NNE Cold Season Thread 2024-2025

[powderfreak]

14 hours ago, Boston Bulldog said:

Couldn’t recall if that stat was just a single station or the whole state. I thought whole state, but the anomaly would be crazy high for such a large area. I’m assuming this is BTV or Morristown now that I’m thinking of it.

Insane statistic regardless, and pretty surprising that snowfall numbers were still pretty good up high. Lots of elevation dependent events that year

What's interesting though is that it is still plenty cold enough to snow at those departures.  It gets close, but it's just cold enough in the MVL climate.

Dec '23... +7.8 (37/24, mean temp of 31F)

Jan '24... +8.1  (30/17, mean temp of 23F)

Feb '24... +8.4 (37/15, mean temp of 26F)

Average... +8.1

So despite being +8... the climate is such that it is still salvageable for snowfall as the mean temps are all below freezing.  What's crazy to me is a +8 in January is still a solid 30/17 month that averages out well below freezing.

Add in elevation and the mountains are certainly still cold enough for snowfall even at those departures.  However, I go look at BTV, which was averaging around +6 to +7 during that time, and their mean temperatures show a more difficult to snow profile.  Which likely fits with a sharper low level gradient that winter.

[mreaves]

1 hour ago, powderfreak said:

What's interesting though is that it is still plenty cold enough to snow at those departures.  It gets close, but it's just cold enough in the MVL climate.

Which made these winters exceedingly awful from a winter sports perspective, aside from skiing at a resort with good snowmaking.  The pack would repeatedly get wiped or severely reduced.  The ground never froze and ice was sketchy on the lakes and ponds.

[J.Spin]

On 6/26/2025 at 1:34 PM, J.Spin said:

-As mreaves noted, the depth of the winter snowpack was on the low side, however. The maximum snow depth at our site for that season was 16.0” vs. a mean of 26.4”, and the 768 snow depth days was about half of average. So at least in the lower valleys in our area, the winter snowpack was present for a typical duration, but its depth didn’t seem to be as robust as usual.

If the results above really came from a +7-8 F December through February period, that potentially bodes well in a warming climate though. If the lowest valleys can pull off a decent season in that situation, then the mountains should have no problem doing that with even greater temperature anomalies. Jay Peak reported 369” of snowfall for the 2023-2024 season, so it was similar to our site with respect to running about average.

 

On 6/26/2025 at 2:03 PM, powderfreak said:

What's interesting though is that it is still plenty cold enough to snow at those departures.  It gets close, but it's just cold enough in the MVL climate.

Dec '23... +7.8 (37/24, mean temp of 31F)

Jan '24... +8.1  (30/17, mean temp of 23F)

Feb '24... +8.4 (37/15, mean temp of 26F)

Average... +8.1

So despite being +8... the climate is such that it is still salvageable for snowfall as the mean temps are all below freezing.  What's crazy to me is a +8 in January is still a solid 30/17 month that averages out well below freezing.

Add in elevation and the mountains are certainly still cold enough for snowfall even at those departures.  However, I go look at BTV, which was averaging around +6 to +7 during that time, and their mean temperatures show a more difficult to snow profile.  Which likely fits with a sharper low level gradient that winter.

 

On 6/26/2025 at 3:12 PM, mreaves said:

Which made these winters exceedingly awful from a winter sports perspective, aside from skiing at a resort with good snowmaking.  The pack would repeatedly get wiped or severely reduced.  The ground never froze and ice was sketchy on the lakes and ponds.

The data I’ve seen indicate that snowfall was decent at most low and high elevation sites around here for the 2023-2024 season, and it looks like it was just the valley snowpack that was on the lean side. The 2023-2024 mountain snowpack appears to be fine based on the Mt. Mansfield Snow Stake data. The black lines on the plot below are for the average snowpack depths and the 2023-2024 snowpack depths, and the red line is for the data from the current season. The 2023-2024 data certainly has its ups and downs, but it comes out pretty close to the average overall. At least for the Northern Greens, it wasn’t really the snowmaking that made it a decent ski season (snowmaking only covers a tiny fraction of a resort’s total terrain anyway, so it can’t really turn an awful season into a good one). In this case it seems that there was sufficient natural snowfall and snow preservation to make for a decent mountain snowpack, which goes along with that additional elevation temperature buffer that PF mentions.

