I’ve written up
my summary for the 2011-2012 ski season in a similar manner to the
2010-2011 Ski Season Summary that I put together last year. Hopefully these data will be useful for Tony in his
Vermont Weekly Snow Conditions Charts. Beyond that, I know there’s not much interest in
Northern Vermont skiing on this forum, but hopefully the information and links will be of some utility to others as well. The general synopsis text (with sections covering snowfall, off piste/tree skiing, and snow quality), and the linked list of daily reports are included below. For those interested in the more in-depth monthly synopses as included in
last year’s report, they can be found in the full text at our website, but I have included the photographs selected from our collection for each month of the ski season, and added them at the end for some visuals in this post.
Our 2011-2012 winter weather summary is also complete, with the storm by storm details for the 45 accumulating winter storms that reached our valley location this season – links to several relevant storms are also integrated into the ski season summary text included here. I’ve provided direct links to
the 2011-2012 ski season and
2011-2012 winter weather summaries below, and the excerpt text from the ski season summary follows:
http://jandeproductions.com/2012/08/16/2011-2012-ski-season-summary/
http://jandeproductions.com/2012/1112weather.html
With everyone having their own unique perspective on skiing, combined with the multitude of weather-related factors involved in winter recreation in general, there’s usually ample room for debate about where a ski season sits relative to average. However, when it comes to the 2011-2012 ski season in
Northern Vermont (and
perhaps to an even greater extent in other parts of the Northeastern U.S.) most any metric would set it firmly in the lower half of seasons. Some key contributing factors to the outcome of the season were temperatures, which were above average for every month from October through May (specific monthly temperature departures are available in the monthly detail section), overall precipitation, which was well below average during that period, and as expected with that combination, snowfall that was well below average. However, the numbers don’t always tell the whole story, and indeed that was the case in
Northern Vermont this past season. If numbers aren’t everything, perhaps timing
is everything, and the snow machine of the
Northern Greens exhibited
some impeccable timing for some of the busiest ski periods when it came down to it. There was also a consistency and intensity in
backside snows that seemed to heal just about every mixed precipitation event. So while I don’t think that
the winter of 2011-2012 can be considered anything but below average around here, the bigger story might just be how surprisingly good it was. That story unfolds in the details below.
Snowfall: A very reliable and trustworthy indicator of just how poor the winter’s snowfall was for the general
Northern Vermont area, is the data from
the area’s first-order weather station at the
National Weather Service Office in Burlington. Out of
127 years worth of data going back to the winter of 1884-1885, the 37.7" of total snowfall in
Burlington during
2011-2012 was the third lowest in their records (only 1912-1913 with 31.3" and 1904-1905 with 32.0" were lower). Interestingly this third lowest recorded snowfall obtained in
2011-2012 came right on the heels of
Burlington’s third
highest recorded snowfall of 128.4" in
2010-2011. Relative to average snowfall, which for the
1884-2011 period of record in Burlington is 73.3",
2011-2012 came in at just 51.4%.
Burlington is the local
first-order weather station for the area, but despite its proximity to the spine of the
Northern Greens, the
Champlain Valley’s snowfall doesn’t necessarily correlate with what goes on in the mountains. Looking next at
Winooski Valley snowfall data obtained from
our house, which sits right along the spine and is a decent representation of what happens in the mountain valleys of the
Greens, we find that snowfall was well below average during all the key winter months, and our season total was 115.3". Not surprisingly, this is the lowest snowfall total obtained in the six years that we have collected rigorous data at our location, and it’s almost two standard deviations below the mean (172.1 ± 31.5") obtained from 2006-2011. However, at 67.0% of the average snowfall, it’s not quite as low as what
Burlington experienced. Like the local mountains themselves, some spots in the mountain valleys have what
Powderfreak refers to as
a snowfall insurance policy, which comes in the form of upslope snow.
Burlington and the
Champlain Valley can get in on a bit of mesoscale weather action in the form of lake-effect snow from
Lake Champlain, but it’s not a major contributor to snowfall due to the size and orientation of the lake. To the east of the
Champlain Valley however, the
upslope snow, sometimes referred to as
Champlain Powder™, is what sets the snowfall in the
Greens apart from areas that rely solely on synoptic precipitation. Interestingly, as we head up in elevation above
our house in the valley, we find
Bolton Valley reporting a
very similar deviation from average snowfall compared to
Burlington this season.
