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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[Froude]

Haven’t had time to check in here much but glad I tuned in for a J Spin data dump. I always love reaping the benefits of your record keeping.

I don’t have numbers to back it up but I think there are a couple things factoring into the perception of this amazing start to our winter.

First, this has been the best early winter in terms of valley snow retention that I can remember. Aside from some days around Thanksgiving we have had snow cover on the ground here in Fairfax since November 11. Consistent cold without the rain and melt outs (like the one we’re about to have) has preserved dry fluffy snow in my front yard for the better part of the last 6 weeks. That is remarkable at my location for November and early December. And it's also kept the ski slopes in phenomenal condition.

Also, with so many small systems there have been a lot of days with snowflakes in the air even if it’s not always piling up. It just feels different when there’s flakes flying out your window and keeping the surface refreshed.

J Spin do you keep data on snow depth days?  Your retention is always better than here in the Champlain Valley but I’d be curious how this early season stacks up in that department.

[backedgeapproaching]

Even down here I have had 17 measurable snow events since Mid NOV.  I'm sure that number is even higher up there(NVT).  It works out to pretty much every other day if you were to average it out, which certainly makes it seems even more snowy as Froude mentioned.

 

Edit: I see Jspin posted above and has 18 events documented, so similar. 

[powderfreak]

Love seeing the snow cores making it into the AFD.

.HYDROLOGY...
Sharp rises on streams and rivers are anticipated on Friday
into Friday night associated with warm temperatures, snow melt,
and moderate rainfall. Rainfall of 0.50 to 1.25 is expected with
snow melt adding another 0.75 to 1.25 inches into the river
basins. Given dewpoints will be above freezing during the day
today and tomorrow, efficient snow melt will be likely. Snow
core analysis Tuesday near Mt Mansfield indicated at 3000 feet
snow depths were 53 to 58 inches with 12 to 14 inches of water,
while at 1550 feet snow depths were 22 to 30 inches with 5 to 7
inches of water. The rivers with greatest potential to reach
action stage, given expected rainfall and snow melt are the
Ausable, Mad, Winooski at Essex Junction, and Otter Creek at
Center Rutland on Friday afternoon and evening. Crests on the
Mad and Ausable Rivers will be Friday afternoon, and Otter
Creek and the Winooski cresting closer to Friday evening/early
Saturday morning. Lastly, while any river ice may move, the
threat of ice jams remains low.

3,000ft High Road Plot…

1500ft Barnes Camp…

[TheMainer]

Nice 50 mile ride from the house today, trails were actually pretty decent, another 6 inches and they would have been perfect, oh well, I'd be surprised we had any snow Saturday morning, the bullseye is right over our heads ..

[powderfreak]

22 hours ago, J.Spin said:

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.

Ok, I see your point, ha.  I was thinking "big" in terms of QPF/snowfall totals, as opposed to big in terms of publicity or large scale synoptic events.  That mid-November one was a solid 7-15" event, even in the valleys around the mountains, while 15-25" at elevation of 1-2" QPF.  That was the type I was thinking of... but absolutely nothing of the widespread region wide news worthy storms.  I get your point there.

I guess what's more eye-opening is the local area wide like 7-12" of QPF since November 1 to now... while maintaining solidly below normal temperatures, if not very below normal temperatures (like -10F so far in December).

To have 55-60" of snow depth contain 13" of water is pretty wild to me... because that pack started right around November 1st.  So in roughly 6 weeks, that 3,000ft elevation AVERAGED just over 2" of QPF per week, most of it in the form of snow.  That's damn impressive, but I guess that's also how you get to record numbers.

I do wish we were able to sample individual event SWE/QPF in the higher elevations, as sometimes I do think I conceptually under-estimate just how much precip falls up there in these type of upslope patterns.  Many of the November snows that left nearly 70" (measured in a controlled, single spot) on Mount Mansfield during the month felt like they were all there in terms of SWE.  That wasn't upslope fluff.  Sure there were some endings of fluff and some mixed in, but there were some real healthy dense snowfalls of rimed flakes, graupel, ect even at colder temperatures.

I often look at the Alta Collins plot as my gold standard, and often note that for all the hype Utah gets for fluffy snow, they get their share of orographic QPF dumps where its like 12" on 1.50" water.  Or even 24" snow on like 3.00" water.  I think the local mountains had their share of that type of snow in November, which really boosted base depths and led to that amazing skiing... the type of cold but dense (rimed and graupel) driven snow that can sustain significant skier traffic and hold up fine.

