Northeastern U.S. Weather
- Thread starter jamesdeluxe
- Start date
jasoncapecod
Well-known member
i agree...this season is awful...warmth followed by extreme cold rinse and repeat...
???
I would assume the recent new snow is preserving well in cold weather. Is that wrong?
Northern Vermont was in the 90% of average snowfall range Feb. 15. Currently Jay, Sugarbush, Mad River and Killington report 90+% open.
Nonetheless there is no substitute for eyewitness reports in order for me to update this page accurately, so please keep these comments coming! I've generally relied on snowfall incidence and percents of terrain open. Northeast resorts do close terrain after rain/freeze events, precipitously after the big rain event before Christmas. Trail counts drifted down some during the fairly dry first half of February but recovered with the ~15 inches of snow that fell just before President's Weekend. With little snow since then the trail counts remain high but I'm sure surfaces have degraded. That scenario is still a B in the chart linked above because I know trails do get closed when it's really bad.
At any rate this season is subpar in the Northeast but far from the disasters of 2012 and 2016.
Whenever we start hearing superlatives like "best season ever!" or "worst season in 25 years" (chronic offender: @jasoncapecod
), I always assume that people are speaking hyperbolically or from a place of emotion. That said; I may be guilty as well as I'll always say that the best northeastern season ever was my first year of downhill skiing: 2000-01.
Nope, you are right about that. See link above. In terms of snowfall you need to go back to 1977 or 1969 to find as snowy a Northeast season as 2001.
Interestingly, I had the exact same experience in SoCal in my formative 1978-79 season, still the best on its chart due to consistent snow starting mid-November and only one rain day all season during the middle of a 99 inch January. The seasons with more snowfall (like last year) had also had more rain and/or got started later. I was told in 1979 that 1973 was comparable.
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The snowfall totals reported this year do not take into account the rain. The monsoon that washed away a good part of our early season snowpack did a good amount of damage. Stowe recovered quickly...but it was groomers only for a while.
Almost every time it snows its followed by rain. Almost all our warmups are followed by single digit cold.
Worst season for this I can remember. And our storms have been a few inches here and there...a good bit of them but nothing like last season.
Almost every time it snows its followed by rain. Almost all our warmups are followed by single digit cold.
Worst season for this I can remember. And our storms have been a few inches here and there...a good bit of them but nothing like last season.
Where are you moving next season?
@kingslug i may be wrong but I believe I remember you skiing extensively in the west from the old Epicski days? You now live in the east hence doing your season there this year?
Kingslug has always lived in the East AFAIK. He usually visited former admin's group in Utah at last once per season.
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berkshireskier
Member
Welcome to the post-climate change world in New England - terrible Summers - warm, humid and rainy - and horrible Winters - warmer, mostly rain with some snow, along with flashes of cold that just freeze all of the liquid precipitation that has fallen. Even the Fall seasons, that generally used to be the best season of the year, have not been that great in recent years.
Sounds exactly like my 4 college years in New Jersey 1971-1974. And the transitional seasons in fall and spring that were supposed to be nice? Some of those lasted about a week.
I would like to see some more hard data from upper New England comparing temperature and precipitation to 50 years ago. I have a few charts comparing snowfall to precipitation. The trend is negative but only gradually so. Midwinter rain has always been a feature in the Northeast.
This is the Mansfield Stake at 3,950 feet, should be best case scenario for the Northeast. Snowfall data collection ended Dec. 2017
Pinkham is the notch between Wildcat and Mt. Washington.
Rangeley is the town at the base of Saddleback ski area.
East Jewett is in the Catskills. No data after 2020. The Catskills get a ton of rain in the winter and always have.
Snowshoe has the worst trend, probably distorted by last year being awful like 2016 was in the Northeast.
I'm tracking this info in the Pacific States too. Worst case I could find was Government Camp, which is at only 4,000 feet near Mt. Hood and got plenty of rain decades ago too.
Once you get high enough in the Northwest, like Crater Lake 6,800 feet, the trend is minimal.
But note the Northwest had a disastrous rain year in 2015 similar to the Northeast's in 2016.
The relationship of temperature to altitude is clear cut. The 1C rise in temperature we have seen in the past 50 years translates to 500 feet of elevation. So barring something unusual about the microclimate we can probably say that it rains for example now at 7,000 feet at Tahoe as much as it rained at 6,500 feet in the 1970's.
