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.