Vermont Snow Updates 2008-09

[J.Spin]

Summary: 0.2” snow total in Waterbury (495’) as of 6:00 A.M. EST

Thursday, February 5th, 2009: 6:00 A.M. update from Waterbury, VT

New Snow: 0.2 inches
Liquid Equivalent: 0.01 inches
Snow/Water Ratio: 20.0
Snow Density: 5.0% H2O
Temperature: 3.6 F
Humidity: 48%
Dew Point: -15.1 F
Barometer: 30.30 in. Hg
Wind: Calm
Sky: Light Snow/Flurries
Storm snow total: 0.2 inches
Storm liquid equivalent total: 0.01 inches
Current snow at the stake: 23 inches
Season snowfall total: 129.2 inches

It’s been five days since we’ve had any accumulating snowfall at the house, as the last measurable snow was recorded on January 31st at 12:00 P.M. It’s certainly felt like quite a dry stretch, so I checked my records and found that the five-day period from January 31st to February 5th ties for the longest stretch we’ve had without measurable snow since December. The only other period of this length was from December 25th to December 30th, and since it was the holiday period and we were out of town for a few days, the lack of snowfall wasn’t as obvious. This event has also been our first accumulating snow for the month of February, so it is starting out on the dry side.

A quick peek at the accumulations list on skivermont.com and some of the ski area websites indicates that none of the resorts are reporting any substantial snowfall from this event. The next potential snowfall event looks like it will be a cold front passage from Saturday into Sunday. The temperatures will be warming on Saturday ahead of the front, and the NWS suggests that the valleys may see a mix of snow and rain before everything changes back to snow on Sunday. Without any substantial new snow this week, but reasonable snowpack down to even the lower valleys, decent snow preservation, and comfortable temperatures, I suspect that the backcountry is going to be a popular place this weekend. I’ve updated some of my data charts with this latest event, and have included them below:

J.Spin

 

[J.Spin]

Summary: 0.2” snow total in Waterbury (495’) as of 6:00 P.M. EST

Sunday, February 8th, 2009: 6:00 P.M. update from Waterbury, VT

New Snow: 0.2 inches
Liquid Equivalent: 0.06 inches (rain/snow)
Snow/Water Ratio: 23.3
Snow Density: 30.0% H2O
Temperature: 30.4 F
Humidity: 44%
Dew Point: 10.2 F
Barometer: 30.12 in. Hg
Wind: Calm
Sky: Mostly Cloudy
Storm snow total: 0.2 inches
Storm liquid equivalent total: 0.06 inches
Current snow at the stake: 20 inches
Season snowfall total: 129.4 inches

It appeared to be just too warm down here in the valley to get much snow to stick with this event, so all that accumulated was a couple slushy tenths of an inch. The higher elevations certainly accumulated more, and when I pulled into the Mansfield parking lot (~1,500’) at Stowe Mountain Resort a bit before 1:00 P.M. this afternoon there were a couple of fresh inches at that elevation. Below I’ve listed today’s accumulations reported by some of the resorts in the northern half of the state; the accumulations generally tapered off as one headed from north to south:

Jay Peak: 4”
Smuggler’s: 3”
Stowe: 3”
Bolton: 2”
Mad River: 2”
Sugarbush: 1”
Killington: 1”

J.Spin

 

[J.Spin]

Yesterday E and the boys and I joined up with James and Jack for some backcountry turns up in Bolton Valley. After a morning low around 0 F at the house (495’), the temperature was up to the 20 F range by mid morning. We headed up the Catamount Trail from the access point on the Bolton Valley road at an elevation of ~1,200’. Most of us skinned, although Dylan and Jack, the littlest guys, used snowshoes. We covered about four tenths of a mile and a couple hundred feet before Dylan and Jack were calling for their skis and a descent. After we hit the bottom, the boys did a couple more small laps on skis and then switched to sleds for a bit. The conditions were nice, with packed powder on the trail and powder off to the sides.