[Boston Bulldog]

On 6/27/2025 at 10:59 AM, J.Spin said:

 

 

The data I’ve seen indicate that snowfall was decent at most low and high elevation sites around here for the 2023-2024 season, and it looks like it was just the valley snowpack that was on the lean side. The 2023-2024 mountain snowpack appears to be fine based on the Mt. Mansfield Snow Stake data. The black lines on the plot below are for the average snowpack depths and the 2023-2024 snowpack depths, and the red line is for the data from the current season. The 2023-2024 data certainly has its ups and downs, but it comes out pretty close to the average overall. At least for the Northern Greens, it wasn’t really the snowmaking that made it a decent ski season (snowmaking only covers a tiny fraction of a resort’s total terrain anyway, so it can’t really turn an awful season into a good one). In this case it seems that there was sufficient natural snowfall and snow preservation to make for a decent mountain snowpack, which goes along with that additional elevation temperature buffer that PF mentions.

What a bizarre winter that was, an incredble hot start wiped out by an insane cutter. The meltout in early March felt like armageddon for the ski season and then boom a huge finish with three high elevation bombs (and an eclipse). I don't think we do as well the next time we pull a +8.1, hopefully that's not for a very long time.

 

[J.Spin]

19 hours ago, Boston Bulldog said:

What a bizarre winter that was, an incredble hot start wiped out by an insane cutter. The meltout in early March felt like armageddon for the ski season and then boom a huge finish with three high elevation bombs (and an eclipse). I don't think we do as well the next time we pull a +8.1, hopefully that's not for a very long time.

The winter/ski seasons all blur together for me, which I think is in part due to our climate here in the Northern Greens. While we certainly get memorable storms, the majority of the winter features day after day with light to moderate snowfall events, which don’t stand out as easily from one season to the next. In any case, it’s a good climate to maintain high-quality snow surfaces for skiing and riding, and it’s one of the reasons that I really like having the reports from my ski outings to refresh my memory for specific periods though.

I was curious about that strong start you mentioned for the 2023-2024 season, and indeed it does pop up on the plot for the Mt. Mansfield Stake data – the snowpack depth hitting 40 inches in the first half of December is a great place to be, and it quickly gets a lot of off-piste terrain in play.

I checked my snowfall numbers and saw that our site in the valley only picked up about a foot of snow in the first half of December, which is below average and certainly not a standout performance. After looking a little closer, I realized that November 2023 also brought us 20 inches of snow in the valley, and that was a big help in priming that great start to December. I hadn’t caught that the first big rise in the 2023-2024 snowpack plot is actually from the end of November, but I see in my data that we had 6 snowstorms in the valley in the last 10 days of the month. On my Bolton outing on the 28^th I measured the snowpack depth at 20” at 3,000’ and then on the 29^th it was up to 24”. The skiing was great even before the calendar hit December.

[J.Spin]

…and then December just continued to deliver.

[tamarack]

On 6/30/2025 at 10:57 PM, Boston Bulldog said:

What a bizarre winter that was, an incredble hot start wiped out by an insane cutter. The meltout in early March felt like armageddon for the ski season and then boom a huge finish with three high elevation bombs (and an eclipse). I don't think we do as well the next time we pull a +8.1, hopefully that's not for a very long time.

 

Snow season started great, with 8" paste T-Day night.  The 9.3" fell on 12/4-5, bring the pack to 15", tops here for the date.  Little did I know that the best was behind; that 4-5 event was the season's biggest and the remainder was mostly spent escaping from serious snowfalls.  After the nice 6.3" fluff on 12/24, we had only one event greater than 4".  No other winter here can claim that factiod.