), there’s tons of terrain that was sufficiently resurfaced by this storm, and it looks like there are more potential storms in the pipeline that could affect the area as well.

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Yesterday the very cold air was still in place here in the Northern Greens, but we also had some fresh snow moving in with some weak upper-level vorticity pushing through the area.  Temperatures at elevation looked like they would stay in the single digits F, so ski touring once again seemed to be the call vs. riding the lifts.

We’d picked up a half inch or so of new snow down at the house when I headed up to Bolton in the mid to late afternoon.  Flakes had been small throughout the storm, so accumulations were coming in a bit on the denser side at around 10 to 12% H2O.  I found the same type of snowfall up on the hill, although it was coming down with a bit more intensity.  You could see that vehicles had taken on some decent accumulations from the day’s snowfall up to that point.

My ski tour was over in the Holden’s Hollow area, and my initial descent was down through some of the C Bear Woods and Holden’s Hollow West Side Glades that I’ve hit many times before.  Based on Friday’s tour, the sweet spot for best turns based on the depth and consistency of the powder seemed to be those mid-angle slopes, so that’s what I was seeking out.  I was touring at relatively low elevation in the 2,000’ to 2,500’ range, and depth measurements revealed a similar 8 to 10” of powder.  That surface snow was bolstered a bit by what was falling, but the liquid equivalent from that snow was only about a tenth of an inch, so it wasn’t a major addition.  Those mid-angle slopes delivered once again though, with generally bottomless turns on 115 mm skis.  I mixed things up a bit on the tour to explore some new terrain and continued my descent on the back side of the ridge down below the Telemark trail to the Maple Loop area.  I then joined back on to a lower part of the Telemark trail and looped back around to the Holden’s Hollow area again to finish off with a front side descent.

Although temperatures weren’t supposed to be all that different from what they were on Friday, I think they were a few degrees warmer, and with the absence of those 30 to 50 MPH winds, the difference was dramatic.  The air was quite calm while I was touring, and the snow was falling straight down, so the overall conditions were just much more comfortable and easy to handle.

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14 hours ago, wxeyeNH said:

3.25" of fluff between yesterday and today.  That brings me to 62.25" on the season.  My average is around 80" or so.  Not bad, the December storm of 19" really pushed up my total.  

Lots of possibilities looking forward but with warmer air the mix comes into the equation.  

Only 0.4" here but it finished with nice dendrites that really sparkled this morning.  Now at 65.3" which is an inch BN for season to date.  The 22" dump in Dec pushed the yearly average to 88.6".  Feb will finish well BN even if we get 6"+ tomorrow - currently at 9.8" while avg is 22 - but early March offers some good prospects.  :D

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Yesterday had been looking like a good ski day for quite a while.  The cold air was moving out to bring our temperatures back up into the 20s F, and low pressure from the Ontario/Quebec border passing southeast across our region looked to bring us more fresh snow.  The models had been showing a nice shot of liquid equivalent coming into the area, and it seemed to hold some potential for a good topping off of the current powder that’s out there.

I was working on some exam questions in the early morning in my home office and had the blinds closed, but I eventually finished off a section and decided to take a break.  I opened the blinds to find that we were getting hit with heavy snowfall made up of some massive flakes that were nearly 2 inches across at times.  The forecast did call for some snow starting around 10:00 A.M., but this was a bit early, and the intensity was impressive.  A quick measurement out back revealed that the snow was falling at a rate of around 2”/hr., and it was stacking up fast and dry with that typical consistency of upslope champagne.

For yesterday’s ski session, the plan was to head out with my younger son and his friends, and there’s nothing like seeing the heavy snow pounding outside your window to kick the mood up a notch.  I didn’t wake my son up immediately because I wanted to make sure he had the sleep he needed, but when I did check on him a bit later it turned out he’d been up anyway.  He hadn’t opened his blinds, but he’d already gotten a text and picture from one of his ski friends; the same huge flakes had been pounding down at his place as well.

With the new snow not coming in until mid-morning, we’d planned on a late morning start up at Bolton.  That timing worked out well, because they’d already picked up a few additional inches from the intense snowfall.  And, the snow that had just fallen was the perfect consistency to top off all the powder that was already out there – my morning liquid analyses from the house revealed that the snow came in at just 1 to 2% H2O.  So, it was incredibly dry and set up some excellent right-side-up, bottomless powder skiing.

I had a tour planned that brought the boys around to some of the lesser used areas of the resort, so they had a great time and got to ski plenty of untracked powder.  I’d say powder depths we encountered were generally in the range of about a foot, and there’s well over an inch of liquid equivalent in that surface snow now.  With the new champagne on top, it skied quite well and was typically bottomless in the case of first tracks.  You’re still hitting bottom at times on the steepest slopes, but that old base is becoming more and more distant with every one of these storms comes through the area.  On that note, it appears as though we’ve got another storm cycle on the doorstep for tonight into tomorrow.

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