E then took the boys down to the house for more sledding, leaving James and I with enough time for a bit of additional backcountry exploring. We skinned along an old logging road that breaks off the Catamount Trail about 100 yards up from the parking area, and then headed away from that and up one of the gullies dropping down from the west wall of the valley. Our trip topped out at around 1,700’, where a big icefall and boulder field loomed above us. I checked the depth of the powder in a few spots, and it seemed to be running at about 17 inches throughout the tour. When we were descending it was mid afternoon, and the temperature had gone a bit above freezing in our elevation range. The temperatures saw the top surface of the powder getting a little thick, and our skis would stick to it a bit until we got moving. On south-facing slopes that had been hit by the sun, the snow was just right for supporting pinwheel formation, so on one steep pitch we found ourselves setting them off all over the place. We didn’t find anything especially spectacular in terms of glades, it was just the typical sort of hike up in the hardwoods where there’s usually plenty of space for turns as long as the snowpack is deep enough.

Later that evening we were driving to my sister’s house and on the radio I heard that the temperature was 44 F in Burlington and 35 F in Montpelier, so the southerly winds certainly seemed to be doing their thing in the Champlain Valley. A few shots from yesterday are attached below:

J.Spin

 

[J.Spin]

I noticed a few flakes of snow when I was leaving Waterbury today around 6:00 A.M. and didn’t think much of it, but when I got here to Burlington I saw that the mountains were hidden behind what looked like snowfall. A few minutes ago I looked outside here and saw that it was snowing, so I took a quick look at the radar and saw this:

It clearly looked like there was some northwest flow taking place, so I proceeded to the BTV NWS discussion and saw their comments:

AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BURLINGTON VT
659 AM EST MON FEB 9 2009

.NEAR TERM /THROUGH TONIGHT/...
AS OF 631 AM EST MONDAY...NORTHWEST FLOW ALOFT HAS DEVELOPED OVER THE AREA EARLY THIS MORNING. WATER VAPOR IMAGERY SHOWS A SHORTWAVE TROUGH MOVING INTO THE REGION EARLY THIS MORNING AND COMBINED WITH THE BAND OF MOISTURE EXTENDING ACROSS NORTHERN NEW YORK...CLOUDS AND LIGHT SNOW HAVE BEEN COMMON AND SHOULD CONTINUE THROUGH ABOUT MID-MORNING BEFORE DRIER AIR FINALLY MOVES IN. WILL NEED TO MENTION LIGHT SNOW LIKELY FOR PORTIONS OF NORTHERN NEW YORK WITH SNOW ACCUMULATIONS UP TO AN INCH. FLOW PATTERN IS CONDUCIVE TO UPSLOPE FLOW AND AN ENHANCEMENT TO THE LIGHT SNOW.

I’m not sure if anything too substantial will come out of this, but it may be something to watch in the mountains this morning. If we pick up anything in Waterbury I’ll make a report this evening.

J.Spin

 

[J.Spin]

Yesterday afternoon we headed to Stowe, and I was eager to see how they did in terms of snowfall when the front came through. We ended up getting just a couple tenths of an inch of snow at our house in the valley (elevation 495’), but while parking in the Mansfield lot below the Easy Over Gondola (elevation ~1,500’), I was happy to find myself driving though two inches of fresh snow. The new snow was fairly dense stuff, which I suspected would be good in terms of adding something a little substantial to the trails.

I did all my skiing over at Spruce Peak, and conditions on the groomed trails were decent where the new snow had settled in. However, where there wasn’t any new snow left, there were a lot of icy areas, especially where the man made snow was plentiful. The groomed snow certainly wasn’t the quality of the previous weekend, probably in part due to a week of skier traffic without substantial snowfall, but even more due to the weather. The mountain had warmed up on Saturday, and from what I heard they even got a bit of rain. A friend we spoke with that does grooming on the mountain said that they were grooming while it was still warm, and that seemed to pack down the snow and really make it firm. The areas that hadn’t been groomed seemed to have far better snow. I jumped into the trees a few times with Dylan, and the powder in there was very similar to the stuff I’d skied in the Bolton Valley backcountry with James on Saturday – it was a bit on the dense side compared to the usual, but the turns were great. I was wishing I had fatter Telemark skis though, because floating higher would have made the turns a little easier in the denser powder. E and Ty got over on Mansfield and said that the wind was strong up high – in areas where it had blown away the new snow the conditions weren’t that great, but they said in other areas the snow was soft and fun.

