Vermont Snow Updates 2010-11

[J.Spin]

This one sort of snuck up on us, so I figured I give a heads up that there should be another nice NVT powder day tomorrow. With the way the snow has been falling, BTV put up advisories for 2 to 5 inches, and I’ve added a couple of their graphics below. I suspect the western slopes will be beyond the numbers in the graphic since my colleague Stephen called to tell me he already had 6 inches by 8:00 P.M. in South Burlington, and BTV says it should continue through the night:

AS OF 935 PM EST WEDNESDAY...NO UPDATE PLANNED TO GOING FORECAST ATTM. CWA WILL CONTINUE TO SEE PLUMES OF ATLANTIC MOISTURE PUSH WEST INTO THE CWA OVERNGT FROM LOW OFFSHORE. LGT TO MODERATE SNOW WILL FALL OVER THE AREA.





One thing that may be keeping the accumulations numbers down is that the flakes aren’t the massive upslope kind. At least here in the Winooski Valley we’ve had fairly small flakes and my evening snow analysis came in at 8.3% H2O. In any event, there’s a nice shot of moisture going into the snowpack on top of what were already really nice conditions on and off piste. With the more moderate density snow it should be a good shot of material for the local tree skiing, so options may jump up from what we already saw last weekend. Additional discussion is in the NNE thread at Americanwx.com; we’ll see where the accumulations fall in the morning.

[J.Spin]

Waterbury event totals: 3.8” Snow/0.32” L.E.

Thursday 12/23/2010 6:00 A.M. update: The snow fell overnight as generally a continuation of the small flakes we’ve seen, so a decent amount of liquid was in the 2.1 inches I found on the board this morning. The average snow density here for the 6:00 P.M. to 6:00 A.M. period was 9.0% H2O, so this snow should add a nice shot to the snowpack in locations where it’s come down. As of this morning’s totals, there’s been about a third of an inch of liquid from this event at this location. Flake size was up to the 3-5 mm range at observation time and the snow has been topped off with bit of fluffier material, although snowfall is now very light.

Below is a north to south list for 24-hour snow accumulations at some of the Vermont ski resorts:

Jay Peak: 4”
Burke: 3”
Smuggler’s Notch: 3”
Stowe: 5”
Bolton Valley: 7”
Mad River Glen: 3”
Sugarbush: 5”
Killington: 3”
Okemo: 4”
Bromley: 4”
Stratton: 3”
Mount Snow: 2”


Some details from the 6:00 A.M. observations are below:

New Snow: 2.1 inches
New Liquid: 0.19 inches
Snow/Water Ratio: 11.1
Snow Density: 9.0%
Temperature: 27.1 F
Sky: Light Snow (3-5 mm flakes)
Snow at the stake: 9.0 inches

[J.Spin]

Waterbury Event totals: 4.2” Snow/0.35” L.E.

Thursday 12/23/2010 2:00 P.M. update: With Bolton Valley topping the accumulations list from this event, we headed there today for turns. Consistent with their report, my depth checks on new snow around the mountain generally revealed about 7 inches. The new snow was fairly dense, pretty consistent with the 8-9% H2O snow we’ve been picking up at the house from this event, so the mountain may have received in the range of 2/3 of an inch of liquid in the past 24 hours. With this event, Bolton has picked up 99 inches of snow for the season.

It snowed on and off while we were skiing, although occasionally it came down quite hard, and I’d say there was another ½ inch to inch of accumulation on the car when we left. I wondered if any of that activity had reached down to the house, and found that we’d picked up 0.4 inches of additional snow this morning.

Some details from the 2:00 P.M. observations from the house are below:

New Snow: 0.4 inches
New Liquid: 0.03 inches
Snow/Water Ratio: 13.3
Snow Density: 7.5%
Temperature: 28.8 F
Sky: Flurries
Snow at the stake: 9.0 inches

[J.Spin]

My Bolton Valley report from yesterday is up with a few pictures. It wasn’t a Champlain Powder™ type of day with dry snow billowing up all over the place, but the dense snow was really great for the base and it was smooth and bottomless.

[J.Spin]

Two things to note from Friday’s outing at Bolton were that wind reset some of the powder surfaces and a bit of wind crust formed. A couple of conditions shots are below, and the rest of the text and images are in my Bolton report from Friday.

[J.Spin]

Northern Vermont wasn’t the focus for the recent Nor’easter, but Bolton Valley seemed to do quite well based on what I saw up there today. With this latest shot of synoptic snow now down, I’d say that even the steeper off piste terrain is in play aside from perhaps the lowest-elevation areas near the base of Timberline. Conditions could be very close to Tony’s “A” level based on what I saw today, with the only questions being durability when enough visitors hit it and how much on piste terrain has seen sufficient levels of wind that the mountain still needs to keep them closed. I added a couple of shots from today’s Bolton report below:

[J.Spin]

I just added my report from Tuesday at Bolton, which was our first chance to get out and visit Timberline since the Nor’easter. Conditions were excellent both on and off piste, and even some of the steepest tree lines are in play now. The steepest off piste stuff wouldn’t hold up to tons of traffic, but fortunately Bolton’s lifts don’t push a ton of traffic. It seems that for the Northern Greens, the west side is the place right now and there’s been an interesting thread at SkiVT-L discussing west side vs. east side conditions. More details from Tuesday can be found in my report linked above.

