Ice Ice Baby December 28-29 Storm Discussion

[Cyclone-68]

4 hours ago, dendrite said:

If you don’t like the weather in New England just wait 5 months. 

Honestly not only is this unfortunately true, it’s also more accurate than Twain’s 

[SJonesWX]

20 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

Black Mountain NH had catastrophic failures on both their lifts

both occurred yesterday and neither had anything to do with this storm

[tamarack]

4 hours ago, dendrite said:

I drove up to Lyndon with my father during it to work on my shitbox 87 Cavalier that died in the LSC parking lot before break. I remember the Lakes Region looking like a disaster area from 93…mostly from about here through the woodstock area. We gradually lost ice through the notch until it looked like mostly just wet trees on the other side toward Cannon. 

Our 0.8-acre houselot in Gardiner probably had more large branches on the ground than the 60 acres of forest on our current woodlot, as the Farmington area had mostly pingers.  Elevation was often the key.  On the state lot in Hebron, 10 miles NW from LEW, ice at the top of Greenwood Hill was almost the size of a Pringles can.  I brought 2 pieces home to show family, each centered with a first-year twig.  One was 3.0x2.2 inches diameter, the other 2.5x2.5 inches, about 2 lb per linear foot of branch.  Some large white pines had a near-continuous sheet of ice on their NE exposure and others had cascading breakage on that side as top branches landed on the lower ones.

OT:  Sad your Cavalier was a lemon.  Our 1983 wagon (1st year they had fuel injection, also our last new car) was wonderful except for its unibody frame.  Just under 150k, 33 mph on average, engine never missed a beat, but the frame was rusted such as we might end up like Herbie in the Love Bug.  Also the finest 2-WD vehicle in snow and mud that I've driven.  With aggressive tread snows and spike, it would go thru almost anything.

[powderfreak]

19 minutes ago, HoarfrostHubb said:

Our daughter had her first day as a lift operator today. Wawa just opened their new summit lift.  One good thing about that one is that they build a shed building where they store the chairs overnight.  That’s a first for them. Should help a bit on icy days.  

Yeah a chair barn helps a lot.  Still need to de-ice sheave wheels, rope and towers… but it’s a lot easier than de-icing 100 detachable grips.  Chair storage is a big deal.

We have it for the FourRunner Quad, but not Sensation Quad and that’s the photo I posted of the grips all iced up.  Lift maintenance has to bang the ice off each and every one of those.

Which by the way, hats off to all lift maintenance teams today.  They were the ones up on towers, in the elements, all day long banging ice… it’s hard physical work, cold and wet… tethered in way off the ground.  They are the real heroes.

[Cold Miser]

2 hours ago, WxWatcher007 said:

Let’s say it’s 24-30” with 70mph winds. 

That may be hard to refuse.

[WinterWolf]

1 hour ago, Ginx snewx said:

In Norwich Ct no all a dream here solid 3 left all white no cheese 

Yup…we 100% solid cover about 3-4” deep. Lost about half of it, but still full cover. 

[VivaManchVegas]

29 minutes ago, HoarfrostHubb said:

My first memory of Thundersnow. 

Mine was the Halloween storm in 2011 which shut the grid down for a week in my neighborhood. My initial reaction was, what the eff was that?

[Prismshine Productions]

Update to last night:

Dreamless sleep, minor headache all day, took a two hour nap this afternoon and finally got a little energy



Sent from my SM-S166V using Tapatalk

[Cold Miser]

Of my 3.5” of “pack” from the other day’s snow  I probably lost just over half, which surprised me considering the sub tropical climate I’m in at Lava Lake.    

[Baroclinic Zone]

39 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

I’ll have to look that up.  Curious how.

Happened on Sunday, so not due to ice.

https://www.facebook.com/BlackMtnNH/

[CoastalWx]

Could rip tonight into tomorrow aftn. Mixing looks good 

[Ginx snewx]

14 minutes ago, Baroclinic Zone said:

Happened on Sunday, so not due to ice.

https://www.facebook.com/BlackMtnNH/

Didn't mean to imply ice at all. Just thought PF would be interested 

[dendrite]

Pack is at 5” of waterlogged cement. I put a ruler up on the stratus gauge and it’s around 1 3/8”. I’ll estimate what fell before 1230am but I assume it’s enough to put me over 1.5”. We take the drink. 

[dendrite]

53 minutes ago, AstronomyEnjoyer said:

32.2°, temp has come down a little from a high of 32.9°. Still anticipating a bit of a spike sometime later today, but I'm not sure it's going to do much. Little to no ice has melted off the trees at my place - hoping the wind doesn't make more a mess.

You can kind of see ground zero for the most icing on the Eversource outage map. Looks like the area directly around Lake Sunapee got it pretty good. Makes sense, given pretty much all of that terrain is at least 1100ft asl. 

Here’s the NHEC map. The bigger numbers seem to be Wilmot, Moultonborough, and Conway.

