NNE Cold Season Thread 2025-2026

[Ginx snewx]

54 minutes ago, WxWatcher007 said:

True, but I meant below zero down II my in CT. Here we may be able to pop a below zero number as far out as early April? This has been a big year for below zero temps. I love it.

-1.5/-5 here right now. -8 at SLK. 

Ah I see said the blind man

[amarshall]

Feb break for the kiddos. Headed up to Danforth ME to ice fish start of the week. Mild temps up there. mid 30s is shorts weather. Rented some sleds.  Sugarloaf Wed-Sun.  Anything on the horizon next week snow wise for the north country? 

 

[alex]

9 hours ago, Ginx snewx said:

Thought you were all done with below zero?  Never know up there 

I wish. -13F this morninb

[WxWatcher007]

-9 here this morning 

[dendrite]

9 hours ago, WxWatcher007 said:

True, but I meant below zero down II my in CT. Here we may be able to pop a below zero number as far out as early April? This has been a big year for below zero temps. I love it.

-1.5/-5 here right now. -8 at SLK. 

I liked SLK’s -29 on St Patty’s in 2014. They did -25 a week later too.

Not too many mornings below 0° in April during the ASOS era though.

[tamarack]

52 minutes ago, dendrite said:

I liked SLK’s -29 on St Patty’s in 2014. They did -25 a week later too.

Not too many mornings below 0° in April during the ASOS era though.

Our coldest March here.  We had -17 on 3/25/14, though the Month's coldest was -21 on the 6th.  Had 30.8" and the pack reached 43".

Ah I see said the blind man

The way I heard it:
"I see, said the blind carpenter as he picked up his hammer and saw."

[WxWatcher007]

58 minutes ago, tamarack said:

Our coldest March here.  We had -17 on 3/25/14, though the Month's coldest was -21 on the 6th.  Had 30.8" and the pack reached 43".

Ah I see said the blind man

The way I heard it:
"I see, said the blind carpenter as he picked up his hammer and saw."

What's your coldest April low?

[tamarack]

1 hour ago, WxWatcher007 said:

What's your coldest April low?

Here's the coldest for each month, May 1998 on, contrasted with Fort Kent, Jan1, 1976 thru Oct 25, 1985.

Month   New Sharon   Fort Kent   Month   New Sharon   Fort Kent
   JAN             -36          -47              JUL               37          32
   FEB              -29         -32              AUG              35          28
   MAR            -25          -32              SEP               23          20
   APR                5            -7               OCT               11            7
   MAY             21            20               NOV              -4         -12
   JUN             27            28               DEC             -31         -42

 

[klw]

Frost heaves are starting to get noticeable now.

[SJonesWX]

31 minutes ago, klw said:

Frost heaves are starting to get noticeable now.

they've been heaving down here for a few weeks now. some side roads are brutal

[das]

6 hours ago, klw said:

Frost heaves are starting to get noticeable now.

Even here in the valley. Offloading on pavement…

[J.Spin]

Our most recent system was one of those classic setups when an Alberta Clipper interacts with the Northern Greens and turns into a 12”+ event. I didn’t have time to get out for turns yesterday, so I headed up to the mountain this morning for a ski session. The Wilderness Lift has been closed for the past couple of days per its usual weekly schedule, so I toured via the Wilderness Uphill Route this morning ahead of its Friday opening.

As I mentioned in my Wednesday report, the first half foot of snow from this system came in fairly dense, with snow in the 9-10% H2O range, but the next half foot or so was in the 4-6% H2O range, and then then the final rounds of snow that came through yesterday finished off in the 2-3% H2O range. So all told, the storm cycle played out beautifully by delivering an excellent gradient of right-side-up powder.

