NNE Cold Season Thread 2025-2026

[powderfreak]

54 minutes ago, J.Spin said:

PF, am I seeing the recent snowpack depth report numbers correctly to suggest that the current snowpack (74”) at your High Road Plot at 3,040’ is coming in deeper than the snowpack (70”) at the Mt. Mansfield Stake at 3,700’? Those two spots aren’t all that far away from each other, they aren’t too disparate with respect to elevation, and they both represent similar leeward aspects of the mountain, but is that true and does the lower elevation depth outpace the higher elevation depth frequently?

I’ve never routinely followed the snowpack depths at your snow study plots because I typically only see them when you bring them up in a forum post, but now that Matt Parrilla appears to have them on his Mt. Mansfield Stake page, I’m seeing them all the time (he also monitors some lower elevation CoCoRaHS sites around here in the Northern Greens like ours in Waterbury). I didn’t know your daily depths from the plots were even available – where does he get them from? Or (it’s hard to imagine) are his 3,040’ and 1,550’ numbers coming from somewhere else other than your High Road and Barnes Camp plots?

We've started reporting them to Parrilla to increase his data sets.  We sometimes put them on the report and also started an IG account mtmansfield_snowobservations where we only post photos of the readings as a way to archive them.  We have been taking photos of the readings and keeping data for over a decade and honestly, its a shame we didn't start archiving it more in the past.

We are just looking to keep things transparent and to preserve the idea of measuring snowfall and depth in the same locations as often as possible.

Regarding High Road depth... this is the first season I've seen that site stay with the fabled stake and even slightly exceed it at times.  In all other seasons, that spot can run even a foot or two below the stake.  However, we have done snow survey analysis there with the 60" Adirondack Snow Sampler (when the snowpack was a bit lower) and the numbers checked out.  It appears to be legit.

I have a few hypothesis, primarily going back to the November upslope snows that really built the base up... and that is that the Gondola terrain for whatever reason seemed noticeably deeper than the Quad side after a few of those storms.  It has generally felt a lot snowier from like the FourRunner Quad northward towards the Notch, and I think that's normal, but it has felt exaggerated at times this year.

Its definitely interesting, but man, there is still some areas of open water in there and that whole High Road zone from Rim Rock across to Cliff Trail and Perry just has a ton of snow on the ground.  When you see the open water spots, its a legit like 6 feet down.  Its sort of creepy at times, ha.  We were skiing the Strawberry Fields below Upper Perry/Cliff intersection and there's a drainage in there with holes that look like they are 8 feet deep wells.  It's impressive but certainly not something you want to fall into head first.

The depth stake was stuck in the mid/upper 60s for what felt like two weeks, but finally have movement upward after this last cycle.

Ticked from 68” to 70” and then 74”.

One skier from MLK weekend found there way in here and left a track just behind the depth stake… not a fan of it but it’s filling in again.

[backedgeapproaching]

1 hour ago, WxWatcher007 said:

As a non skier, I can’t imagine a 70” pack.

You can probably get some really healthy packs up your way in the right year with good retention that area has. Heck maybe even this year could get pretty decent.

March 18 was prob high water mark for this area in general since I've moved here.

This was at Mitchs, so 2k, but pretty impressive since alot of folks live in the 1500-2000ft zone. I think there was more added after this too IIRC.

 

[WxWatcher007]

This is the highest pack I've seen yet. We're down to around 16" now, but it was 18" a few days ago. 

[qg_omega]

-29 This morning SLK

[mreaves]

BTV has been pretty steady with their map for a while now. 

[WxWatcher007]

This will be the first time in the last 10 days without snowfall. I picked up 20.6" in that time. Really hoping we get a ML magic crushing with coming storm. 

[mreaves]

BTV bumped it up a little bit. 
 

[Prismshine Productions]

BTV bumped it up a little bit. 
 

Lol they inched it up after that one

Sent from my SM-S166V using Tapatalk

[MJO812]

Its beautiful down here. Snow is accumulating fast.