I spoke with my colleague Stephen today who was at Bolton on Sunday morning, and after arriving for the opening of Timberline at around 9:00 A.M., they had to wait out a lightning hold on the lifts. Most people decided to take the shuttle up to the main base to eventually catch other lifts, but they decided to hang out in the Timberline Lodge for a while, and when the lift eventually opened they had the area to themselves. His kids were just learning to make parallel turns after their lessons the previous day, and he said that they really enjoyed having all the untracked trails to themselves. I’m sure it was fun to see the tracks that their turns were leaving. They only had time to stay for a couple of runs but it sounded like the conditions were excellent, no doubt due in part to the fact that there was no traffic.

A couple pictures from yesterday at Stowe are attached below:

J.Spin

 

[J.Spin]

Summary: 0.1” snow total in Waterbury (495’) as of 7:00 P.M. EST

Based on what I saw from UVM in Burlington today, it looked like snow started in the Northern Greens at around 1:00 P.M. or so, and by 3:00 P.M. the white wall of precipitation against the mountains was more apparent. I got back to Waterbury a bit before 5:00 P.M. and found that the temperature was 36 F, but the precipitation was still rain. However, I could see that there was snow falling not too far above us in the mountains, probably in the 1,000 – 2,000’ elevation range. The first signs of changeover to snow I saw down at this elevation were around 5:30 P.M. when the boys and I popped into town to grab some subs – there were clearly ice crystals in the raindrops on the windshield, so I suspected that the valley changeover to snow wasn’t far away. By 6:00 P.M. we had changed over to snow at the house, but our temperatures are still marginal (34.3 F as of 7:00 P.M.) and we’ve only got a slushy 0.1 to 0.2 inches of accumulation on the snowboard so far. I did collect the liquid portion of the this event in my rain gauge, which revealed 0.11" of liquid in the Wednesday evening period, 0.33" in the Wednesday overnight, and 0.41" today for a total of 0.85 inches. It was raining pretty hard at times here in the valley this afternoon/evening, and it appears as though this has translated into some dense accumulations of snow in the mountains.

J.Spin

 

[J.Spin]

Summary: 0.9” snow total in Waterbury (495’) as of 10:00 P.M. EST

I took a peek outside at 10:00 P.M. and the snow is falling with some impressive intensity now; the flakes are about 3-4 mm in diameter. We’re still above freezing (33.3 F) down here in the valley but the snow is certainly accumulating; I measured 0.9 inches on the board as of 10:00 P.M. With the mountains’ lower temperatures and additional upslope enhancement, it will be interesting to see what they pick up tonight. The snow we’ve received down here is fairly dense at this point, so there should be a decent amount of liquid put down with this snow. I’m not sure if the back end of the radar image below will be the last snow we see with this event, but unless the intensity really drops off, we should have some additional accumulation to go this evening.

J.Spin

 

[J.Spin]

Summary: 1.2” snow total in Waterbury (495’) as of 6:00 A.M. EST

Friday, February 13th, 2009: 6:00 A.M. update from Waterbury, VT

New Snow: 1.2 inches
Liquid Equivalent: 0.17 inches
Snow/Water Ratio: 7.1
Snow Density: 14.2% H2O
Temperature: 20.3 F
Humidity: 67%
Dew Point: 8.4 F
Barometer: 29.85 in. Hg
Wind: Calm
Sky: Light Snow
Storm snow total: 1.2 inches
Storm liquid equivalent total: 0.17” snow/0.85” rain/1.02” total
Current snow at the stake: 18 inches
Season snowfall total: 130.6 inches