Bolton recorded 159" of snow this past season, which based on
Bolton’s reported seasonal snowfall mean of 312", comes in at just 51.0% of average. That amount of snow is extremely low for this area, and is more akin to what one might find in a typical season at
Lake Louise Ski Area in
Alberta vs. the spine of
Vermont’s Northern Greens. The updated table with
Bolton Valley’s snowfall from the past several seasons is added below, which illustrates the strong snowfall deviation from average seen in
2011-2012:
Although still well below average all around, there certainly was a trend toward slightly better snowfall as one continued to head north in the state, with the northward trend of 63.4% at
Stowe, 66.6% at
Smuggler’s Notch, and 71.5% at
Jay Peak relative to average. A contributor to the low snowfall at the resorts was the fact that there was really only
one big, multi-foot storm cycle during the heart of the season.
That storm came at the end of February and
dropped 40" at Jay Peak, just on the heels of a couple smaller systems for a total
in excess of 50" of snow in just a few days.
The resulting skiing was fantastic due the density gradient that was set up by the way it fell - 1 to 2 feet of dense snow came first, and it was topped off with another couple feet of champagne that
finished at around 2% H2O. The snowpack at the
Mt. Mansfield Stake jumped from
49" to 81" during that period, and the icing on the cake was that the storm cleared right out to produce bluebird skies on
Feb 26th. Unfortunately, one great storm doesn’t make a season. Based on
estimations from my weather data, on average we should only expect one or two of those 40"+ storms per season, but they would typically be backed up by several 20+ storms, and the deficiency of those is part of what left the overall snowfall lacking.
Tree Skiing: In the past I’ve used empirical data from trip reports to establish a mean date for the start of tree skiing in
Northern/
North-Central Vermont, and as I outlined in
last year’s ski season summary, that analysis revealed a date of December 10th ± 13 days, with an average depth at the stake of 28.1 ± 6.5 inches. However, after
a comment from Powderfreak back on December 12th, in which he indicated that he’d observed tree skiing on appropriate terrain at
Stowe to start roughly when the snow depth at the
Mt. Mansfield Stake hit 24 inches, I decided to run an analysis using snowpack data from the stake. Instead of just the 15 to 20 seasons worth of ski trip reports that are available since the arrival of the internet era, there are almost 60 seasons worth of data available from the
Mt. Mansfield Stake.
Analysis of the stake data using the first date of attaining 24" of snow depth or higher as the start of tree skiing, actually produced a very similar result (December 12th ± 19 days, with an average depth at the stake of 25.8 ± 2.7 inches) to what was obtained from the empirical data. With the date being so close to what I determined from the empirical data, I’m pretty confident that the date of attaining 24" in the stake data will serve just as well in determining the average start of tree skiing, and the relative start date for individual seasons. With
the median and mode for that analysis coming in quite close to the mean, the distribution seems normal, so the
standard deviation in the data should have some predictive value. This
24-inch rule isn’t meant to replace the traditional
40-inch rule, but it’s there to compliment it as a more practical measure of when people actually start venturing into the trees in this area (the fact that it is corroborated by many years of empirical data can testify to that). The point at which the stake hits 24 inches is a decent mark for when appropriately maintained trees are going to start offering up good turns for those with the right skills and knowledge, whereas once the stake hits 40 inches, skiers can pretty much venture into most off-piste areas with a good degree of confidence. Between those two points is going to be a continuum of increasing access to off piste terrain. Moving from the 24" depth to the 40" depth will typically take place during the month of December,
with the snowpack at the Mt. Mansfield Stake reaching the 40" mark at the beginning of January on average.