Enjoy up there

[J.Spin]

On 1/24/2026 at 10:27 AM, WxWatcher007 said:

As a non skier, I can’t imagine a 70” pack.

 

On 1/24/2026 at 10:53 AM, powderfreak said:

Its definitely interesting, but man, there is still some areas of open water in there and that whole High Road zone from Rim Rock across to Cliff Trail and Perry just has a ton of snow on the ground.  When you see the open water spots, its a legit like 6 feet down.  Its sort of creepy at times, ha.  We were skiing the Strawberry Fields below Upper Perry/Cliff intersection and there's a drainage in there with holes that look like they are 8 feet deep wells.  It's impressive but certainly not something you want to fall into head first.

 

On 1/24/2026 at 11:57 AM, backedgeapproaching said:

March 18 was prob high water mark for this area in general since I've moved here.

This was at Mitchs, so 2k, but pretty impressive since alot of folks live in the 1500-2000ft zone. I think there was more added after this too IIRC.

Hitting 70-80” snowpack depths is pretty typical for Mt. Mansfield and similar elevations in the Northern Greens in most seasons as the Mt. Mansfield Stake data suggest, with 80-100” depths a bit less common. Strong seasons will hit 100”+ snowpack depth with either the right combination of liquid equivalent and/or lack of large storm cycles with substantial warmth – I think last season was just above the 100” snowpack mark at its peak. With everything so evenly covered and buried, it can be difficult to get a sense for the depth unless you are in areas that have sharp wells to the ground as PF discussed or dig a pit like backedge showed. One approach that has always helped set up the perspective for me is warm season hiking above Stowe’s Cliff House, not too far from the area that PF describes in his post. When you hike up there in the summer among the car, truck, or even house-sized boulders and realize that many of those areas are actually smoothed over into snowfields that you’re skiing in the winter, it sort of hits home. Once you get up in that 100”+ range of depth, you’re at that height of a one-story building, so it’s not hard to see how all those huge obstacles can get covered.

The image below shows summertime shots of some of the types of terrain features there that are covered, and then the bottom right of the collage is a shot of what it looks like in the winter when we were out with some of the kinds in our school’s ski program guiding them in the alpine. The next image is a great representation of how smoothed out it gets, and there are more winter shots of the area in my web page archives.

[J.Spin]

Well, it’s wall-to-wall Winter Storm Warnings on the BTV NWS alerts map now that those cold weather alerts are gone, and that’s typically a good sign for a storm. I see that the latest Event Total Snow Accumulation map update has some areas of that 18-24” shading up here along the spine, and there’s a bit of that 24-30” shading down in the Southern Greens. The forecast here at our site does come in around that 10-20” range through tomorrow night, and the mountains are a bit more than that. Those numbers generally match up with the accumulations shading, but it’s a little tough to envision the high end of those numbers with the liquid equivalent that I’m generally seeing in the models (which seems to top out in the 0.75”-1.00” brackets). Accumulations could get there with some high snow to liquid ratios, but I’m not used to getting great snow ratios when the air is this cold – we often get that relatively dense arctic sand. The ratios are being mentioned a lot, so the dendritic growth zone setup must be there, and I guess we’ll see if this event is different and gives some lake-effect/upslope style snow ratios.

What’s in the forecast is certainly a moderate resurfacing event, but it’s not even as large as Winter Storm Ezra from a few weeks back, which brought 1.24” of liquid here in the valley and even more to the mountains. This should be a nice addition of liquid equivalent to the snowpack in any case – I’m not sure if we’ve had a storm in the 1.0” liquid equivalent range since Ezra? And it’s always great to add to the snowpack when it’s already in really good shape and the surface conditions are relatively good as well – the ski conditions should only get better. This system (Winter Storm Fern) is rightfully getting a good amount of attention though because it’s affecting a relatively large amount of the country and some big population centers.

[WxWatcher007]

Keep taking em up, BTV…keep taking em up.