NNE Cold Season Thread 2025-2026

[mreaves]

43 minutes ago, WxWatcher007 said:

Posting here instead of the main thread lol. 

It's frigid. This is man cold right here. It's 12 degrees and with the wind it's pretty rough out there. Of course, sunny with snow showers.

12.2/6 

The temp has been dropped all day.  We are at 15°/10.1° and its windy. 

[powderfreak]

December 11th and we have already measured roughly 33% of the seasonal snowfall at the Mt Mansfield plots.

I know I harp on this, but I think the measured part is important when comparing years.  If it’s not measured, but eyeballed, guessed, estimated… it’s hard to compare year to year.  It becomes more vibe based, than data based.

Both methods can tell a story, but this season being at 30+% of annual measured snow (in a controlled manner) is incredible to me… as someone who’s personally been involved in the process for almost 20 years now.

This isn’t a marketing ploy.  The various data points support it.

Last year at this time the FourRunner Quad had been running for exactly one week.  This year it’s been 3+ weeks of deep, skier supporting natural snowpack.

 

[WxWatcher007]

1 hour ago, powderfreak said:

December 11th and we have already measured roughly 33% of the seasonal snowfall at the Mt Mansfield plots.

I know I harp on this, but I think the measured part is important when comparing years.  If it’s not measured, but eyeballed, guessed, estimated… it’s hard to compare year to year.  It becomes more vibe based, than data based.

Both methods can tell a story, but this season being at 30+% of annual measured snow (in a controlled manner) is incredible to me… as someone who’s personally been involved in the process for almost 20 years now.

This isn’t a marketing ploy.  The various data points support it.

Last year at this time the FourRunner Quad had been running for exactly one week.  This year it’s been 3+ weeks of deep, skier supporting natural snowpack.

 

All the local folks I talk to say this start to winter has been wild. 

We're over 40" on the season now.

Hovering around 10 degrees with -SN. 

[WxWatcher007]

Another 2.1 overnight into this morning. I knew something good happened when I heard the plow this morning. 

-SN and 12.3 now. Next week might feel like summer given the pattern we've been in so far. 

[timp]

Hell of a way to start a winter! 15” the past three days and 42” on the season so far. Upslope crushed pretty good last night/this morning to the tune of an additional 8”. Almost 20” otg. 

[WxWatcher007]

Upslope snow is beautiful. I got another inch of powder here today. Dendrites stacked on one another. 

[powderfreak]

Mansfield stake goes over 5 feet and beats the previous earliest 60”+ depth by two weeks.

 

Skiing is all-time, just like the depths.

[J.Spin]

As of yesterday morning, we’d already picked up 7 to 8 inches of snow in the valley from our most recent clipper, and Bolton Valley was reporting 8 inches in the past 48 hours. So, consistent with what PF had mentioned, it didn’t seem like there wasn’t a huge elevation gradient for accumulations up to that point in the storm.

We were actually in a snowfall lull at that point – the front side of the storm had wound down, but the back side precipitation was quickly moving into the area. Indeed, as I ascended the Bolton Valley Access Road in the morning, I drove right up into heavy snowfall as the first bands of snow from the back side of the storm were hitting the mountain. I geared up for a tour at the Timberline Base amidst huge flakes of snow falling in the range of 1 to 2 inches/hour. Clothing and gear were getting covered so fast that I was constantly having to shake off the snow.

During my previous outing on Monday, I’d found powder depths of roughly 8-12” around 1,500’ at the Timberline Base and 12-16” up near the 2,500’ level. Yesterday I’d say you could tack on a couple more inches to those general powder depths. Even though a lot more snow fell than that, my liquid analyses revealed that we had a solid period of 10-11% H2O snow during the day on Wednesday with all those small flakes, so that would have compressed the existing powder a bit. Fortunately, the density of the snow had dropped down to around 5-6% H2O by Wednesday night, so if there had been any perturbing of the powder grading with that denser snow, it had been largely restored by Thursday morning. Coinciding with that denser snow that fell Wednesday, this most recent storm did have the advantage of bringing more liquid equivalent to the snowpack. Whereas our previous Clipper brough a bit more than a quarter of an inch of liquid equivalent here at our site, this one had already brough a half inch as of yesterday morning, which would likely mean that between a half inch and an inch of liquid equivalent fell in the mountains.

So although the powder skiing yesterday wasn’t quite as light and airy as it was on Monday, it was still right-side-up, and the added liquid equivalent more than made up for it with the ability to charge a bit harder on steeper terrain.

