NNE Cold Season Thread 2025-2026

[mahk_webstah]

1 hour ago, dendrite said:

Hey Gene…can you vouch for a wildlife rehabilitator in our area? I found a squirrel in my road that was hit, but still alive. The only visible sign of injury is a little blood on a rear foot, but it isn’t really moving anything from the waist down except a slight movement of the other leg a few times. Upper half looks good. I have it in a box in the basement right now.

The closest one (Henniker) has some iffy reviews. 

This may be the person you’re referring to in Henniker, but we had a sick heron on our property about 10 years ago and we took it to her and about two weeks later we picked the bird up completely rehab and re-released it on our pond. She was great at least with our bird. But I think she specializes in birds And I don’t know her name.

[tamarack]

3 hours ago, dendrite said:

Hey Gene…can you vouch for a wildlife rehabilitator in our area? I found a squirrel in my road that was hit, but still alive. The only visible sign of injury is a little blood on a rear foot, but it isn’t really moving anything from the waist down except a slight movement of the other leg a few times. Upper half looks good. I have it in a box in the basement right now.

The closest one (Henniker) has some iffy reviews. 

If you can get the NH version of North Woods Law (much more numerous than the Maine ones), every 2-3 episodes you would probably see a warden/rehab contact.  Almost all have a happy ending, though one cannot know which contacts get onto the show.  The NH Warden Service could likely point you to rehabber locations.
 

A Trace is just snow falling and either melting on contact or less than anything measurable. So yes, you had that, but nothing measurable yet.

I've had up to 0.3" of wispy snow that melted out to less than 0.005", thus a trace.  Not common and it looks odd, but I've not found a better way to report.

Edit:  Moved the snowblower out of the shed and set out the snow stake.  Hope that doesn't scare off Sunday's event.

[dendrite]

Update…thanks everyone, but it just died. It must’ve had some bad lower internal injuries. I had it in a box for a few hours and it didn’t pee or poop once. I put it back out into the woods to reenter the circle of life.

[Boston Bulldog]

Robust 850mb vortmax about to collide with the spine.

Solid upward tick in BTV accumulation forecasts for tomorrow. 5-9” on the point and clicks for favored summits during the daytime period

[wxeyeNH]

3 hours ago, dendrite said:

Update…thanks everyone, but it just died. It must’ve had some bad lower internal injuries. I had it in a box for a few hours and it didn’t pee or poop once. I put it back out into the woods to reenter the circle of life.

Brian,  I just saw this post.  Sorry.  I would have not been able to have helped you anyhow, as i don't know any rehab people.   I hate to see animals suffer.  Last month I had to drive to PA and on the interstate a hawk flew right in front of the car into the grill.  I still think about that.

 

[powderfreak]

Snowy evening.

Radar looks like J.Spin and Waterbury has been under the best banding so far.

RT 108 cam up by the base of Stowe.

RT 100 on the Waterbury/Stowe line.

RT 105 in Jay.

[alex]

35 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Snowy evening.

Radar looks like J.Spin and Waterbury has been under the best banding so far.

RT 108 cam up by the base of Stowe.

RT 100 on the Waterbury/Stowe line.

RT 105 in Jay.

Another snowy evening here too. About 3/4” fresh snow since this evening. 

[WxWatcher007]

Very cool to be holding at 32° pretty much the entire event. Never mixed. Once the sun set we picked up a quick half inch. For now the precip remains focused on the region. 

 

[alex]

10 hours ago, WxWatcher007 said:

Very cool to be holding at 32° pretty much the entire event. Never mixed. Once the sun set we picked up a quick half inch. For now the precip remains focused on the region. 

 

Same here - we’ve been stuck at 31.8 with light snow. Looks great though! 

[J.Spin]

On 11/11/2025 at 1:19 PM, J.Spin said:

I had time for a quick ski tour up at Bolton today, so I can pass along a bit of beta with regard to this latest storm and conditions. I’d seen that with the warm front end of this storm, the snow had melted out in the lower elevations of the mountain, so the depths that are there now in the roughly 2,000’-2,500’ range are only from this latest event. Seeing that Jay Peak webcam image above that you posted, I’d say Bolton got hit just a bit better as you surmised – it’s probably similar to what Smugg’s saw. Here’s the elevation-based snow depth profile I observed this morning in the Bolton Valley area:

340’: 4”

500’: 4”

1,000’: 4”

1,200: 4”

1,500’: 4-5”

2,000’: 4-6”

2,500’: 4-6”

2,700’: 5-8”

You can see what a weird snow depth profile that is compared to the usual – the snow depth even in the Village at ~2,000’ is basically that same as it is at 340’ at the base of the Bolton Valley Access Road or at our house at ~500’. I only had time to tour up to ~2,700’ this morning, but the snow depths don’t really start to increase until you get above ~2,500’ into the elevations that have pre-existing snowpack, so it looks like the snow accumulations from the front end of this system were pretty consistent over quite a broad range of elevations.