[AstronomyEnjoyer]

Here comes the wind. Temp up to 33.6°.

 

[HIPPYVALLEY]

41 minutes ago, Prismshine Productions said:

Update to last night:

Dreamless sleep, minor headache all day, took a two hour nap this afternoon and finally got a little energy



Sent from my SM-S166V using Tapatalk
 

Well, no concussion is good news. 

[mahk_webstah]

2 hours ago, dendrite said:

For our region I think it was. Most have been at or under 1/8” radial. Lurker didn’t have a lot of ice there…looked like about 0.1” radial.

You have to separate out what was forecast from what we received. The forecast I saw last night had nearly a half inch of ice at MHT and CON and social media weenies were losing their minds about the grid collapsing. There’s been no accretion since sunrise outside of 1500’+ elevations. We’re just rotting at 32-33° as usual.

Now don’t get me wrong…it’s a high end mess out there with all of the liquid on top of icy surfaces. I don’t think there’s enough in the trees to cause an issue with freeze up and winds…maybe some isolated outages at most. It has the look of ice that will break up and rain out of the branches when the winds pick up a bit. 

I wish we could just get 2-3 hours of a saturated 36-38 to expose some of the dirt and rocks in my driveway. At least we got a nice drink for the drought.

Yes, I think it was over forecast. I agree. I think I did get more than an 8th inch radial though.  Although it’s unusual for me to get more than you and any of these situations. I was out of my driveway earlier. It’s 1500 feet hard pack and it’s a freaking mess and it’s all freezing up tonight. I got four Home Depot buckets of sand to see if that can help lol we need a big snowstorm.

[Damage In Tolland]

38 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Could rip tonight into tomorrow aftn. Mixing looks good 

You think strongest once sun comes up tomorrow or overnight? Already gusting here with falling temps 

[Hoth]

Pleasantly surprised to find my pack remains intact upon arriving home. Thought for sure we’d be down to a few piles around the driveway. Now we freeze solid and wait for a refresh. 

[Damage In Tolland]

Just now, Hoth said:

Pleasantly surprised to find my pack remains intact upon arriving home. Thought for sure we’d be down to a few piles around the driveway. Now we freeze solid and wait for a refresh. 

What was your high today ? 

[ineedsnow]

Wtf big gust coming through... instantly colder and dumping sleet

[ineedsnow]

Now we snow!

[metagraphica]

3 hours ago, metagraphica said:

45/44 and this rain ain't gonna get it done.  The pack is shrinking but I don't think it's going to disappear.  Should still have some left over once this is all said and done.

3 hours ago, DavisStraight said:

Its gonna turn to ice if enough of it sticks around.

Yep, gonna end up with ~2" or so of bullet proof pack.

[dendrite]

1 minute ago, ineedsnow said:

Now we snow!

Yeah that looks interesting 

 

[dendrite]

10 minutes ago, mahk_webstah said:

Yes, I think it was over forecast. I agree. I think I did get more than an 8th inch radial though.  Although it’s unusual for me to get more than you and any of these situations. I was out of my driveway earlier. It’s 1500 feet hard pack and it’s a freaking mess and it’s all freezing up tonight. I got four Home Depot buckets of sand to see if that can help lol we need a big snowstorm.

1/8” radial still looks impressive on the trees. Imagine that amount on each side of the branch. If you had more than that there would be a lot more outages south of here. If you’re measuring flat ice, that’s twice as much the radial amount. So if I had 1/8” radial here that equivalent to 1/4” of flat ice.

And yeah, it’s an adventure for me going down the driveway or to the run. I wanted to get my dormant plants some rain so I stupidly carried about 20 pots from the garage to outside. The pots were subfreezing so they froze to the driveway. I was eventually able to pull them out in the past half hour, but that was almost a stupid mistake. 

[HoarfrostHubb]

18 minutes ago, AstronomyEnjoyer said:

Here comes the wind. Temp up to 33.6°.

 

Yup.  Just started a few minutes ago in N Central Mass. 

Also, my driveway is an ice rink, despite it being close to 40F.  The ground is pretty cold. 

[HoarfrostHubb]

And the snow too.  A few minutes ago I took out the trash to our barrel that’s been waiting on the street since Friday morning )stupid trash company).  No wind. No snow.  Now there’s both

[ineedsnow]

6 minutes ago, dendrite said:

Yeah that looks interesting 

 

Radar wasn't even great over us when it happened.. I went out thinking a gutter broke and water was pouring on the side of the house lol nope just a crap ton of sleet hitting the house  I was out a couple minutes before that it was warmer and calm.. then hell broke loose 

[HoarfrostHubb]

Brian, who is the blue curly icon to the east of (I assume) ineedsnow. Prob Fitchburg or Leominster?

[Damage In Tolland]

Spent about 4 hours today with temp 42-43.. enough to do a number but not entirely wipe it.