NNE Cold Season Thread 2025-2026

[mreaves]

1 hour ago, powderfreak said:

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.

Considering how dry it had been in the weeks and months leading up to the snow blitz, it's nice to see some stored water being built up.  Now lets hope we don't lose a lot to run off on frozen ground.

[tamarack]

1 hour ago, das said:

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"

Exactly the same 14.6" here in the western Maine foothills, but with 6" depth and about 0.8" LE.

[WxWatcher007]

Temp dropping and flipped to snow here

[powderfreak]

1 hour ago, WxWatcher007 said:

Temp dropping and flipped to snow here

Never saw any rain up at 1500ft that I could tell.

Snowing now with a dusting of white at 33F.

[J.Spin]

8 hours ago, powderfreak said:

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 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.

What one considers a “big” storm is sort of arbitrary/subjective, so there’s certainly room for pushback. But your comments help to make the point – I can’t even tell you when those two 20” cycles occurred. I’m not sure if anyone in the forum other than you knows when they happened. Most likely they were “nothing” events in terms of their impacts on the majority of the Northeast. There have only been three TWC named winter storms so far this season, and they all impacted us and are in the list below, but none of them were named for their impacts in our area because their effects here were minor as you can see by their accumulations at our site. Alston and Bellamy earned their names because of impacts in the Midwest, and Chan was named because of impacts off to our south. If you look at this list below of the 18 storms that have hit our site so far this season, it’s loaded with Clippers, cold fronts, and shortwaves. My main argument was that the Mansfield stake has reached record depth without being in the sweet spot for any major synoptic storms. If someone told me that Mt. Mansfield had reached a record snowpack depth for mid-December, I’d assume there had to have been at least a couple of major synoptic storms in which our area was in the perfect position to cash in and get a ton of snow. But that hasn’t been the case. And, what’s more interesting is to consider that perhaps the record depth wasn’t achieved just in spite of not getting hit by those big synoptic storms, but the record depth was actually achieved because we were in a pattern that wasn’t conducive to creating big storms. What has transpired so far this fall just proves that it’s not necessary to have multiple perfectly placed coastal storms to achieve a record mountain snowpack around here - that’s the part I find most counterintuitive and intriguing.

Below is the list of accumulating storms that have affected our site so far this season, and it should be just about the same list for the local mountains. The description of each storm is included, and none of them were big coastal systems. The closest to a typical nor’easter was Winter Storm Chan, but it was still quite weak, and its effects this far north were fairly minimal (only 4.8 inches for a storm total at our site).

[bwt3650]

The gfs has done an outstanding job of sniffing out these storm cycles this year. When I’ve seen that darker blue precip shield sitting over the northern greens for 18-24 hours on a nw flow flow show up for 3-4 runs in a row, you can almost lock in an 18” upslope party every time so far this year. Even at a 3-4 day lead time.


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