In terms of the quality of the turns, today was more like the skiing from the Halloween/November 1^st system vs. the much higher quality turns from the November 5^th system. This snow was drier than the Halloween/November 1^st system, so it skied better in that regard, but going with meadow skipping terrain was definitely the optimal choice for fun turns. The number of folks that I saw out touring today at the resort wasn’t outrageous – the top tier of Bolton’s Village parking area was ~1/3 full, but you could tell the ski touring activity was a bit livelier than the past couple of systems with the way the lower valleys got in some substantial accumulations.

I’ll put together a bit more of a report with a few photos as soon as I get a chance.

I’ve had a chance to put together a few shots from Tuesday’s outing for that interesting storm that hit the lower valleys just about as much as the mountains, so I figured I’d follow up with those. I don’t think there are any major updates I need to make to my text report, except that I do recall there was a bit of a crust in the snowpack due to some mixed precipitation that fell at some point during the event. Thankfully, it was an interior layer because new snow had fallen on top of it, so it didn’t derail the turns like it might have had it been a surface crust.

Any mixed precipitation is really buried now though – as PF noted, our current storm lit up the mountains last night with some very potent accumulations. I’ll report on that as soon as I can put some material together.

[J.Spin]

Our current winter storm began affecting the area yesterday, and it’s been hitting us with a decent stream of moisture in the form of snow and some rain/snow in the lower elevations. We picked up less than an inch of additional snow overnight at our site in the Winooski Valley, and the total precipitation Id recorded from the event was less than ¼” as of this morning’s CoCoRaHS submission. So, I had no idea that we’d been clobbered with snow in the higher elevations until I saw PF’s post of the accumulation at the Stowe snow cam. I immediately checked the Bolton Valley Base Area Webcam, and although I couldn’t get a good sense for how much snow had fallen there, the scene was solidly white, and in general if Stowe has done well with snowfall, then Bolton Valley has seen something similar.

Snow cover was getting patchy this morning in many of the lower valleys, with marginal temperatures and a wet snow/rain mix, and that’s the way things stood at the base of the Bolton Valley Access Road when I headed up. Snow depths really started to pick up above 1,000’ though, and I found 6-9” of snow at the Timberline Base at 1,500’. Up in the Village at 2,000’, snow depths were in the 10-14” range, and there was steady moderate to heavy snowfall.

I was able to tour up to the Wilderness Summit at ~3,150’, where I measured total snow depths in the 15-24” range. That’s not all from this current system of course, but with the existing snowpack below and this fresh snow on top, it’s set up some very nice skiing. Steep terrain is certainly in play with the amount of snow out there right now, and Bolton Outlaw was in really good shape. I was on mid-fats, since I wasn’t sure of how much snow there was going to be, but if I’d known just how much was out there, and how good the coverage was in general, I would have gone with fatter skis. At least on piste as of this morning, fats were the way to go. The powder out there isn’t quite as dry as what fell from the November 5^th storm, but the quality is quite good, and it has a lot of substance to it. With underlying base in place and this new medium to high density snow on top of it, there is absolutely some great coverage out there.

Below is the total snow depth profile I observed this morning for various elevations in the Bolton Valley area. As usual, it’s getting harder to probe the full depth of the snow in the higher elevations where the snowpack is becoming more consolidated.

340’: T-2””

500’: 1-2”

1,000’: 2-4”

1,500’: 6-9”

2,000’: 10-14”

2,500’: 12-15”

3,000’: 15-24”

It should be interesting to see where the snowpack depth comes in with the next update from the Mt. Mansfield Stake. This system looks like it should continue to deliver snow right through the end of the week, with 8-14” of additional snow shown in the forecasts. And, temperatures are expected to cool down a bit and bring snow levels back down to the lower valleys, so if the snow density drops it could set up some excellent right-side-up powder conditions.