[Boston Bulldog]

I think Jankoski typically does a pretty good job (if a but optimistic) for forecasting amounts along the spine. I will say, I do not see any support for this 4-8” call at MRG! Hoping he’s right though

[NW_of_GYX]

The east facing ravines on mt. Washington are a month ahead of schedule. The whites don’t do snow like the northern greens buts it’s a been a great start to the season in the presidential range. Photo from today. Notice the big crown lines from a natural avalanche cycle that occurred sometime in the last 24 hours




.

[J.Spin]

As of yesterday morning, Bolton Valley was reporting 14 inches of new snow from our latest clipper system, and 2 feet total for the week up to that point, so another visit to the mountain seemed in order. Being an early season Friday, I expected the usual spattering of early season visitors at the resort, but I was quite surprised when I arrived at the Village to find a multitude of cars – I wound up parking down in the 4^th tier of the main parking lots. As I made my way toward the base of Wilderness to start my ski tour, I realized why all the visitors were at the mountain – the Wilderness Chair was running! I hadn’t checked the snow report that morning, but apparently along with the Vista Quad terrain the resort was running the Wilderness terrain on 100% natural snow. That’s certainly a sign of how thing early season has gone thus far – to have the entirety of Wilderness open for lift-served skiing before even hitting the middle of December is definitely ahead of the usual seasonal progression.

I quickly shifted gears and decided to tour on the Backcountry Network. Based on my visits to the mountain so far this season, it was obvious that the backcountry had been skiable for quite some time, but this was my first chance to really see how the terrain was doing with the current snowpack. I wasn’t sure how far I was going to go, but I started up the Bryant Trail, and before I knew it I was at the Bryant Cabin. I made a descent in some of the untracked terrain between JJ’s and Big Blue, then switched over to Coyote and finished with some of the lower glades. Despite all the visitors to the resort, it was clear that the new lift-served offerings were the big draw – I saw very few people while I was out on the Backcountry Network, and untracked snow was a very plentiful commodity. Although not as intense as what I experienced on Friday, light to moderate snow was falling during my tour, so the snowpack just continues to get topped off with fresh coatings.

In term of describing the snow and ski conditions, you can pretty quickly run out of superlatives, but the numbers don’t lie. I toured in the 2,000’ – 2,700’ elevation range, and the untouched areas offer powder depths of 2 to 2½ feet atop the most recent subsurface layer. Based on the Mt. Mansfield Stake, the snowpack in the higher elevations of the Northern Greens has now topped 5 feet, so even for some of the steepest terrain, coverage is getting quite good. You can tell that the snowpack is still settling, so coverage isn’t quite the same as a snowpack of that depth that’s had a couple of months to settle and consolidate, but it’s pretty darned good for the first half of December.

On my way back to my car at the end of my tour, I was met by a Bolton Valley employee who was checking passes, and he was able to get me my backcountry tag for the season right there by electronically entering my pass information. The tags are yellow this year, and I’m not sure if it was just coincidence that I had my pass checked on my very first backcountry day, but it made me wonder if they are going to increase the vigilance on monitoring tickets on the Nordic & Backcountry Network this year. In any event, those who are heading out right now are definitely getting their money’s worth in terms of snowpack depths and snow quality.

[J.Spin]

My colleague Mark arrived at UVM yesterday for some work in the proteomics core, and after we spent the morning in the lab getting some samples ready for analysis, he was wondering if I wanted to head out for a backcountry tour at Bolton Valley. Mark is a big Nordic skier, but he also likes to get out for some Telemark skiing from time to time, and with current conditions around here, this was definitely one of those times. He knows Bolton’s Nordic terrain quite well, but I was more than happy to bring him on a fun tour through some of Bolton’s classic backcountry glades. I would probably have been heading out for an afternoon tour anyway, even if he hadn’t asked – the conditions are just so good right now that it’s simply a great time to get out for turns.

We headed up to Bryant Cabin as I’d done yesterday and took a slightly different descent that brought us through the Gotham City area and down to the Telemark Practice Slope. The resort was reporting another few inches of snow since yesterday’s snow report, so in terms of conditions, just tack on another few inches to the depths that were out there yesterday. We were still touring in the 2,000 – 2,700’ elevation range, and my depth checks on the powder were hitting 30 inches. Skiing in powder in that 2 to 3-foot range is definitely a different experience than your typical 1-foot powder day, and fat skis are undoubtedly your friend on days like these. Mark was on mid-fat boards with 85 mm at the waist, and they did fine, but he could see the benefits of having 100+ mm skis with more rocker for the depths of powder we were dealing with.