[Tony Crocker]

Scott's thread referenced in JSpin's TR above confirms why I'm not giving an "A" grade to northern Vermont yet. FYI I'm equally stingy with my SoCal grades. No chair 1 at Baldy or face of Waterman skiable, no "A" grade, even when Big Bear and Mt. High are 90+% open as they are now.

And Scott's call for 1/4 inch of rain followed by dry weather next week does not look good. 1/4 inch of rain is more than enough to screw up surfaces, as noted by jojo_obrien's Baldy report from today vs. mine 2 days ago.

[J.Spin]

I’m still catching up on trip reports, so I’m only up to Thursday, but it was another great day out there with clear skies and temperatures in the low 30s F. Most trails had settled down to just packed powder, but the powder in the off piste areas was still fantastic. More details are in my Bolton Valley report from Thursday.

[J.Spin]

Friday was the transition day for conditions at Bolton, with high temperatures around 40 F and surfaces becoming spring-like. Details can be found in my 12/31/2010 Bolton Report.

[skimore]

How bad did the warmup kill the natural base offpiste?

[J.Spin]

How bad did the warmup kill the natural base offpiste?

I'm still finishing up my report, but we skied the Bolton Nordic/backcountry network on Saturday and the base was in great shape (we were in the 2,000' to 2,700 elevation range). We skinned up the Bryant trail to the cabin, and saw a couple small streams with running water off to the sides of the trail, but that was it. The natural snowpack in there was a couple of feet deep, and didn’t seem to be going anywhere, it’s just that the snow was wet so it wasn’t powder and wasn’t all that much fun to ski. Rain wasn’t really an issue with this event (we had a tenth of an inch at the house) so that’s presumably why the streams didn’t open up. It was just warm, so any areas where the snowpack was thin due to traffic or wind opened up. It was the on piste areas with exclusively natural snow that needed to be closed. The mountains did get about a half foot of new snow today, and I can see in Bolton’s report that they have been dropping ropes on additional trails.

[J.Spin]

I finished up my trip report from Saturday, which was the last time I was up in the higher elevations. We didn’t ski the alpine trails, but on our drive up I could see that previously thin areas on natural snow terrain were showing ground. Presumably these were the areas where wind or traffic had led to shallower snow depths, because off piste even in the lowest elevations of the Nordic/backcountry network area, base depths were easily a couple feet and there were no concerns about coverage.



There’s been a good deal of additional snowfall over the past couple of days, with Jay Peak topping the accumulations list at 19 inches. It’s been fluffy snow, but Bolton has only reported about 5 inches and they have been able to open some additional trails. I’ve attached my most recent update from the NNE thread at Americanwx.com below:

Event totals: 5.5” Snow/0.18” L.E.

Thursday 1/6/2011 6:00 A.M. update: We picked up another half inch of very fluffy snow overnight to add to the snowfall total. Even as of yesterday however, this clipper was already our third largest snowfall event of the season. Since yesterday, the mountains picked up additional snowfall as well, so I’ve updated the storm totals for the mountains along the spine, listed north to south:

Jay Peak: 19”
Smuggler’s Notch: 6”
Stowe: 9”
Bolton Valley: 5”
Mad River Glen: 4”
Sugarbush: 10”
Killington: 3”

The numbers are quite variable along the spine, with some areas getting close to a foot now, but Jay Peak has clearly ramped up its legendary snowfall magic in a way I hadn’t seen yet this season to lead the pack.

In his morning broadcast, Roger Hill said that he’s not expecting much accumulating snow in our area in the Thursday-Friday timeframe, but for Saturday-Sunday he was going with 4 to 8 or perhaps 5 to 10 inches for the mountains. Presumably we’d get in on a portion of that in the mountain valleys

Some details from the 6:00 A.M. observations are below:

New Snow: 0.5 inches
New Liquid: <0.01 inches
Temperature: 15.6 F
Sky: clear
Snow at the stake: 7.5 inches

[J.Spin]

It looks like Jay Peak's earlier report of 19" for the storm was initially an error and they have since revised it to 13". More details and links in a post in the NNE thread at Americanwx.com.



Snowfall update from today: Here in Burlington it actually snowed steadily for a while in the morning, but there was no accumulation in this area. The snow that is on the ground here actually looks like it saw some melting today, or perhaps it was just the fluff settling and revealing some spots of grass. In the mountains the snowfall was more consistent and now that the sun is coming out there is a distinct line visible around the 2,000’ elevation mark with everything above quite white (image below). I’d guess that there was a little more accumulation in the higher elevations today.