Overall, turning a new page after tomorrow as it'll be the first time in like 3 weeks the mountains have sniffed above freezing temperatures and rain.  There was one brief rain event around Thanksgiving, that was then covered up almost immediately with more cold, but dense, upslope... and with that brief thaw, the mountains are running like a solid month, or more, of being on a snow and cold heater.

Definitely a legendary start and one of yore.

[powderfreak]

1” at the plot, plus some wind really filled in the turns above that elevation today.  It was a dense inch, but not wet, and that leads to some smooth skiing.

Its too bad this multi-week stretch has to end.

[J.Spin]

11 hours ago, Froude said:

Haven’t had time to check in here much but glad I tuned in for a J Spin data dump. I always love reaping the benefits of your record keeping.

I don’t have numbers to back it up but I think there are a couple things factoring into the perception of this amazing start to our winter.

First, this has been the best early winter in terms of valley snow retention that I can remember. Aside from some days around Thanksgiving we have had snow cover on the ground here in Fairfax since November 11. Consistent cold without the rain and melt outs (like the one we’re about to have) has preserved dry fluffy snow in my front yard for the better part of the last 6 weeks. That is remarkable at my location for November and early December. And it's also kept the ski slopes in phenomenal condition.

Also, with so many small systems there have been a lot of days with snowflakes in the air even if it’s not always piling up. It just feels different when there’s flakes flying out your window and keeping the surface refreshed.

J Spin do you keep data on snow depth days?  Your retention is always better than here in the Champlain Valley but I’d be curious how this early season stacks up in that department.

Since the snow depth for our VT-WS-19 CoCoRaHS site is reported each day, SDD for our site is actually something that can be obtained publicly. SDD isn’t something that CoCoRaHS reports directly though, so it would require some offline analysis (unless it’s available in one of the various CoCoRaHS analysis tools – I haven’t explored all the features in those tools exhaustively). You could even explore some of the data for a CoCoRaHS site closer to you if you wanted something that might be more relevant to compare to your location. It looks like southern Franklin County has relatively poor coverage on CoCoRaHS, but the one active site in that area is in Fairfax: VT-FR-21: Fairfax 4.9 WNW.

Anyway, I have all my data in a spreadsheet, so it’s really quick for me to calculate SDD. If one is looking for relative snow retention/snow cover, SDD is certainly going to be helpful, but I could also envision the total number of days with snow cover being another important parameter. There could be a season with a solid number of SDD through mid-December, but it all happened to come from one notable storm that fell in the last week of November and hung around for several days, but the rest of November and the first half of December had bare ground. Or, there could be a few inches of snow cover right from the start of November that never melted and the ground was white the entire time. It’s hard to say which one of those is “snowier”, so I made plots for both of those parameters. There are three plots below covering data from the start of the snow season (Oct 1) through Dec 15: the first one plots SDD, the second is total days with snow cover, and the third is the sum of those two (sort of a way to blend those two parameters into a more comprehensive parameter for integrated snow depth & snow cover – the numbers are generally within an order of magnitude of each other, so a straight up sum seemed reasonable).

As you can see from the data, this season is solid, but not really a standout that jumps from the pack of other decently performing seasons in either SDD, days with snow cover, or the combined parameter. I’ve never really explored these numbers until you inquired, so it’s interesting to see the season that does jump out here is 2018-2019. It’s actually the top season on all three plots, but boy does it absolutely soar above everything else with respect to SDD. It’s not surprising to see that 2018-2019 is one of the comparative seasons I’ve been tracking in my snowfall progression plots (I added that latest plot at the bottom here for reference). Coincidentally, there is currently a discussion on First Tracks!! Online Ski Magazine about the strong start to the ski season here in Northern Vermont, and in that discussion, Tony Crocker has a post showing that as impressive as this start has been with respect to open terrain – through December 8^th, the 2018-2019 season was even better than this one.

[Froude]

53 minutes ago, J.Spin said:

 

Wow thanks for putting that together. Combining depth days and snow cover is a great way to look at it.

18/19 really does stick out. I recall the storms that November being a bit warmer and putting down a few feet of dense snow that really opened the whole mountain up. So I agree with Tony that it was a more impressive start than this one in some ways.