Last night’s snow at the house tapered down in intensity during its final hour, and it also contained some graupel, so there appeared to be just a couple tenths of an inch of additional accumulation as the back edge of the radar returns moved through. The snow did wind up adding almost two tenths of an inch of liquid atop the snowpack however. I had emptied the rain gauge not long before the precipitation changed over to snow, but I didn’t have time to melt down its contents this morning, so if there is any additional liquid in there above what was collected on the snowboard, I’ll add that on to the rain value for this event. This morning it seems that another small round of moisture was coming from somewhere, because steady light snow was falling in the Waterbury area, and based on the snowboard accumulation it hadn’t been falling all night. In terms of the accumulations in the Burlington area, here on the UVM campus it looks like they picked up just a dusting of snow. The accumulations I’ve seen for Vermont’s higher elevations from this event are up to a half a foot of snow as of this morning. Below is a list of snow totals I’ve seen along the Green Mountain spine for those ski areas that have reported in so far, listed north to south:

Jay Peak: 3”
Smuggler’s: 3”
Stowe: 6”
Bolton: 6”
Sugarbush: 5”
Pico: 3”
Killington: 3”
Okemo: 3”
Stratton: 4”
Mount Snow: 1”

J.Spin

 

[J.Spin]

Since there was a lot of rain with our recent midweek storm, I suspected that the slopes were going to feature very hard snow this weekend, and truth be told, both E and I were anticipating that we’d have a chance to take the weekend off from skiing and catch up on everything else that needs to be done. But apparently Mother Nature had other plans, because the rain changed over to snow around midday Thursday in the higher elevations, and the Bolton-Stowe area resorts reported a half foot of new snow on Friday morning with 6.5 new inches of snow recorded at the stake (~3,700’) on Friday evening. The SkiVT-L reports coming in from Stowe on Friday suggested that there was some really nice snow up high, so it looked like there was going to be some powder to track up for the long weekend.

E was still too committed to getting stuff done around the house today, but it was way to gorgeous outside to miss out on the powder, so Ty and I headed up to the mountain for some turns. Due to the obvious advantage of elevation with this event, I decided to bring Ty for his first trip into the sidecountry and backcountry off the Wilderness Lift, where we’d be able to check out a lot of wind-protected terrain in the 3,000’ range and see how it fared in terms of fresh powder.

We arrived up at the village (~2,100’) near 11:00 P.M. and the temperature was already around 20 F, then we hopped on the Wilderness Lift to get to its summit (~3,050’). Along the way, I was amazed at how good the conditions looked in the entire 2,000’ to 3,000’ elevation range. There was clearly plenty of powder around where the resort hadn’t groomed, and the skiers and riders below us were making the sounds of turns on packed powder, not ice. I doubted that the amount of snow they’d received would hold up on the steepest terrain, but on the beginner and intermediate runs we saw, it looked really good.

We strapped on our skins and headed off on Heavenly Highway, quickly breaking off the established trail and making our own shortcut toward the steeper terrain on the back side of the Nordic Network. There had clearly been a respectable dump of snow up at that elevation; my depth checks revealed 6-8 new inches in the 3,000’ elevation range. I was surprised to find that the skiing was generally bottomless up there on the low and medium angle pitches we hit, presumably due to the way the rain changed over to snow and started out dense and gradually lightened up. There’s a nice continuum of new snow, topped off with some champagne powder. Even more amazing was the fact that there isn’t a major crust layer under the new snow. I expected to find some sort of bulletproof zone in the snowpack due to the rain, but it’s just not there. Below this recent dump, the snow becomes thicker, but I was able to take my ski pole and push it right through the snowpack almost up to the handle with minimal effort. I’m not sure if the rain just got absorbed by the snowpack and recrystallized or what, but that’s the situation up there. Unfortunately, Ty wasn’t willing to do a bigger run off the back side of the mountain (he said flat out he was just too tired to commit to a run where we’d have to skin back up), so we just toured around up high. It’s too bad, because I saw several nice new lines that are just begging to be skied, but they’ll have to wait for another time. Another thing that amazed me on our tour was the fact that the powder on south-facing aspects was actually getting affected by the sun. The fluffy snow in the top layers was clearly starting to get a bit thick with direct sun. We are almost a couple months past the solstice now, so even at this latitude the sun is starting to do its thing.