[J.Spin]

We haven't been hit hard with the inverted trough here in Northern VT like some places in CT, but we've had at least some snow to add on top of the fluff from the clipper earlier in the week. With the new snow I popped up to the mountain for some lift-served runs in the late morning, and then I headed back up with the family when we went for a tour on the Nordic/BC network in the mid to late afternoon. It looks like the western slopes have an upslope event coming in tomorrow, with some decent accumulations expected for the mountains. Anticipated snowfall maps for the next event are below, along with some of my Waterbury and Bolton observations from today in my latest report at AmericanWx.com:

Waterbury event totals: 3.0” Snow/0.24” L.E.

Saturday 1/8/2011 12:00 P.M. update: It was snowing decently with some larger flakes at the house in the mid to late morning period, so I decided to head up to the mountain to make some turns and see what conditions were like. The powder depths I observed up there are actually a combination of the fluffy snow from the clipper earlier in the week, with this denser snow from the current Great Lakes ULL/inverted trough on top of it. In Bolton’s Timberline area up to the mid station (1,500’ to 2,250’) I found 4 to occasionally 5 inches of powder, but up at the Timberline summit there was a consistent 5 to 7 inches atop the consolidated snow from before the warmth. On the main mountain at around 2,300’ I found 6 inches of powder, and even up at the Vista Summit (3,100’) I never found more than 7 inches. Toward the end of the day we went out for a tour on the Nordic/backcountry network and I found generally 6 inches of loose snow in the 2,000’ to 2,500’ range.

Down at the house (495’) we picked up some additional snow during the morning, and with some larger flakes, at least at times, the snow density dropped another couple of percent down to 6.9% H2O. By that point we’d received about a quarter inch of liquid for the event. Some details from the noontime observations are below:

New Snow: 1.6 inches
New Liquid: 0.11 inches
Snow/Water Ratio: 14.5
Snow Density: 6.9%
Temperature: 27.3 F
Sky: Light Snow (1 mm flakes)
Snow at the stake: 8.0 inches

After noon, the snow really shut off, and we even had a few breaks of sunshine. Up on the mountain there was a burst of snow when we started our backcountry tour at around 3:00 P.M., but for the most part the snow was very light until we were leaving around 4:30 – 5:00 P.M. and it picked up a little. Flakes were very small (1-2 mm) on the mountain the entire time. Since noon there’s only been a couple of tenths of additional snow accumulation here at the house, and most of that seems to have come from this evening where we’ve had some slightly larger flakes falling.

Looking ahead to tomorrow, BTV has new advisories up for the western slopes from 5:00 A.M. tomorrow through 10:00 A.M. Monday for upslope snow, and the focus of the expected snowfall is very clear on the storm total snowfall maps. Washington County isn’t actually in this advisory, but our NWS point forecast calls for 2 to 6 inches through tomorrow night and the storm total map has the Chittenden County/Washington County border in our area at around 6 inches. I added a bit of the afternoon NWS discussion along with their warning and accumulations maps below:

.SHORT TERM /7 AM SUNDAY MORNING THROUGH MONDAY NIGHT/...
AS OF 315 PM EST SATURDAY...ANOTHER INTERESTING SETUP TAKING SHAPE ONCE AGAIN DURING SUNDAY/SUNDAY NIGHT TIME FRAME AS UPPER LOW SHIFTS EAST/OFFSHORE... MARITIME CYCLONE OCCLUDES AND NORTH/NORTHWESTERLY FLOW DEEPENS. THIS WILL ALLOW CONTINUED OROGRAPHICAL ENHANCEMENT OF LIGHT SNOWS ACROSS THE NWRN DACKS/NWRN GREENS AND PORTIONS OF THE VT CHAMPLAIN VALLEY. INDEED...MODELS DEPICT TO VARYING DEGREES AT LEAST A PERIOD OF MORE ENHANCED ACTIVITY DURING 18Z SUN TO 06Z MONDAY TIME FRAME AS STRONGER UPPER SHORTWAVE PASSAGE COMBINED WITH MOISTURE OF MARITIME ORIGIN WRAPS BACK SOUTH/SOUTHWESTWARD INTO OUR AREA. BASED ON HISTORICALLY HIGHER THAN NORMAL SNOW TO LIQUID SNOW RATIOS FOR THESE SCENARIOS (AROUND 20:1 OR A TAD HIGHER) HAVE OPTED TO ISSUE A WINTER WX ADVSY FOR THE NWRN SLOPES OF THE ADIRONDACKS...AS WELL AS THE WESTERN SLOPES OF THE NRN GREENS AND THE EASTERN PORTIONS OF THE CHAMPLAIN VALLEY OF NRN VT DURING THIS TIME FRAME. MAINLY LOOKING AT A PROLONGED LIGHT SNOW EVENT HERE...OFFERING 3-7 INCHES IN THE NWRN DACKS...AND 4 TO 8 ACROSS THE VT PORTIONS OF THE ADVSY (LOCALLY HIGHER)...THOUGH HEAVIER ACCUM HERE SHOULD BE GENERALLY EAST OF BURLINGTON.