So where did the 2011-2012 season stack up in terms of the start of tree skiing in
Northern Vermont? Not surprisingly, when assessed by the new method of reaching 24" at the
Mt. Mansfield Stake, it’s down near the bottom of the pack. Below, I’ve added a scatter plot that I generated using the
Mt. Mansfield snowpack data; the X-axis is a timeline spanning from October to January, and the blue stars represent the dates when 24 inches of snow depth was attained at the stake for the various years from 1954-2012. The red data point is for the 2011-2012 season (date of attaining 24" = January 3rd, 2012), so the season is indeed more than one standard deviation on the late side (the large vertical line in the plot is the mean, and the small vertical lines are ± 1 standard deviation), although it actually isn’t as late a start as some seasons:
For those that want the actual raw data from the above plot to see where specific seasons stacked up in terms of reaching that 24-inch mark at the stake, the numbers are available in
my initial post with the plot in the
New England Regional Forum at American Weather.
How did the 24-inch snowpack depth analysis compare to what we actually found on the ground this season? Since skiing natural snow terrain on piste began first, I’ll mention that momentarily before discussing the trees. I saw the first signs of people skiing natural snow trails this season on
December 27th at Bolton, and
coverage certainly looked sufficient on at least moderate terrain. The tracks I saw at that point already looked old, and I suspect that on piste natural snow coverage was actually sufficient the day before (December 26th), thanks to
the Christmas Day storm.
Bolton picked up close to a foot of snow from that storm, and at the end of the day on the 26th, the snow depth at the
Mt. Mansfield Stake came in at 14. The first day that we actually ventured into the trees at
Bolton Valley was
December 29th, and as I stated in
my report from that day, we only ventured in for one run because the base was just a little too thin to really ski with confidence in there and enjoy it. And, when the snowpack was measured at the
Mt. Mansfield Stake later that afternoon, the depth was 21 inches, just a bit shy of that 24-inch mark. By
the next day, we were skiing natural snow trails with more than enough coverage, but it wasn’t until
January 7th at Bolton that I commented about some of the trees finally being ready after the boys and I skied
Wilderness Woods. The measurement from the stake came in at 24 inches that afternoon, and we were clearly reaching another threshold of sorts, so attaining that 24-inch depth at the stake was indeed a decent measure for the start of tree skiing this season in our experience.
Powderfreak and I have discussed how that 24-inch number is going to be quite rough, since a 24-inch depth attained mostly with fluff will represent something substantially different that a 24-inch depth attained with cement, but it looks like it’s going to be a decent approximation of when people start to take their initial forays into the trees and find the conditions good enough to stay there.
Looking at tree/off piste skiing for the season as a whole, there’s no question that it was curtailed relative to normal. The very late date of reaching 24 inches at the stake in the beginning of January (January 3rd) is 1.13 standard deviations beyond the mean according to the
Mt. Mansfield snowpack analysis, putting it close to the bottom 10% of seasons. When this is coupled with the large amount of melting in Mid March due to record heat, which closed a lot of terrain, it equates to a tree skiing season that is roughly 2 1/2 months long, compared to the more typical length of 4 to 5 months. The off piste season was certainly condensed, and while coverage was there to enable plenty of access in January (
Stowe reached 100% open status by January 14th), tree skiing really seemed to take forever to hit its stride; to wit,
the snowpack at the stake didn’t hit the 40-inch mark until the end of January.