The weather was great today, with temperatures in the mid-20s F and light snow falling for much of the tour to keep that snowpack topped off. Being a Saturday, the Nordic & Backcountry Network was busier than yesterday, but there are still tons of untouched lines out there in most glades, and we’ve got another system affecting the area tonight that could add accumulations of another inch or two.

[Boston Bulldog]

On 12/13/2025 at 11:05 AM, Boston Bulldog said:

I think Jankoski typically does a pretty good job (if a but optimistic) for forecasting amounts along the spine. I will say, I do not see any support for this 4-8” call at MRG! Hoping he’s right though

You know what, it looks at least 4” has verified on the summit. And it’s nuking right now. And the rope just dropped on Paradise with knee deep powder. Touché Jankoski

[WxWatcher007]

We just had a legit wicked snow squall roll through. I couldn’t see more than 150ft ahead of me at one point. A quick .7”.

Taken right before all hell broke loose.

[backedgeapproaching]

Surprised to get 3.7" here, definitely fluff. Really nice snow growth. 13" OTG

 

[WxWatcher007]

-SN at 1.7°

[backedgeapproaching]

@WxWatcher007 why i dont have gutters, old house with crap insulation in attic = death icicles.

 

[mreaves]

27 minutes ago, backedgeapproaching said:

@WxWatcher007 why i dont have gutters, old house with crap insulation in attic = death icicles.

 

I've been raking the edges to minimize the icicles. It's a pita but I don't mind, it's al part of the clean up routine now.

[backedgeapproaching]

4 minutes ago, mreaves said:

I've been raking the edges to minimize the icicles. It's a pita but I don't mind, it's al part of the clean up routine now.

Yea, Im pretty bad at keeping up with that.  Some years I do a little better job, but this year I haven't done any roof raking so I have more ice dams.  

[WxWatcher007]

21 minutes ago, backedgeapproaching said:

@WxWatcher007 why i dont have gutters, old house with crap insulation in attic = death icicles.

 

We decided on gutters (I wanted to wait a year) but the insulation so far doesn’t seem to be too bad. We still need more though. I came across this monster downtown the other day.

[backedgeapproaching]

2 minutes ago, WxWatcher007 said:

We decided on gutters (I wanted to wait a year) but the insulation so far doesn’t seem to be too bad. We still need more though. I came across this monster downtown the other day.

Oh yea, that's a nice one..lol. 

[J.Spin]

The local mountains keep picking up a few inches of powder each day, so my older son and I headed up to Bolton Valley for a tour yesterday. We headed up to Bryant Cabin and did a slightly longer tour than the one I did on Saturday with my colleague who was visiting for work. There’s not much to add with respect to describing the fantastic conditions, since Mother Nature keeps the snow refills coming, that just about cancels out the settling of the powder, and the powder skiing stays great. Indeed, powder depths continue to top out around 30 inches in the 2,000-2,700’ range, and the main problem certainly isn’t in finding deep, dry, untracked powder, the bigger issue is often finding steep enough pitches to support the depth of all that snow.

[Lava Rock]

Oh yea, that's a nice one..lol. 

If that were to hurt or kill someone can the owner be held liable

Sent from my SM-S921U using Tapatalk

[tamarack]

5 hours ago, Lava Rock said:

If that were to hurt or kill someone can the owner be held liable

Sent from my SM-S921U using Tapatalk
 

AUG was fortunate that no one got hurt by falling ice in January 2004.  Plumbers had left a dead-end run of pipe on the 9th (top) floor of the Key Bank building.  The temp dropped to -16 overnight, causing the pipe to rupture and pour water into and out of the building, wrecking office furnishings all the way to floor #1.  Icicles 15 feet long and up to a foot diameter were draped on the northerly 1/4 of the building and ice had built up more than a foot thick on the sidewalk, also partially blocking Water Street.  Think of 200-lb icicles falling from nearly 100 feet above.  

Cloud-free this morning.  Low was -1.

[WxWatcher007]

6 hours ago, Lava Rock said:

If that were to hurt or kill someone can the owner be held liable

Sent from my SM-S921U using Tapatalk
 

I would think so since this is something that gradually built up rather than what happened in @tamarack's story. It directly hangs over another smaller section of the building. 