While I think this early season has been special for all the reasons I mentioned earlier, it’s great to have those numbers to confirm that we aren’t really in uncharted waters here. Just in very good company with some of the better winters in the last 20 years. And wow is it always incredible to see how terrible 15/16 was.

[J.Spin]

My colleague Mark was still in town for work yesterday and my older son had the day off, so the three of us headed out for another tour on the Bolton Valley Nordic & Backcountry Network. Mark was looking for a tour that would have an ascent in the backcountry potentially followed by some rolling backcountry terrain, finishing off with a descent on some groomed alpine terrain where he could work on his Telemark turns. When he described what he was looking for, I had just the route he needed. We ascended via the Bryant Trail to the Bryant Cabin, then traversed back toward the alpine trails on the rolling terrain of North Slope and finished off with a final descent down Lower Turnpike.

Temperatures had crept up into the 30s F in the valleys, so I was unsure what was going on up at the resort, but temperatures dropped as we ascended to the Village. The temperatures were below freezing at Village level, so all the snow was still in midwinter form. My younger son had been out for some lift-served skiing in the morning, and he felt the off piste snow had settled somewhat, so I was surprised to find that the powder was just as fluffy as usual out in the backcountry.

We didn’t ski a ton of untracked powder on the backcountry route we took, since it had a lot of rolling terrain without many big descents, but the powder that we did hit was excellent. Just as impressive as the powder off piste was the quality of the turns we found during our final descent on Lower Turnpike. I hadn’t been there in quite a while, but I’d say it had the highest quality packed snow I’ve seen during this recent stretch. Even with lift-served traffic on Wilderness, we couldn’t find a touch of firm snow on Lower Turnpike, so it wound up being a highlight of the trip and a fantastic surface for Mark to use for practicing his Telemark turns.

[J.Spin]

On 12/17/2025 at 10:56 PM, bwt3650 said:

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.

Yeah, I find the GFS is the best mid-range model out there with respect to telling us what’s likely to happen up here in the Northern Greens when looking ahead a week or two. It seems to see the terrain well and it knows what to do with it. When it comes to modeling, I think we sort of have an advantage around here in that this is an incredibly snowy climate, so basically any impulse, piece of energy, or system that gets near the spine is typically going to produce some snow. All a model has to do is assume that it’s going to snow and it’s generally going to be correct. Also, our classic “bread and butter” patterns are often based on a single northern jet stream, so there’s not a lot of concern about lining up perfect phasing, etc. Looking back at my post from earlier in the month, the GFS suggested 7 to 9 systems coming through the area through about this time period, and this current system is #7 or #8.

We’re right around 30” of snowfall for the month so far here at our site, so it will be interesting to see if we end up above average for December. If we kept the snowfall pace we had through the first half of the month, that would have been a slam dunk, but the pattern doesn’t look quite as prolific for the remainder of the month. The GFS shows roughly 6 potential systems in the queue through the rest of December, so we’ll see how thing play out. This current system isn’t really a big one for snowfall, with probably just a few inches on the back side, and then there’s a system tracking along to our north over the weekend – it seems a bit far north to hit us with too much snow, but there will potentially be some effects and the BTV NWS talks about that in their discussion. Then there’s a potential system in the Tuesday timeframe. That one has that look on the GFS with the lingering upslope precipitation, which definitely suggests some decent potential at first glance. That one is still a bit in the distance, but the BTV NWS certainly touches on that in their discussion as well:

Area Forecast Discussion

National Weather Service Burlington VT

1233 PM EST Fri Dec 19 2025

LONG TERM /SUNDAY NIGHT THROUGH FRIDAY/...

The next system will approach Tuesday afternoon. Although temperatures during the day will climb near to just above freezing, we`ll likely remain all snow for precipitation. Our weather pattern will feature us on the fringe of a very warm air mass to our south and cool air off to our north. Small fluctuations in the pattern could spell a wide range of scenarios. On a day-by- day scale, these kind of weather patterns tend to have lower predictability since systems move fast between stronger winds between these sharp thermal gradients and the lack of amplification means these smaller systems can be more difficult for global models to resolve. It`ll certainly be active, with likely breezy conditions and precipitation opportunities every other day or so.

[Boston Bulldog]

Northern Greens appear to be flipping back to snow. Snowing furiously on MRG cams since about 1:30. Coverage looks pretty ugly, south of I-89 took a hit 

[bwt3650]

Back to snow and dumping…about a half inch so far, but the re-whitening begins. Pack is just fine here.


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