NNE Cold Season Thread 2025-2026

[WxWatcher007]

28 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

12z HRRR getting a look at the Tuesday night snows... I'm starting to think this could go fairly decent.  Most models are putting around a half inch of QPF in the area of central/northern VT, with more along the Spine.

It could be sneaky snowy heading into Wednesday AM.

Getting a little snow here today. Tomorrow looks pretty good and agree it may go into Wednesday. Models also starting to sniff another weak fast mover diving down on Christmas Day. Fast flow ftw. 

[das]

Nice midwinter day here in Burlington.  Light snow for the last 3+ hours with at least a couple more hours upcoming.  Highs in the low 20's.  Will be a nice "commute" home to Charlotte at 5pm.

Edited to add:

 

 

[powderfreak]

Nice little snowy evening for the holidays.

[powderfreak]

Also, this high-res Canadian panel tomorrow night has me salivating.

This would be a crushing from 2am to 8am... with 850mb temps falling to -12C, great snow growth, serious upslope moisture.  This would be a pummeling for the ski areas.

Curious how this clipper works out.

 

[WxWatcher007]

2 hours ago, das said:

Nice midwinter day here in Burlington.  Light snow for the last 3+ hours with at least a couple more hours upcoming.  Highs in the low 20's.  Will be a nice "commute" home to Charlotte at 5pm.

Edited to add:

 

IMG_6849.mov 16.91 MB · 1 download  

 

Love it. How long have you had a place up here? IIRC, you had it when I still lived in DC. 

16 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Also, this high-res Canadian panel tomorrow night has me salivating.

This would be a crushing from 2am to 8am... with 850mb temps falling to -12C, great snow growth, serious upslope moisture.  This would be a pummeling for the ski areas.

Curious how this clipper works out.

 

We'd do nicely even back here, though probably not as nicely as areas to my north. The NAM is hot for the region. 

[powderfreak]

23 minutes ago, WxWatcher007 said:

Love it. How long have you had a place up here? IIRC, you had it when I still lived in DC. 

We'd do nicely even back here, though probably not as nicely as areas to my north. The NAM is hot for the region. 

I think you'll do quite well too.  Upslope looks a bit unblocked which should help drift your way on the backside. 

[WxWatcher007]

An inch today up here. Exceeded expectations. Still -SN out there. It’ll look like an underperformer all day, and then go right to fluff after sunset. 

[powderfreak]

Been snowing big fat fluffy flakes for a bit.  Almost 2”?  All air.

[mreaves]

59 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Been snowing big fat fluffy flakes for a bit.  Almost 2”?  All air.

Maybe I just missed it but I didn’t really expect snow today. Maybe half an inch?

[powderfreak]

21 minutes ago, mreaves said:

Maybe I just missed it but I didn’t really expect snow today. Maybe half an inch?

Yeah nice 2.25” of fluff stacked nicely on all the trees and even power lines.  Looked festive driving home from Waterbury.

It wants to snow this year.

 

[J.Spin]

At some point during the day today Alexa alerted me that we’d been put under a Winter Weather Advisory, and it looks like the BTV NWS advisories start up at 7:00 A.M. tomorrow morning and cover a good chunk of the state outside the Champlain Valley. The most recent Event Total Snow Accumulation map shows totals in the 8-12” shading for the higher elevations of the spine around here. Down in the valley our point forecast suggests something in the 5-10” range through tomorrow evening, and the map has us in that next tier of 6-8” shading, so those projections seem to correlate fairly well.

[mreaves]

1 hour ago, powderfreak said:

It wants to snow this year.

That’s the feeling I’ve been getting too. We obviously haven’t had the accumulation the mountains have but it’s seems to snow at any opportunity. 

[Ginx snewx]

10 hours ago, J.Spin said:

At some point during the day today Alexa alerted me that we’d been put under a Winter Weather Advisory, and it looks like the BTV NWS advisories start up at 7:00 A.M. tomorrow morning and cover a good chunk of the state outside the Champlain Valley. The most recent Event Total Snow Accumulation map shows totals in the 8-12” shading for the higher elevations of the spine around here. Down in the valley our point forecast suggests something in the 5-10” range through tomorrow evening, and the map has us in that next tier of 6-8” shading, so those projections seem to correlate fairly well.

Advisory for 8 to 10 no WSW?

[mreaves]

19 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

Advisory for 8 to 10 no WSW?

Here is the latest map from BTV

[J.Spin]

17 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

Advisory for 8 to 10 no WSW?

The numbers are probably too borderline for a Winter Storm Warning down here in the valley (the most recent update is more like accumulations of 5-8" without yesterday afternoon's snow included), but this is often the way they do it when the more substantial accumulations are localized right along the spine – it’s too small a geographic area to focus the alert.

[Ginx snewx]

27 minutes ago, J.Spin said:

The numbers are probably too borderline for a Winter Storm Warning down here in the valley (the most recent update is more like accumulations of 5-8" without yesterday afternoon's snow included), but this is often the way they do it when the more substantial accumulations are localized right along the spine – it’s too small a geographic area to focus the alert.

Thanks enjoy Happy Holidays 

[das]

18 hours ago, WxWatcher007 said:

Love it. How long have you had a place up here? IIRC, you had it when I still lived in DC. 

7 years.  Moved up "permanently" just before the pandemic.  I still work in DC so I am down there half the time.  The other half up here I thoroughly enjoy.............

[WxWatcher007]

At .5” here so far today. Temperature hovering right around freezing. Better snow growth now as the better rates move in. Overnight into tomorrow still look very good @powderfreak.

[Ginx snewx]

Just want to say congrats to all who live and or are visiting in NNE on just an idyllic Bing Crosby Christmas scene.  I have so many Christmas memories up there. Nothing better 

[WxWatcher007]

Christmas clipper maybe juicing up a bit?

[J.Spin]

The weak mid-level trough that came through the area yesterday dropped about 3” of snow in the valleys around here, and I saw that Bolton Valley was indicating 4” new in their morning report. Combined with the snow from Sunday’s cold front, it seemed like it was time to head up to the mountain and check out how the resurfacing was coming along since the most recent consolidation storm that we had over the weekend.

Temperatures were well up into the 20s F and there was no wind, so it was very comfortable out on the mountain, and although it wasn’t snowing, the skies were cloudy ahead of the next incoming clipper system. The Wilderness Lift wasn’t loading until 10:00 A.M., so I started the morning off with a tour up to the ~2,700’ elevation using the Wilderness Uphill Route.

Conditions were excellent on Lower Turnpike, with several inches of powder above the old base. Turns weren’t 100% bottomless, but I was probably getting 50% bottomless turns on lower-angle terrain in untouched areas of snow. And even for turns that touched down to the subsurface, the base was nice and soft. I followed up the tour with some lift-served runs, and I can say that moderate and high-angle terrain are nowhere near being resurfaced yet. The new snow was quickly pushed around by lift-served levels of skier traffic, and it’s going to take another inch or two of liquid equivalent to get the high-angle slopes back to something respectably soft for lift-served skiing.

There is an increase in powder depth with elevation, and here’s roughly what I found for depths out on the mountain today:

2,000’: 3-4”

2,500’: 4-5”

2,700’: 5-6”

3,150’: 7-8”

The best turns were in areas of untouched snow, which were thankfully fairly plentiful ahead of the lift opening, but there’s just not enough liquid equivalent in the surface snow yet in any terrain area to hold up to lift-served skier traffic. The current system affecting the area is even more robust than the last one however, so it certainly should bring the snow surfaces up another notch by tomorrow morning.