NNE Cold Season Thread 2025-2026

[tamarack]

We have 10 feet of gutter.  It's on the front porch, which is open to the air, and over the front steps.  It limits the drip/freeze on the steps, but thaws/freezes do fill it with ice.

October here was 1.8° AN and November is currently running 2.0° BN.  The November departure will likely be less but will almost certainly stay BN.  In 27 snow seasons, 6 have had AN Octobers and BN Novembers.  All 6 had AN snow, ranging 90.4" to 142.3", and the average of 108.5" is exactly 20.0" above the current average.  

[wokeupthisam]

6 hours ago, WxWatcher007 said:

This is all very helpful. We're closing in a couple days and we've been wondering whether we should get gutters or not. I don't want to spend thousands on something that's going to get ripped down in two years. Sounds like more insulation may be the better investment for now at least. 

I have a c1795 house, replaced shingled roof with all metal in fall of 2021. and I'm having gutters installed all around.  With the right (strong) debris filter included and stout anchors, the better installers can mitigate risk of sliding snow or ice even with metal roofing. It's not just about driplines, I've replaced half a dozen sills on windows, two doors needed new thresholds and trim, and multiple clapboards - all due to water damage from years of 'splash-up' water coming off the roof.  In a strong downpour there's no way to avoid this damage without gutters catching the water up high.  It WILL rot any wood that it contacts, and it doesn't take long.  If you value your sills, including sill plates of your foundation, unless they're pressure treated or vinyl/plastic - get gutters.  If you don't, your doors, trim, and sills will eventually fall prey to water splashing up from a dripline - even mulch or crushed stone won't eliminate it in a heavy downpour.

 

[J.Spin]

I was last out on the mountain for turns on Thursday, and the powder from our early week storm was holding up well. There had certainly been some consolidation of the snowpack, with sunny areas seeing the effects more than shaded areas, but the general consistency of the snow was dry, and there was no melt layer or melt crust.

A couple days have passed now, and we haven’t had much in terms of new snowfall. High temperatures in the mountain valleys have remained in the 30s F, but the lower elevations have definitely been above freezing, and the snow has seen some thaw-freeze cycles. I didn’t know how high the freezing line had gone and how the snow quality might have been affected in the mountains, but I figured I’d head up for a ski tour today and check it out.

I decided to tour at Timberline as I’d done on Thursday, which would give me a good point of comparison with respect to changes in the snow. From today’s tour I can say that the freezing line has definitely been above 1,500’ on the western slopes, and even above 2,000’. The snow hasn’t consolidated much more from where it was on Thursday, but the above-freezing temperatures have definitely degraded the quality of the snow. Even shaded areas have a melt layer in the top few inches of the snowpack, so you’re not dealing with fluffy, right-side-up powder skiing. Thankfully the humidity has been relatively low, so the melt layer has a spongey consistency instead of being a refrozen aggregate. I’d still recommend alpine fat skis with some decent rocker or a snowboard as the best riding tools. The powder is a bit upside down now with that melt layer on top and drier snow below, but shaded snow is still reasonably surfy if you’re on a nice big platform that can ride up in the higher areas of the snowpack. I was on my 115 mm Telemark boards, but I made only a few Telemark turns – I stuck with alpine turns for the most part because the more consolidated platform and tighter stance was a much better fit for those snow conditions. As long as you have the appropriate tools on your feet and stick to untracked areas of snow, you can get some decently surfy turns. Tracked or packed areas of snow aren’t offering up great turns right now – the snow there has consolidated enough that it’s just bumpy terrain and you’ll get tossed around for a much rougher ride. At least in those lower elevations, we’ll need a decent storm to get back to fluffy powder conditions.

Today was supposed to be fairly benign with respect to the weather, but in true Northern Greens form, as soon as I started gearing up at the Timberline Base, a snow squall moved in and pounded us with heavy snow/graupel and reduced visibility for several minutes. It was nothing that resulted in substantial accumulations, but it was a definite reminder from Mother Nature that she’s there. In their early morning forecast discussion, the BTV NWS mentioned two areas of weather interest for today passing to our north and south, leaving us in “no man`s land” with no active weather, but in later updates they noted that there was going to be plentiful cloud cover across much of the region in the afternoon as an upper-level shortwave passed through and supported cold air advection and snow showers. We even picked up accumulating snow down at our place in the valley, so there was definitely some wintry weather out there, even during this relative snowfall lull.

Bolton’s planned opening day was the 28^th, but in the spirit of all the November snow we’re received, they started the lift-served season today. Lift Operations Manager Scott Beasley and President/CEO Lindsay DesLauriers made a fun social media post on Thursday to break the news to the community. They’re only running the Mid Mountain Chair and the Mighty Mite at this point, but since I was up at the mountain anyway and had to hit the main base to take care of some passholder stuff, I figured I’d stop in for a few lift-served turns. Conditions were fine, with a mix of manmade and natural snow, but with manmade snow in the mix, there were certainly some firmer areas. You can tell it was a bit of an impromptu opening since they hadn’t full groomed the Bear Run route, but that left some fun contours on the terrain and made it even more interesting. The highest elevation I reached today was up to Mid Mountain at 2,500’, but even at that elevation, you could see that the snow had been affected by the temperatures, so you really have to go higher than that to find pristine winter snow at this point. The resort was bustling though, so it’s great to see them get off to a great start. I heard that they expect to open the Vista Quad Chair for next weekend, which is their original planned opening date.

[J.Spin]

On 11/21/2025 at 6:44 PM, WxWatcher007 said:

Models converging on a little clipper moving through the area Sunday-Monday.

That system is on our doorstep now, so we should have a decent sense for potential accumulations. The latest BTV NWS forecast discussion that mentioned accumulations was from earlier this morning:

 Area Forecast Discussion

National Weather Service Burlington VT

1251 AM EST Sun Nov 23, 2025

 .NEAR TERM /THROUGH MONDAY/...

Total accumulations will be relatively light, mainly 2 inches or less, with the highest accumulations above 1500 ft. The summits could pick up 3 to 5 inches during this time frame.

 On their most recent maps for expected snowfall, it looks like projections are for 4-6” in the higher elevations, and 1-2” in the mountain valleys, so that seems to jive with the forecast:

 

 As I mentioned in my report from yesterday, the mountains could use a refresher to bump the powder conditions up a couple of notches, and it’s always nice to cover up some of the open areas in the valleys as well. This event certainly won’t be a full resurfacing event for the slopes, but the models generally suggest something on the 0.1”-0.3” of liquid equivalent for the mountains (with the 3K NAM being up there >0.5”, which is typically exaggerated as PF has been noting).

 It looks like snow chances will start to pick up a bit more as we go forward with the GFS showing 6-7 systems through the course of the latest deterministic run.:

 Sun-Mon: Clipper

Wed-Thu: System heading into northern Ontario/Quebec

Thu-Sun: Cold Front/LES

Mon-Tue: Snow/Mix/Rain

Tue-Fri: Rain to snow

 After that there are a couple more systems into the first week of December, but that’s way out there in the modeling of course. In any event, many of the systems have some rain potential, but lots of frontside/backside snow potential as well.