And indeed the powder skiing today was as one might expect with those numbers – fantastic and bottomless unless you were on terrain that had been groomed during the storm. And even then, you were touching a subsurface that is of very high quality due to the rounds and rounds of snow we’ve received in the past few weeks. I last did powder depth checks during my Saturday outing on the Bolton Valley Nordic & Backcountry Network and was typically finding powder in the 20 to 30-inch range above the subsurface. We’re getting to the point now that it’s getting hard to put numbers to it – the overall powder stack is getting deep enough that it’s crushing and settling the lower levels of powder into denser snow beneath it, and it’s getting hard to assess where the actual subsurface sits. Oh well, that’s a great place to be in midwinter, so let’s just say that the powder out there in off piste areas that haven’t been touched is 20-30”+, and it’s got a beautiful density gradient in it that has set up naturally over time. On a related note, I see that the snowpack depth has now jumped back up above 80” according to the Mansfield Stake. So right now in the Northern Greens, the powder is deep, the overall snowpack is deep, the forecast calls for seasonable temperatures, and the modeling has 2 to 3 smaller systems with snow over the next few days. My recommendation is to get out there and enjoy it.

[mreaves]

22 hours ago, tamarack said:

Our coldest March here.  We had -17 on 3/25/14, though the Month's coldest was -21 on the 6th.  Had 30.8" and the pack reached 43".

Ah I see said the blind man

The way I heard it:
"I see, said the blind carpenter as he picked up his hammer and saw."

I guess I wasn’t paying close enough attention but I wasn’t really expecting light snow today. It’s nothing huge but always welcome. Well, at least until mid to late March when the golf jones starts kicking in. 

[tamarack]

1 hour ago, mreaves said:

I guess I wasn’t paying close enough attention but I wasn’t really expecting light snow today. It’s nothing huge but always welcome. Well, at least until mid to late March when the golf jones starts kicking in. 

Radar says it's snowing here, but the dry air is eating away, and no flakes have reached the ground yet.  Hit -3 earlier this morning.

[alex]

It’s been snowing lightly all morning here, just some light accumulation (maybe 1/4” or so). 

[mreaves]

Did a little tour of east central Vermont today. What a beautiful day for outdoor activities. 

[WxWatcher007]

Parade day at the winter carnival with flurries in the air. Carnival ends tomorrow. 
 

 

Could be a very wintry week ahead if the models have a clue. 

[J.Spin]

My wife and I headed up to Bolton Valley for a lift-served session this morning, so I can pass along the conditions updates. We planned to spend our time on Timberline and arrived there right around the opening of the Timberline Quad. Being a holiday weekend, we were a bit worried about how busy the resort was going to get, but the Timberline Quad remained at pretty much walk-on levels of traffic right up through noontime when we were done.

So, skier traffic was relatively light, but the snowfall from the larger storm earlier in the week was really spread out over the course of multiple days (Tuesday through Thursday). So, with respect to lift-served terrain, that storm’s powder has certainly been skied. Therefore, on piste areas and easily accessed off piste areas are mostly packed at this point, and we had to travel a bit farther afield to get into untracked lines.

We did pick up another inch or two of snow today down at our place in the valley, and it snowed lightly all morning on the mountain to add similar amounts, so that added another layer of freshened up snow. In general, the powder was in excellent shape, albeit with a bit more settling that what I encountered on my ski tour yesterday. We actually encountered a bit of sun/melt crust on some southerly aspects down around 1,500’, so be aware of that possibility if you’re planning to hit a any low elevation terrain with substantial southerly exposure. On piste conditions were excellent packed powder aside from the usual areas that have a manmade base, so it looks like the holiday weekend will continue to roll on with great midwinter conditions in the Northern Greens.

[WxWatcher007]

Not expecting much talk in the other thread but there’s a strong signal for a boundary to setup somewhere on Wednesday with a train of moisture running along it. Wherever that zone sets up there could be significant snowfall.

NAM and Euro are further north into NY/VT/NH while the GFS is further south.

[Boston Bulldog]

1 hour ago, WxWatcher007 said:

Not expecting much talk in the other thread but there’s a strong signal for a boundary to setup somewhere on Wednesday with a train of moisture running along it. Wherever that zone sets up there could be significant snowfall.

NAM and Euro are further north into NY/VT/NH while the GFS is further south.

Yep pretty decent look, though the slice of latitude that will get substantial snows is pretty thin. Put together a bit of a rambling post in the main thread as to why I think the GFS is too far south

[WxWatcher007]

18 minutes ago, Boston Bulldog said:

Yep pretty decent look, though the slice of latitude that will get substantial snows is pretty thin. Put together a bit of a rambling post in the main thread as to why I think the GFS is too far south

Very narrow geographically. Euro is slow to come out today but it’s still quite a bit further north of the GFS.