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NNE slowly approaching winter


dendrite

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11F with -SN falling. Cars are dusted up again. I thought it snowed persistenly in Jonesville but here on the Mountain Road between the village and resort, it seems to be snowing every time I look out the window.

BTV is chalking this light snow up to a "steaming" effect off Lake Champlain coupled with upslope flow. Delta T's are over +30F between lake and air, causing steam and moisture to rise into the arctic air...then it is forced up into the mountains and falls as snow in my backyard, haha.

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Sunday's storm looking like rain for VT. My long hold theory is, if it shows cutter, then cutter it is. Very little snow. Tiny shot at the beginning, change over to rain, and then not much on the backside. Upslope will help the mtn but not the village of Stowe. Like powderfreak said at one point, getting some substance to this snow pack wont be a bad thing. Anytime you get so much snow and see a big rain it's disheartening, but it is what it is. A basebuilder. Doesnt seem like a washout where it counts up on the mtn The valley locations? Well...we will see....I am picturing grass at this point because I am a pessimest.

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In Burlington today around 3:00 P.M., it started snowing. We didn’t think much of it at first, but the snow kept falling with greater and greater intensity, and before we knew it, there was probably an inch of snow on the cars outside. It prompted me to check out the radar, and it looked like a very localized event. I’m not sure if the lake had anything to do with it, but it was very interesting:

09DEC10A.gif

Here at the house we’ve picked up a couple of tenths of an inch to add to the event total, some were big flakes, but this evening it’s that diamond dust falling out of the air under what appear to be clear skies. I’ll roll it all into tomorrow morning’s observation for the end of this event, and then anything that falls with the disturbance passing through tomorrow will be put into that event.

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Sunday's storm looking like rain for VT. My long hold theory is, if it shows cutter, then cutter it is. Very little snow. Tiny shot at the beginning, change over to rain, and then not much on the backside. Upslope will help the mtn but not the village of Stowe. Like powderfreak said at one point, getting some substance to this snow pack wont be a bad thing. Anytime you get so much snow and see a big rain it's disheartening, but it is what it is. A basebuilder. Doesnt seem like a washout where it counts up on the mtn The valley locations? Well...we will see....I am picturing grass at this point because I am a pessimest.

Yeah, if this keeps going the way it appears, we will likely be down to just snowbanks here in the village. The mountain will be fine and it'll just pack the snow down, freeze it up solid, and then we'll have something to ski on when the next powder storm hits.

I'm optimistic that we see some upslope snow even down here in the village, dmc. This last even showed that upslope can benefit us quite nicely. I'm not sure where you live in Stowe (I know jvt is out near the Morrisville line) but I've noticed a decent snowfall gradient along the Mountain Road so far this fall. I live about halfway between the blinking red light in the village and Harlow Hill (and general ski resort area) and I'm right along the snowfall/precip gradient. I started noticing it in the fall during upslope rain events... above Harlow Hill there would be steady, moderate precipitation... at my area it would be light rain with wet roads, and then as I head into the village the roads would dry up and there'd be nothing from the Alpine Mart to the blinking light.

This past event was a good indicator of the gradient in this town. During Monday night when I picked up 8.5" of snow, a fellow co-worker over in Stowe Hollow (east side of town for those that don't know) picked up only 4-5" (at 1,300ft, which is 500ft higher than me). Meanwhile, west of me from the Matterhorn/Northern Lights Lodge area up to the ski resort picked up a solid 10-12" overnight. When my lease is up next June, I want to find a place even closer to the base of the mountain because the closer you get to Mansfield, the more snow you get regardless of elevation.

Very, very interesting local climate here in Stowe. I guess it makes sense as Stowe is the largest town in the state (in terms of total acres) and covers a decent amount of varying terrain and elevations. Tonight was a great example of this as the lodge/resort I moonlight at in the evenings was seeing steady snow with a solid fresh dusting of a half an inch with snow on the road (Mtn Road). I left work to drive home and it was snowing lightly till I hit my place a mile or two down Mtn Rd...and the half inch tapered to a dusting on the cars here. I had to run into town to get gas, and by the time I hit Alpine Mart there was no sign of snow and nothing evident on pavement or cars. It is very obvious that the further you get from Mansfield, the less it snows.