Snow Quality: In
last season’s summary, I checked my trip reports and found those days in which we were skiing powder, typically suggesting a fairly high level of snow quality, and those days in which powder skiing wasn’t available, often indicating some sort of thaw (or in
one case this season, insufficient base depths). For the list of outings below, I’ve again placed a
P whenever we were skiing powder, and put a red
X if we weren’t, to reveal the temporal pattern associated with that categorization. Outings with an
X may still be providing decent skiing such as wet snow, corn, etc. (or else we’d probably be doing something other than skiing) but aside from the spring period, there’s going to be a price to pay in terms of snow quality after these episodes when temperatures eventually cool back down. Chronologically, the first
X appears for the outing on
December 10th at Bolton Valley. The lack of powder skiing on that date wasn’t actually due to temperature fluctuations, but instead due to the fact that there just wasn’t enough natural snow; substantial snowfall was very slow in coming in early December. The natural snow depth up above 2,000’ in the
Bolton Valley Village was still only 2-3 at that point, so short of
junkboarding, skiing was really restricted to just the limited terrain that had manmade snow. The next
X appears on
our Bolton Valley outing on December 31st, and it represented a notable bump in the winter weather. The holiday week wasn’t too cold, but
it was certainly snowy like one would expect at Christmas time in
Vermont, with three decent snowstorms totaling more than two feet of snow at
the northern resorts (refer to the December entry in the detailed monthly section for more information). So there was indeed
some great powder skiing during that stretch. The main factor that kept the overall quality of the skiing from being really outstanding was the lack of base. The natural snow terrain that was open was excellent, but there still hadn’t been enough snow to open the steepest terrain without snowmaking. The
X in this case comes in at the tail end of the holiday period where there was a thaw. I described
the skiing on New Year’s Eve as reminding me of the
Pacific Northwest, with
low hanging clouds on the mountains, and dense snow underfoot. I’m not sure how long the resulted firm snow conditions lasted, because three small to moderate storms came through the area that week, with
the first one dropping a half foot of snow in the mountains. By
the following Saturday there was powder skiing again for the weekend. From that point on there were no interruptions in powder skiing though to mid March – at least from our perspective; we don’t ski every day of course, but we did ski every weekend through that period. However,
Powderfreak does ski just about every day of the season at
Stowe, and
he noted that there were only a few select days without powder. I’ll speak more about that at the end of this section. By far the section of the outings list that stands out the most is the second half of March – the dramatic change in conditions is quite obvious, with seven outings in a row marked with an
X. Record warm weather came in with a vengeance in mid March, and it was all spring skiing until the weather cooled back down to normal levels and produced snowstorms for the final two thirds of April. We finally finished off our season with a couple of corn snow days in May, a point in the season where that type of snow is the norm.
The 2010-2011 ski season was the first one to which
I applied this type of powder skiing analysis, and relative to what I thought it would look like, I was certainly surprised by the consistent availability of powder conditions once I saw the data lined up. But as surprised as I was with that result, the
2011-2012 analysis is even more astounding. Somehow there was good to great skiing every weekend/holiday period throughout most of the core ski season, despite the overwhelmingly warm temperatures and low snowfall. As I mentioned above in the snowfall section,
Bolton Valley reported just 159" of snow for their entire season. That’s ridiculously low – it’s
half their usual snowfall, and we typically average more snow than that at our
house, almost 3,000’ below the upper elevations of the resort where the snowfall measurements are taken. That amount of snow might suffice for some decent skiing in an environment like the high elevations of the
Rockies with very consistent winter temperatures, but this season in
Vermont was anything but that. There were temperature issues throughout the season, and January was a perfect example – at the end of the month, local meteorologist
Roger Hill pointed out that
we’d had seven January thaws. I had many ski weather-related conversations with
Powderfreak in
the 2011-2012 ski thread at American Weather’s New England Subforum about