We eventually came down the front side of the mountain and explored a new section of woods off Turnpike, finding powder that was sufficient for all but the steepest shots. The snow had definitely accumulated with less substance as one dropped in elevation, but I did a depth check in the woods at ~2,200’ when we were almost back down to base elevation and found 5 inches of accumulation. The skiing was really quite good right down to the village elevations, and this is one of those times when Bolton’s higher base elevation is nice.

The Timberline lift is down due to mechanical issues, and there were certainly a few tracks in the powder on the Trails of Timberline (possibly from people that had earned turns or were doing car shuttling), but the powder definitely didn’t look as substantial down at that elevation (~1,500’) as it did at the main base. When we were leaving the mountain the temperatures had climbed into the upper 20s F due to the sun, and it was just over 30 F back down at the house (495’).

Despite all the gloom and doom I’ve heard over the past week about what was going to happen to the ski conditions, if you can get up into the untracked powder in the higher elevations around here you won’t be disappointed – it’s absolutely mid winter delightful. It looks like there are a couple more gorgeous days in the 20s F on tap for this long weekend, so if you can find a way to get out to the right places, there is a lot of powder for the taking.

A few pictures from today are attached below:

J.Spin

 

[Tony Crocker]

Another thing that amazed me on our tour was the fact that the powder on south-facing aspects was actually getting affected by the sun. The fluffy snow in the top layers was clearly starting to get a bit thick with direct sun. We are almost a couple months past the solstice now, so even at this latitude the sun is starting to do its thing.

This is why mid-February is the start of "beware of Jackson Hole" season.

 

[Anthony]

Good pics , you guys were fortunate the rain turned back to snow before the storm moved out of the area. Plan on taking the kids to Bolton first week of March as noticed they have discounted tickets Mon/ Tues/Wed /and haven't been there since 97 .

 

[rfarren]

This is why mid-February is the start of "beware of Jackson Hole" season.

Jackson hole in march was one of the worst ski experience I ever had. The snow was only half decent in the backcountry. Frankly to do a 36 hour drive from indiana to spend 7 days on crusty scratchy snow inbounds and do the same drive back was to say it lightly, a disappointment.

 

[Tony Crocker]

Jackson hole in march was one of the worst ski experience I ever had.

Mine too, in 1986. So bad we rented a car, drove to SLC and skied AltaBird the rest of the week, continuing to pay for a vacant condo in Jackson. Looking back, I have often thought that was the formative experience in getting me to research snow conditions.

 

[J.Spin]

After showing E a the Bolton Valley photos from yesterday, it wasn’t hard too convince her that we should take the boys up to the mountain for some turns today, even though it was a holiday weekend and had the potential to be busy. Unfortunately, hitting the type of sidecounty or backcountry terrain that Ty and I skied yesterday wasn’t an option with Dylan. Having him use his snowshoes while one of us carries his skis on our pack works really well for earning some backcountry turns, but unfortunately his range is too limited for Bolton’s backside terrain just yet. So we decided to stay in bounds today, hoping that the resort wasn’t too busy. We knew we’d generally be a bit lower in elevation than where Ty and I spent a lot of our time yesterday, so the powder wouldn’t be quite as deep, but it would be a chance to show E and Dylan some lines in the Villager Woods and Wood’s Hole Glades that they’d never seen.

We got up to the mountain a bit before 11:00 A.M., and the Timberline Quad was back up and running after being repaired, so we parked at the Timberline Base and took the lift up to get to the village. After skiing a run in the Villager Woods we thought about eating, but the base lodge and even the restaurants upstairs were pretty crowded, so we tided the boys over with a couple of waffles and got back to the slopes. We spent some more time in the Villager Woods and did a couple of other runs. Eventually we ended up eating at the James Moore Tavern at around 2:00 P.M., and there was still a good crowd, but things had settled down a lot and there was plenty of space. We didn’t encounter any lift queues during the day, except for a few minutes at the Snowflake lift where I suspect the folks hitting the terrain parks added some volume. We finished off the day back over at Timberline with a run through the Wood’s Hole Glades and some other trees in the area.