[J.Spin]

[WxWatcher007]

1 hour ago, alex said:

It just keeps coming… 

 

 

Lovely. Not nearly as snowy here, but I already feel like this might be a winter to remember for me now that I'm at some elevation for the first time. 

[alex]

42 minutes ago, WxWatcher007 said:

Lovely. Not nearly as snowy here, but I already feel like this might be a winter to remember for me now that I'm at some elevation for the first time. 

Enjoy it! Moving to the mountains has been the best decision in my life. Or at least one of the best

[WxWatcher007]

Day four of snow here.

32.0°

[mreaves]

When it’s clear, we can see the spine from Mansfield to Jay Peak from the porch of camp. 

[WxWatcher007]

Today was not supposed to be this snowy. Just a glorious afternoon.

 

 

[Ginx snewx]

3 minutes ago, WxWatcher007 said:

Today was not supposed to be this snowy. Just a glorious afternoon.

 

 

Love it

[bwt3650]

Next week is setting up to be another incredible upslope week. Just really starting to enter unprecedented territory for this time of year in the northern greens. From a skier prospective, it looks like a big have vs. have nots in vt. The difference in the totals for the jay/stowe/smuggs/bolton corridor vs. killington south looks dramatic.


.

[powderfreak]

48 minutes ago, bwt3650 said:

Next week is setting up to be another incredible upslope week. Just really starting to enter unprecedented territory for this time of year in the northern greens. From a skier prospective, it looks like a big have vs. have nots in vt. The difference in the totals for the jay/stowe/smuggs/bolton corridor vs. killington south looks dramatic.


.

It’s true. This Saturday night event will wreck the surface but it’s going to be minimal melt, if at all, and will only lock the snowpack up tight.  Then another 6-10” upslope over two days?

The snowpack is bomber.

The ol JSpin pole depth check on a 50” ski pole.  Couple feet of base on Chin Clip?  I’ve seen this trail open on a lot worse coverage ha.  

[Ginx snewx]

5 hours ago, powderfreak said:

It’s true. This Saturday night event will wreck the surface but it’s going to be minimal melt, if at all, and will only lock the snowpack up tight.  Then another 6-10” upslope over two days?

The snowpack is bomber.

The ol JSpin pole depth check on a 50” ski pole.  Couple feet of base on Chin Clip?  I’ve seen this trail open on a lot worse coverage ha.  

Chin clip lol. Let's just say the girls we were with weren't the best skiers and were not happy when we led them to an icy Chin Clip. They made it unscathed 

[powderfreak]

Mansfield summit depth record highest shows 30" on Monday and Tuesday, with 33" on Wednesday, 28" on Thursday, and 30" on Friday.

All of those could be in jeopardy.  A record breaking week of snow depths?

[Ginx snewx]

33 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Mansfield summit depth record highest shows 30" on Monday and Tuesday, with 33" on Wednesday, 28" on Thursday, and 30" on Friday.

All of those could be in jeopardy.  A record breaking week of snow depths?

 

[WxWatcher007]

 

Big few days incoming for the slopes 

[J.Spin]

On 11/14/2025 at 5:13 PM, bwt3650 said:

Next week is setting up to be another incredible upslope week. Just really starting to enter unprecedented territory for this time of year in the northern greens.

 

On 11/14/2025 at 5:52 PM, powderfreak said:

It’s true. This Saturday night event will wreck the surface but it’s going to be minimal melt, if at all, and will only lock the snowpack up tight.  Then another 6-10” upslope over two days?

The snowpack is bomber.

 

10 hours ago, powderfreak said:

Mansfield summit depth record highest shows 30" on Monday and Tuesday, with 33" on Wednesday, 28" on Thursday, and 30" on Friday.

All of those could be in jeopardy.  A record breaking week of snow depths?

 

4 hours ago, WxWatcher007 said:

 

Big few days incoming for the slopes 

I guess folks weren’t kidding about the potential for some additional snow. We were under a Winter Weather Advisory for the front end of this system, but I woke up to find that we’re now under a Winter Storm Warning as the storm continues. Even in the valley here, the BTV NWS point forecast suggests the potential for 6-12”+. Current maps from the BTV NWS are below, and it looks like they reeled in those areas of darker red 24-30” shading in the updated version of the Event Total Snow Accumulation map, but there are still substantial areas of 18-24” shading.