the surprisingly high quality of the skiing, and there was certainly consistency in conditions, but we also determined that
it was an issue of timing. Snowfall was low, and spells of warm temperatures abundant, but storms were just timed well to ensure that most snow quality issues were remedied by the weekend. Although the season was warm on average,
we didn’t have many big rain events, and any that we did have seemed to be
quickly covered by backside snow. There was indeed something special about the timing though, because somehow we had weekend after weekend of nice skiing with powder on
Bolton’s 159" of snow. The detailed reports below and the monthly ski summaries that follow, provide the specifics of how it all went down, and the frequency and distribution of
P in the outings list really speaks to that theme of surprisingly good:
P Pico, VT, Sunday 30OCT2011
P Bolton Valley, VT, Wednesday 23NOV2011
X Bolton Valley, VT, Saturday 10DEC2011
P Stowe, VT, Saturday 17DEC2011
P Bolton Valley, VT, Friday 23DEC2011 (A.M. Session)
P Bolton Valley, VT, Friday 23DEC2011 (P.M. Session)
P Bolton Valley, VT, Saturday 24DEC2011
P Bolton Valley, VT, Tuesday 27DEC2011
P Bolton Valley, VT, Wednesday 28DEC2011
P Bolton Valley, VT, Thursday 29DEC2011
P Bolton Valley, VT, Friday 30DEC2011
X Bolton Valley, VT, Saturday 31DEC2011
P Bolton Valley, VT, Saturday 07JAN2012
P Stowe, VT, Sunday 08JAN2012
P Bolton Valley, VT, Thursday 12JAN2012
P Bolton Valley, VT, Saturday 14JAN2012
P Bolton Valley (Timberline), VT, Sunday 15JAN2012
P Stowe, VT, Sunday 16JAN2012
P Bolton Valley Nordic & Backcountry, VT, Saturday 21JAN2012
P Stowe, VT, Sunday 22JAN2012
P Stowe, VT, Sunday 29JAN2012
P Bolton Valley, VT, Saturday 04FEB2012
P Stowe, VT, Sunday 05FEB2012
P Bolton Valley, VT, Saturday 11FEB2012
P Bolton Valley, VT, Saturday 18FEB2012
P Bolton Valley Nordic & Backcountry, VT, Sunday 19FEB2012
P Bolton Valley Nordic/Backcountry & Bolton Mtn, VT, Monday 20FEB2012
P Bolton Valley, VT, Thursday 23FEB2012
P Bolton Valley, VT, Saturday 25FEB2012
P Stowe, VT, Sunday 26FEB2012
P Stowe, VT, Friday 02MAR2012
P Bolton Valley, VT, Saturday 03MAR2012
P Stowe, VT, Sunday 04MAR2012
P Bolton Valley, VT, Wednesday 07MAR2012
P Bolton Valley, VT, Saturday 10MAR2012
P Stowe, VT, Sunday 11MAR2012
X Bolton Valley, VT, Saturday 17MAR2012
X Stowe, VT, Sunday 18MAR2012
X Stowe, VT, Friday 23MAR2012
X Bolton Valley, VT, Saturday 24MAR2012
X Stowe, VT, Sunday 25MAR2012
X Stowe, VT, Saturday 31MAR2012
X Stowe, VT, Sunday 01APR2012
P Stowe, VT, Tuesday 10APR2012
P Jay Peak, VT, Thursday 12APR2012
P Bolton Valley, VT, Saturday 14APR2012
P Stowe, VT, Friday 27APR2012
P Stowe, VT, Saturday 28APR2012
X Jay Peak, VT, Saturday 12MAY2012
X Mount Washington, NH, Sunday 27MAY2012
TO READ THE MONTHLY SUMMARIES FOR THE 2011-2012 SKI SEASON, HEAD TO:
http://jandeproductions.com/2012/08/16/2011-2012-ski-season-summary/
October:
November:
December:
January:
February:
March:
April:
May:
At the monthly level, the 2011-2012 ski season was a simply amazing stretch of positive temperature departures followed by even
more positive temperature departures, and that trend has continued right into the summer, with June and July coming in at +1.9 F and +2.4 F respectively. August is currently coming in with a positive departure as well, and if it ends up staying that way, it will be the
17th month in a row in the positive departure streak for Burlington. Those departures are going to flip at some point, and it’s going to feel quite chilly by comparison. Despite that trend though, even when combined with below normal precipitation, the quality of the ski surfaces encountered this past season in
Northern Vermont was quite good. I’m not sure if I’m willing to say better than average, since I don’t think surfaces were better than average at
Bolton Valley, but I am willing to say that in our visits to
Stowe this season,
the typical on piste surfaces we encountered were actually better than the previous season. One thought is that the lack big storms in general also played out as
a lack of notable rainstorms, which while generally infrequent in the heart of winter anyway, are likely more detrimental to the snow surfaces than more modest events with simply some mixed precipitation in the middle. The
Northern Greens certainly showed throughout this past season that they have the ability to cover the back side of mixed precipitation events with additional snow quite effectively when there’s at least some moisture in the atmosphere to be wrung out. The fact that business was down somewhat at the resorts, may also have contributed to less skier traffic and slightly elevated on piste snow quality. Whatever the case, for a ski season that felt like an abysmal perfect storm of sorts with regard to temperatures and precipitation, 2011-2012 in
Northern Vermont can certainly be described as surprisingly good.