The Northeast is no doubt more complicated. Temperature variation is as much by latitude and distance from the Atlantic as it is by altitude. As for whether the temperature rise changes weather patterns, that's extremely speculative and far from proven.
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You're moving to Utah permanently? How will you handle the scorching hot summer days? I've only been back in the heat for a week and I'm already over it. (That said it's the humidity here that makes things uncomfortable. I'm assuming Utah's heat doesn't come with a lot of humidity).
Very little humidity. Hottest month July in Salt Lake averages high 34C, low 19C. And of course nearby mountain areas are quite pleasant in summer.
berkshireskier
Member
Thanks for those charts, Tony. Excuse my stupidity ("statistics was, by far, my lowest grade in college), but I'm not sure I understand the "total water as the percent of total snow" chart. I assume the higher percent number on the chart mean more "liquid precipitation" (i.e., rain) in the given winter? So, for example, the Winter of 2016/2017 was almost uniformly bad in the Northeast, with a lot of rain? If my analysis is correct, and when I look at those charts, it seems like there is no absolute discernable and consistent trend over the relevant time periods. The numbers seem to be all over the lot, to my naked eye, with maybe a slight overall trend towards more liquid precipitation in the Winters?
I've lived most of my life in New England (I'm now 67, ugh) and have been skiing since I was a little kid and perhaps my memory is faulty but I seem to remember that the winters in the 60's and 70's were consistently colder and snowier than in recent years. Again, this is purely anecdotal and my memory may not be 100%.
Interestingly, one of the meteorologists at the local Albany, NY TV station occasionally has a segment on his weather report that he calls "climate change update" (or something like that) and he has all sorts of charts and graphs going back to 1970 that shows the number of days with above average temperature (especially during the winter) has been increasing and the number of days with below average temperature has been decreasing, with a definite rise in "average" temperature over that 50-year time period. Also, he said the amount of snowfall has been decreasing with more rain events in the winter months than we used to have. I don't know if these statistics are accurate and Albany is admittedly in the lowlands of the Hudson River valley and not at the higher elevations and latitudes of northern New England. Also, 1970 was in the middle of the "global cooling" period (we all remember the 1975 Newsweek article warning people that the global climate was cooling dramatically and this was going to have dire effects on humanity), so not sure this is a great starting point for the statistical analysis.
As I said above, I've lived in New England most of my life and the only constant about the weather here is the variability of it. Like the old Mark Twain saying, "if you don't like it, just wait a minute". I mean last summer was terrible with much heat, humidity, and huge amounts of rain. But three summers ago. we had a prolonged drought with a long period of "California" weather - warm, dry and rain-free - a gorgeous summer in many respects, other than no rain. Sometimes, the Falls are great and other years they are disappointing. The Springs are usually not very long and tend to be cloudy, rainy and windy. But there are usually some beautiful days in May when there may be no better place to live. Just a large amount of variability in the weather.
I've lived most of my life in New England (I'm now 67, ugh) and have been skiing since I was a little kid and perhaps my memory is faulty but I seem to remember that the winters in the 60's and 70's were consistently colder and snowier than in recent years. Again, this is purely anecdotal and my memory may not be 100%.
Interestingly, one of the meteorologists at the local Albany, NY TV station occasionally has a segment on his weather report that he calls "climate change update" (or something like that) and he has all sorts of charts and graphs going back to 1970 that shows the number of days with above average temperature (especially during the winter) has been increasing and the number of days with below average temperature has been decreasing, with a definite rise in "average" temperature over that 50-year time period. Also, he said the amount of snowfall has been decreasing with more rain events in the winter months than we used to have. I don't know if these statistics are accurate and Albany is admittedly in the lowlands of the Hudson River valley and not at the higher elevations and latitudes of northern New England. Also, 1970 was in the middle of the "global cooling" period (we all remember the 1975 Newsweek article warning people that the global climate was cooling dramatically and this was going to have dire effects on humanity), so not sure this is a great starting point for the statistical analysis.
As I said above, I've lived in New England most of my life and the only constant about the weather here is the variability of it. Like the old Mark Twain saying, "if you don't like it, just wait a minute". I mean last summer was terrible with much heat, humidity, and huge amounts of rain. But three summers ago. we had a prolonged drought with a long period of "California" weather - warm, dry and rain-free - a gorgeous summer in many respects, other than no rain. Sometimes, the Falls are great and other years they are disappointing. The Springs are usually not very long and tend to be cloudy, rainy and windy. But there are usually some beautiful days in May when there may be no better place to live. Just a large amount of variability in the weather.