Tony...the cut-off line seems to be I-89 in VT. MRG/Sugarbush have been able to keep a lot of terrain open after thaws, but from my personal experience they have considerably less snowpack than areas just to the north like Bolton, Stowe, Smuggs, and Jay. Those four resorts are in excellent shape from what I've heard (and seen at Stowe/Mansfield) considering a January that averaged 10F above normal in Burlington with plenty of rain events.
Killington southward is hurting on non-snowmaking trails and like you said, is hit and miss depending on where in the thaw cycle they are.
The only reason any of the trails have closed north of Killington, following a thaw, is because they are the steep expert runs that are frozen solid, not due to a lack of snow necessarily.
Up north, however, we've been lucky enough to have a 2-3 day thaw, not lose much snow, and then have it snow another foot of upslope/localized snowfall after the freeze. This has generally kept the snow conditions in relatively good shape. The snowpack is amazing considering there's no more than 2-4" on the ground in town and even less a few miles away. Above 2,000ft there is like 2-4 feet on the ground but it decreases very quickly below the base elevations of the resorts.
Pretty fascinating how the northern Greens have been able to pull out so much snow all things considered.
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Also, as far as the stake goes...it does look like some data is missing. The ski resort says 15-19" in the past 7 days. That sounds like the truth. 10" last night...1-2" in Monday's report. Also, on Friday when it rained all afternoon, it did snow 2" of wet snow when Jay only reported a dusting before changing over to rain. I was skeptical but I talked to people that were at the mountain on Friday morning and Stowe did get 2" of heavy wet snow before the change to rain. All that considered, 15-19" seems like the truth. Its certainly been more than 5".
On the topic of the stake, Tony, I like how you explain the stake info in your snowfall data. Today is a perfect case of the stake skewing snowfall.
DAILY HYDROMETEOROLOGICAL DATA
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BURLINGTON VT
527 PM EST TUE FEB 07 2006
STATION PRECIP TEMPERATURE PRESENT SNOW
24 HRS MAX MIN CUR WEATHER NEW TOTAL SWE
...VERMONT...
MOUNT MANSFIELD 0.35 12 0 3 5.0 55
I don't know how that'll come out but, the 5pm reading today says 5" of new snow as reported to the NWS. The ski resort says 8-10". I was there today and it was certainly closer to the upper end of the 8-10". Certainly more than 5". I think the pictures show that there was more than 5". I only think the stakes snowpack data is the stuff worth using because it can be compared to past years to see how the snow is relative to average. Its new snowfall can be highly skewed...almost needs to be multiplied by 1.25 at the end of the season to get an accurate snowfall reading.
I've actually been quite impressed with the resort's truthfulness in snow reporting this season...I never watched it so closely in the past but I'm up there every other day (weekends and Tues and Thurs) so I see first hand how it all lines up.