Conditions in the trees were pretty much as we’d expected; the glades in the 2,000’ – 3,000’ range held about 5 to 6 inches of loose snow, which was a bit less than the 6 to 8 inches we’d found at the 3,000’ elevation yesterday, and in the 1,500’ -2,000 range accumulations appeared to drop off another couple of inches. In general there was enough loose snow throughout the resort’s typical elevations to make the powder skiing nice, although not quite as bottomless as the 3,000’ range. You’d definitely encounter the base in some spots, depending on the pitch, but I found many steep lines in the trees were skiing great. On piste there was still a lot of packed powder, but there were definitely more slick spots than we saw yesterday. A couple of the steep trails near the top of the main mountain were closed because the new snow hadn’t stuck and they looked pretty nasty. I also noticed that there were some thin spots near the bottom of the Twice as Nice glades (~1,500’). With that said, I couldn’t believe how deep the base seemed in most of the woods; lines were opened up that I don’t think I’d seen yet this season. I think part of that effect was the consolidation of the base snow with new stuff on top of it just making things a little more accessible and adding a little extra depth. The sky was cloudy until about 12:30 P.M., but then the clouds moved on and we had totally blue skies for the afternoon. Temperatures were in the mid 20s F so it was a really nice afternoon to be out.

A few pictures from today are attached below:

J.Spin

 

[J.Spin]

Summary: 0.5” snow total in Waterbury (495’) as of 6:00 A.M. EST

Monday, February 17th, 2009: 6:00 A.M. update from Waterbury, VT

New Snow: 0.5 inches
Liquid Equivalent: N.D.
Snow/Water Ratio: N.D.
Snow Density: N.D.
Temperature: 22.3 F
Humidity: 82%
Dew Point: 15.8 F
Barometer: 30.15 in. Hg
Wind: Calm
Sky: Flurries/Mostly Cloudy
Storm snow total: 0.5 inches
Storm liquid equivalent total: N.D.
Current snow at the stake: 18 inches
Season snowfall total: 131.1 inches

I found a surprise half inch of very light fluff on the snowboard this morning, with flurries still in the air. The snow was just too dry to get a liquid measure on it, although I suspect it was probably 0.01” or less. Mark Breen did a nice job of summarizing where it came from in the Eye on the Sky detailed forecast from this morning; it seemed to be low level moisture from clouds in the 2,000’-5,000’ range localized along the Green Mountains. Mark also gives his thoughts on the upcoming system in that podcast, although he doesn’t yet specify any accumulation numbers. I’ve pasted a bit from this morning’s BTV NWS discussion below as well with regard to the precipitation:

FXUS61 KBTV 171143
AFDBTV

AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BURLINGTON VT
643 AM EST TUE FEB 17 2009

AS OF 426 AM EST TUESDAY...LOW LEVEL MOISTURE IS STILL ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY ACROSS VERMONT THIS MORNING WITH MANY SITES REPORTING FLURRIES. IR INDICATES THAT THE BACK EDGE OF THE LOWER CLOUDS IS STRETCHING AND BECOMING A MORE NARROW BAND CENTERING OVER THE GREENS.

J.Spin

 

[J.Spin]

Although it was a holiday yesterday, E and Ty had to go to school, leaving Dylan and I home alone. After a couple of sunny days, the weather was mostly cloudy with flurries throughout the day at the house (495’), and it was a little tougher to get inspired to head up to the hill. I got a lot of stuff done at home during the day, and when I asked Dylan if he wanted to head up to the mountain for a couple of runs, he was very excited.

We got up to the Timberline base (~1,500’) at around 3:30 P.M., and the snow flurries were a bit more intense, at times bordering on light snow. The flakes amounted to just a dusting of new snow in the parking lot, but as Wes mentioned in his SkiVT-L report, there were lots of perfect snow crystals that were fun to examine as we caught them on our gloves; Snowflake Bentley would likely have had a blast. We saw Wes and his crew only briefly, as they had to head back to the main base area.