[J.Spin]

A couple more shots from Sunday's outing that I hadn't had a chance to get in with the first batch of images:

[J.Spin]

Yesterday I was up at Bolton Valley for some lift-served skiing with a couple of colleagues who were in town for work, and that was a nice change of pace after several days in a row of touring. Apparently Bolton is doing $50 lift tickets on Mondays, so that’s a nice incentive for folks who don’t have season’s passes. Indeed the mountain was fairly quiet with a relatively small number of visitors, so I can see why the discounted tickets make sense.

It was fairly cold, with temperatures probably in the upper single digits F at Village elevations, and they must have been near zero F up at the summits. I knew from the temperatures and blustery conditions in the valleys that it was probably a day I wouldn’t have gone out for lift-served skiing, but having my colleagues heading out for turns was enough to tip that balance in favor of a visit.

The resort was running both the Vista Quad and the Wilderness Chair, as well as the lower mountain lifts, so they had quite a solid amount of terrain open now that they are operating during the midweek periods. Conditions were decent, with manmade snow on the main routes of Vista Peak, and all natural snow over at Wilderness. Both areas saw substantial weekend skier traffic, and you could tell the snow had seen some wear and tear. There were some slick spots on the manmade surfaces, and some areas of imperfect coverage on the natural snow terrain at Wilderness. This has obviously been a strong early season for snowfall and natural snowpack, but natural snow depths still aren’t quite at the level yet where coverage will really remain fully pristine on steep, ungroomed slopes. The temperatures were also cold enough that the groomed skiing was a bit slow It would be nice to get back up into the 20s F, and it seems like the coldest weather has passed and we’ll be warmer for the rest of the midweek period.

[J.Spin]

On 12/11/2025 at 10:12 PM, powderfreak said:

December 11th and we have already measured roughly 33% of the seasonal snowfall at the Mt Mansfield plots.

 

On 12/11/2025 at 11:30 PM, WxWatcher007 said:

All the local folks I talk to say this start to winter has been wild. 

 

On 12/12/2025 at 5:27 PM, timp said:

Hell of a way to start a winter! 15” the past three days and 42” on the season so far.

 

On 12/12/2025 at 7:08 PM, powderfreak said:

Mansfield stake goes over 5 feet and beats the previous earliest 60”+ depth by two weeks.

Skiing is all-time, just like the depths.

Now that we’ve hit the mid-month period, I’d been meaning to put out an update on the seasonal snowfall progression and check where things stand with respect to other seasons. As the data show, this season’s snowfall progression (red trace in the plot below) is clearly running above average. But as much as everyone has been talking about how outstanding this season has been, its snowfall is really just running in a similar manner to how 2018-2019 progressed (green trace in the plot below). In fact, this season has generally been running behind the 2018-2019 snowfall pace. And for even more perspective on this season’s snowfall, it’s now well behind the 2007-2008 pace (blue trace in the plot below). At this point, the second half of December would have to put on quite a snowfall performance to even be in the same league as 2007-2008. That was a season which essentially stacked a 20-inch November with a 70-inch December, so it’s not surprising that it holds the current snowfall record for that combo in my data set.

As of mid-December, all of the resorts along the spine of the Northern Greens have recorded 100”+ of snowfall on the season, and Jay Peak is approaching 200”. But, this season’s snowfall is basically running in line with what we saw just had a few season’s back, and well behind 2007-2008, so why does it seem like such a strong start? The deviation from average snowfall pace may be a bit more in the mountains than the valleys, but I think a big factor in making this feel like such a strong start to the season has been the temperature consistency. Indeed temperatures have been well below average over this stretch, but they don’t have to deviate much if at all from average to get good snow at this time of year – especially in the higher elevations. I’m sure there are seasons that can attest to that, but I really think it’s the temperature consistency that has been helping to get us to where we are.

Temperature consistency has clearly been a positive, but somewhat inseparable from that factor in this great start to the ski season has been the general pattern/storm track. And one could argue that the process of getting all the snow we’ve seen has been a bit counterintuitive. The local resorts have reached 100”+ of snowfall in just a month or so without any huge coastal systems, and without even getting any of our classic stacked lows sitting in the Maritimes. All this snow has basically been achieved through modest bread and butter systems without a highly amplified pattern. What’s certainly impressive is that we’ve gotten to where we are with a generally progressive flow of Clippers and similar events, but the more important part is that without a highly amplified pattern, we haven’t had to deal with many warm storms passing to our west. We’ve seen few rainy systems, and even few mixed precipitation events over the past month or so. If you ask me, that’s why Mansfield has achieved this record snowpack – it’s avoiding the “two steps forward… one step back” type of sequence that comes with those more amplified patterns and huge systems. I don’t think it would be strange at all for someone to assume that if you’re going to get to a record Mansfield snowpack, you’d need to do it with the help of a monster system or two… but this season flies right in the face of that idea. Cleary, the type of pattern we’ve been seeing is something notable/special if it’s tied or beaten out snowpack depths from the past 70 to 80 years of record keeping.