[J.Spin]

16 hours ago, powderfreak said:

Mansfield summit depth record highest shows 30" on Monday and Tuesday, with 33" on Wednesday, 28" on Thursday, and 30" on Friday.

All of those could be in jeopardy.  A record breaking week of snow depths?

I haven’t done a valley snowfall update yet this season, but now that we’ve reached the middle of the month and the snows have been rolling along well in both the mountains and the valleys, it’s probably a decent time. Last season was certainly solid as a whole with over 200” of snow here in the valley, but November was actually one of the weak spots, at least in the lower elevations. We only had 4” of snow (the lowest November snowfall total in almost 10 years), which is well below average, and most of it came at the end of the month as we were moving into December (you can see how the blue line in the plot below compares to the dotted white line for average snowfall progression). This season (orange line in the plot is off to a solid, above-average start, but up to this point it hasn’t been in the league of seasons like 2019-2020 or 2020-2021.

The valley snows this season did seem to hit quick and hard (I hadn’t even finished blowing the last few leaves off the lawn or put out the driveway marker poles), so I was curious to see where we stood with respect to snowpack. The current snowpack started up on the 11^th of the month, which is on the early side, so I wondered where it would sit if it were to persist into the winter. It turns out that if it does persist, it wouldn’t be a record, since the continuous winter snowpack for the 2019-2020 season started on November 8^th, and even the 2018-2019 season snowpack started on November 10^th. The past five seasons have had more typical/average snowpack starts at the end of November/beginning of December, which probably gives the early feeling to this season.

Part of what’s helped jumpstart this season was simply being in that zonal flow for a while this month with modest storms/clippers passing through the area. And it looks like temperatures for Morrisville have come in right around average for the first half of the month (departure of -0.1 F), which shows that even average November temperatures can produce some decent snows for both the mountains and the valleys. That got me thinking about the weather patterns around here. More and more, I’m seeing the value of these zonal patterns with respect to getting, and more importantly, keeping snow and retaining snow quality. Every year it becomes more apparent that highly amplified patterns are just so much riskier – you basically have this narrow window/slot of storm tracks where you can get some big storms, and an average of 50% of the time you risk a storm passing to the west and putting the area in the warm sector and damaging the snowpack. The discussions around here so often cast “zonal flow” as bad, annoying, unwanted, whatever, but if zonal/average flow is not good, then that’s essentially saying “average” weather is not good. That’s a scary statement with respect to an area’s winter/snow climatology if even “average” isn’t good enough – it would suggest that only a subset of weather patterns (probably well under 50%) are going to be decent, and more often than not you’re really just going to end up with something else.

[qg_omega]

November to Remember

[J.Spin]

PF has done a fantastic job of keeping everyone apprised of the snow conditions at Stowe, so for yesterday’s ski tour my wife and I decided to mix it up a bit and head to mighty Mt. Mansfield. On the approach to the resort, we found spotty snow cover in the valleys building to roughly 12-15” of snow at 1,640’ at the Midway Lodge. Yesterday was a simply beautiful November day, with temperatures a bit below freezing, little to no wind, and some peeks of sun to keep it bright and create excellent views but not throw out so much sun that it substantially affected the quality of the snow.

Plenty of skiers and other winter enthusiasts were around at the resort as they took the opportunity to get out and enjoy the snow, but crowds certainly weren’t crazy – I didn’t see many cars in the Mansfield lot, and the Gondola parking lots certainly weren’t full. There were plenty of established skin tracks on the Gondola terrain, and there were typically double and triple tracks available. So it was very easy to ascend side-by-side and enjoy conversations, and you could conveniently pass people or let them pass you if need be.

Snow depth increased to over 20” as we ascended, and the snow was substantial enough that it provided both excellent base snow and surface powder for skiing. I’d say it was denser snow overall than what we had back from that storm on the 5^th, but the powder skiing was still quite good. We found that the snow did get a touch denser below 2,000’, so you had to be on top of your turns a little more in those elevations as you finished the descent. My younger son was going to head to Bolton for a tour yesterday, but I suggested that he pop over to Mansfield instead, since Stowe isn’t open for the season yet and it’s an excellent time to get in some turns there. We were able to meet up with him and a friend at the start of their tour, just as we were finishing ours. I passed along the info what we’d encountered with respect to snow conditions, and he said they had an excellent tour with some great turns that even brought them into the trees.

[J.Spin]