3rd great winter in a row?

I

icelanticskier

New member
some weather forecasters sure do think so. all i've been hearing and reading is that it could be colder and snowier than last season. man, can you imagine the big dumps from 06/07 combined with the consistency and length of the 07/08 season? nice to think about.
salida, i hope that i can thank you for moving west allowing us to get ours and don't worry, i'll be feeling for ya as it happened to me twice when i moved to the wasatch for the 95/96 and the 2000/01 seasons.
it'll still be in the 60's with rain/sun and little base in early jan for my birthday like the last two seasons though.
rog
 
After a couple of neutral months we're headed back into La Nina territory again. Most recent AUG/SEP MEI reading http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/klaus.wolter/MEI/table.html of -.569 is mild La Nina, about half the strength of a year ago. We've had these double dip La Ninas spanning 2 ski seasons in the past, notably 1974 and 1975, then again in 1999 and 2000. In both of those cases the first La Nina year was also the stronger one. Not much implication for the Northeast, but PNW and Northern Rockies skiers should be happy.
 
with overnight temps in the low 40's and highs around 70 for the last week with more to come, add to that some peak foliage and clear blue skies and winter is the farthest thing from my mind right now. it'll come eventually. maybe nov, dec, or jan. looking forward to mount washington/chic choc days the most. gotta get my new setup figured out, i mean, what i'm gonna get, so many good choices from icelantic-shamen 173 with marker barons? most likely. pray for snow.
rog
 
i couldn't come back from the layoff with out at least taking a poke at ice or river right :D

i disagree with the premise of 2 great seasons prior


there is a post on another site from tom horrocks from Killington in which he states that this past winter 07/08, there were 15 rain freeze cycles/events from dec 15th to april 1st...

we've had this discussion before...if you can drop it all on a dime and chase snow, you could argue it was great... if you have to play the odds and stick to a schedule to any degree , then the odds were it was not nearly as great and there were quite a few crappy days of ridiculous hard pack..

i will admit that it did seem that the stowe corridor seemed to dodge some of those rain events more so than K and everywhere else

just my opinion
 
I think various locations in the northeast had varying degrees of success last year, and indeed any given year. Last year was a record and banner year for almost every single New Hampshire mountain. To argue against last year being a sensational winter from NH's perspective would be arguing against the facts. Vermont certainly did not have the same banner year that New Hampshire did. How would various skiers measure a great winter? I measure in terms of powder days which is not the same as most people as rain/freeze events help solidify base and can help make more powder days into better powder days. Rain/freeze events hurts most areas but most especially areas that do not rebound as quickly as areas that get more snow fall and squeeze refresher snows out of smaller systems that might even give rain to other areas.

Compared to other years in the current decade, the last two stack up very favorably and are in the top five for sure (we all know which year was the number one without question). Last season I had to work harder and got over all lower quality powder days compared to the previous year. But on the flip side... early 2007 in November and December was off the hook and spring skiing on Mount Washington was incredible. I measure a great winter in a lot of different ways. Last year certainly didn't suck, that is for sure. And my best day of the season (even having a pass to Jay) was at Cannon, a testament to the incredible amount of snow and base in NH last season.
 
and everyone forgets there can be better skiing in maine. i skied pow days in maine that were complete rain events in both nh and vt last winter. all depends on where ya go and yes last winter was solid on all accounts from nov till july, winter before/epic from jan 15th at saddleback till the end. and as far as being flexible and chasing storms at the drop of a hat.
1) i wouldn't have it any other way, priorities.
2) wouldn't love livin here as a skier if i couldn't be so flexible
3) because i'm flexible, i wouldn't live anywhere else in the world.
rog
 
This seems the appropriate occasion to mention that last week I updated my season history charts, adding in a powder factor based upon the viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6822 powder day probabilities I derived in June.

The Vermont history is at http://bestsnow.net/vrmthist.htm.
No question last year was #2 of the past decade. Over half the excess over average was due to the excellent December. 2006-07 came out close to average as a combination of the abysmal early season and stellar late season. I will admit to River that the 2006-07 powder gets underestimated a bit by my formula (the percentage is applied to the April A&B weeks, but the percentage itself is based on Dec-Mar) because so much of it was in April.

With respect to snowfall, I have an overall 114% for the Northeast in 2007-08. In Vermont Stratton and Okemo were actually below average, while everyone from Killington to Jay was in the 112%-117% range. As River and icelantic note, the numbers outside Vermont were much better. Whiteface 129%, Cannon 159%, Waterville 131%, Sugarloaf 121%. And we all know that it was a record breaker in eastern Canada, where I have very little data, only Le Massif at 145%. Killington was on the edge of the area that was only average, so I'm not that surprised about the rain/freeze comment.

2) wouldn't love livin here as a skier if i couldn't be so flexible
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Given the day-to-day volatility of surface conditions, truer words were never spoken about eastern skiing. If you're not flexible and you insist on skiing every week in the East, you'll be skiing crap ~1/3 of the time.
Rain/freeze events hurts most areas but most especially areas [like Loon, attn joegm] that do not rebound as quickly as areas that get more snow fall and squeeze refresher snows out of smaller systems that might even give rain to other areas.
Click to expand...
 
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