We obviously know about the critical importance of these types of patterns up here with the fact that we use the “bread and butter” terminology, but I’ve come to appreciate them more and more every year. Growing up, we were always on the lookout for “nor’easters”, since they obviously make a big splash in the news, and everyone talks about them, but as kids we wouldn’t have known any better. If this type of less amplified/more progressive weather pattern that we’ve been seeing is indeed going to become more common around here as some of the meteorologists are suggesting, one has to think there’s going to be improving chances for more stretches like this. It’s definitely going to be interesting to see (and ski) if we get more of these stretches going forward.

 

 

[powderfreak]

2 hours ago, J.Spin said:

Temperature consistency has clearly been a positive, but somewhat inseparable from that factor in this great start to the ski season has been the general pattern/storm track. And one could argue that the process of getting all the snow we’ve seen has been a bit counterintuitive. The local resorts have reached 100”+ of snowfall in just a month or so without any huge coastal systems, and without even getting any of our classic stacked lows sitting in the Maritimes. All this snow has basically been achieved through modest bread and butter systems without a highly amplified pattern. What’s certainly impressive is that we’ve gotten to where we are with a generally progressive flow of Clippers and similar events, but the more important part is that without a highly amplified pattern, we haven’t had to deal with many warm storms passing to our west. We’ve seen few rainy systems, and even few mixed precipitation events over the past month or so. If you ask me, that’s why Mansfield has achieved this record snowpack – it’s avoiding the “two steps forward… one step back” type of sequence that comes with those more amplified patterns and huge systems. I don’t think it would be strange at all for someone to assume that if you’re going to get to a record Mansfield snowpack, you’d need to do it with the help of a monster system or two… but this season flies right in the face of that idea. Cleary, the type of pattern we’ve been seeing is something notable/special if it’s tied or beaten out snowpack depths from the past 70 to 80 years of record keeping.

While I agree greatly about the fact that temperatures have been a key driver of this stretch, I will push back slightly on the no big storms for the mountains.  Maybe I'm thinking more in terms of cycles, but we've had at least two 20"+ "cycles" over say a 2-3 day period.

I do think the upper elevations of 3,000ft+ are wearing the brunt of the positive snowfall departures over the valleys too.  Often we see in synoptic seasons like 2007-2008, the valley locations under 1,000ft can see just as much snow as the mountains... because it's synoptic forcing up at 700mb and above.  You get a 1" QPF dump and it hits at 300ft almost the same as at 3,000ft if the temperatures are cold enough.

But this stretch has been meso-scale driven and just loaded QPF and snowfall into the upper elevations non-stop.  And a bunch of the early snows in November were heavy QPF events.  It was elevational driven too... like when Stowe opened with 250 acres of terrain all on natural snow essentially back in mid-November, my backyard had next to nothing.  There was a monster gradient in there for 2-3 weeks around 1,500ft.  From like 1-3" to like 18"+.  Which I think is seen in some of the lower elevation snowfall numbers as to why they aren't as ahead of normal as some other years... while the mountains are clearly in record territory.  

I do agree on the bread and butter though... despite a couple of "big events" they aren't hyped events.  I think there was one Winter Storm Warning?  Even Advisories have been limited for this, largely because the snow has been impacting higher elevation spots and been mesoscale in nature.

The Stowe Snow Report team ran a SWE analysis yesterday for NWS/NOAA and I'll share some photos later, but we generally found 55" depth at 3,000ft High Road with 13" of water.  While 1,500ft was 26" snow depth and 6" of water.  Both plots were consistent at 23-24% water.

13" of water up high seemed fairly impressive for a snowpack that began roughly 6 weeks ago.  That's a good slug of frozen QPF!  And would check out for over 100" of snowfall.

[das]

21 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

The Stowe Snow Report team ran a SWE analysis yesterday for NWS/NOAA and I'll share some photos later, but we generally found 55" depth at 3,000ft High Road with 13" of water.  While 1,500ft was 26" snow depth and 6" of water.  Both plots were consistent at 23-24% water.

Good post.  To put a fine point on the synoptic/orographic nature of this year, I am at 14.6" snowfall total here in Charlotte at 285'.  With 4" OTG and a SWE of 0.6"