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Aye, all the ponds around here are frozen right over and I hear from a friend here at work that lives in Piermont, NH that Lake Tarleton is already iced over. Tarelton is a pretty good sized--2 miles long by a mile wide or so. Clearly it's not safe but the speed at which things are freezing over is notable.

Hell, the Connecticut River has a fair bit of ice along the edges and per this morning, is even starting to skim over across the broads. The set-backs are all frozen over too.

Last winter I got into the nordic skating a bit--Lake Morey and on the Connecticut. If we don't get any real snow in here soon to ski on, I'll be lacing up the skates again. ;)

We had a stretch of real good ice last February. Here's Lake Morey last Feb. with about 16-18" of ice and no snow:

4362547991_25d7479a33_z.jpg

Morey is a great place to skate and we certainly did have some good ice during February last year. It was too bad it got warm for the Pond Hockey Championship, this year it is Jan 29 and 30, should hopefully keep it nice and cold.

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I'll echo the reports from J. Spin and klw, ligh, diamond dust falling from basically clear skys. The cars are coated and the temp is 3.6° on my home thermometer. My thermometer usually runs a degree or two cooler than the official MPV reading. I don't know whether to chalk that up to their ASOS being in the middle of the paved tarmac or my inexpensive thermometer. Either way, this is the coldest night of the season so far. Hopefully the upcoming event doesn't torch us too badly. Since we don't have a lot of snow to lose, I would expect to be back to grass. Maybe we can get dryslotted so there isn't a lot of rain. That would at least allow us to keep th ground frozen to better keep the next snow.

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I'm excited about the upslope possibilities after this.. especially with the potential retrograde storm D5. I'm pretty sure I'm going skiing next Friday and/or Saturday and Sugarbush will be opening Mt Ellen up for the first time all year on Saturday so it will be first tracks. Could be phenomenal if they get 12"+ upslope

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I just noticed that the warmest tongue is actually at 900-850mb unlike a lot of these cutters where it is at 800mb. From 850mb on up it gets cooler, so I wonder if that could allow the summits to stay snow for a little while at the start above 3,000 or 3,500'. It would be falling into air above freezing but could fall as snow for a little while

Also the Euro only spikes the 850s to +3C while the GFS is spiking them to +4.5C.

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Event totals: 23.4” Snow/0.79” L.E.

Friday 12/10/2010 6:00 A.M. update: We’ve definitely cleared out now, so this will be the final update for this week’s snowfall event. It had quite a duration, as I took the first snowfall observation exactly one week ago. In line with what others have mentioned, we saw our lowest temperature of the season this morning, -3.8 F, and the temperature is climbing now. Details from the 6:00 A.M. update are below:

New Snow: 0.2 inches

New Liquid: 0.01 inches

Snow/Water Ratio: 20.0

Snow Density: 5.0%

Temperature: -3.8 F

Sky: Clear

Snow at the stake: 7.0 inches

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are you in a valley? seems like you radiate well there. only bottomed out at 6.9, but it's still dropping a bit.

Not really a valley. I'd call it a lower spot .. lol. Admittedly, my measuring device is improperly sited (attached to the side of my kids' playhouse). A PWS in Hollis is maybe 3 sm away and I'm usually within 2F on the low side of that station. A PWS in Parsonsfield in the other direction is also useful as a reference. I have noticed that our area radiates pretty well.

Edit: Just noticed that SFM made it down to 1F

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I'm excited about the upslope possibilities after this.. especially with the potential retrograde storm D5. I'm pretty sure I'm going skiing next Friday and/or Saturday and Sugarbush will be opening Mt Ellen up for the first time all year on Saturday so it will be first tracks. Could be phenomenal if they get 12"+ upslope

Yep, looking beyond the not-so-ideal setup for Sunday/Monday....there are certainly possibilities for occasionally significant snowfall in the favored upslope regions all the way into next weekend, really. I'm particularly watching the late Tuesday/Wednesday period which could bring warning-criteria snowfall to the same locations that got hammered this past week. I know it's still a ways out, but we seem to be in a pattern that favors retrogression so it's not such a hard thing to buy into.

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