I think that Dylan had had a good time with all of us on Sunday, because he specifically requested that he wanted to go skiing in the “woods”. I figured we had time to catch two runs before they stopped loading the lift, so we did a quick groomed run first (Twice as Nice/Showtime combination) before heading to the woods. The groomed trails were feeling pretty worn out, and there was still mostly packed powder on there, but the harder surface underneath was definitely making its presence known at the end of the three-day weekend.

I had an inclination that Dylan would like to visit the Wood’s Hole Glades for his “woods” run, and as I knew the most obvious lines would be generally tracked up, I decided that we’d explore the far side of the glades. I’d briefly checked out that area on Sunday and found that there weren’t any tracks, but I didn’t know much else about it. We started out with some gorgeous mellow lines through mixed evergreens and hardwoods, and gradually the evergreens began to predominate as we continued along. With seasonable winter temperatures, the powder was still sitting there in the range of 4 to 5 inches as it had in the previous days, although as we moved a bit lower, the preponderance of evergreens actually depressed the accumulation of powder on the ground by a couple of inches since they’d held more of the snow up in their boughs.

After the mellow lines, the pitch began to steepen, and we were soon into an area of smaller, tighter evergreens. Although I was pretty sure we weren’t going to get cliffed out, I could see that the terrain was likely to get steep enough that Dylan would need some help. We weaved our way through the smaller evergreens, and came to a steep chute that offered up several turns at a pitch of about 30-35 degrees. Ample powder had settled in there and it allowed Dylan to control his speed, but he still needed assistance getting through a couple tight spots. It was fun to watch him set off a bit of slough on the steep pitch though. I was very impressed at how calm he was on such a steep pitch, he didn’t seem to panic at all, even when he was stuck and needed my help. As we approached the bottom of the chute, he used a small tree off to the left to assuage his descent, and at first he was in a precarious position having to use arm strength to hold himself up, but eventually he locked his skis into the tree and he seemed very relaxed. It gave me time to get a picture of him, but as sometimes happens, the image didn’t quite convey the steepness of the pitch. As soon as I got down and released him from the tree, he was off like a shot snaking through the more dense foliage below and leaving a long Dylan-style track in the powder. He’d made it to the next trail crossing before I could even put my camera away. He seemed very excited by the whole adventure, and I suspect he’s going to be gung ho for a lot more “woods” this weekend. In actuality, that chute would be a good match for deeper powder since it’s so steep, so it might be fun to bring E and Ty by there to check it out this weekend depending on how the next few days of snow pan out.

It doesn’t sound like we’ve a super huge snowfall event coming up, but Scott Braaten is suggesting 10”-20” totals above 2,000’ in the Wednesday through Friday period depending on how the upslope goes. That certainly sounds reasonable based on the various weather discussions I’ve seen so far about this event and the upslope potential. Josh Fox is going with 12”-24” through Saturday morning in his forecast, so it seems like they are thinking similar thoughts. After that cycle there is the potential for another event if the late weekend clipper gets amplified and positioned correctly. In any case, it sounds like a good refresh of powder is coming for all the woods, glades, and even the trails over the next few days.

A few shots of Dylan from yesterday are attached below:

J.Spin

 

[J.Spin]

From here on the UVM campus I could see that snow started to fall in parts of the local Green Mountains as of ~3:15 P.M.; at that point it was visible crashing out of the clouds at Camel’s Hump. As of 3:30 P.M. all the peaks of the spine from there south have disappeared behind the snow. The snow appears to be moving north, but for now the peaks north of the Winooski/I-89/Route 2 corridor are still visible.

J.Spin

 

[J.Spin]

Summary: 0.7” snow total in Waterbury (495’) as of 6:00 P.M. EST

By roughly 3:45 P.M. the entirety of the Green Mountain spine that I can see from the UVM campus (roughly Lincoln Peak through to north of Mt. Mansfield) had disappeared behind snowfall, but the foothills were still visible. It was right around 4:00 P.M. when I saw the initial flakes in my area of the UVM campus (380’). When I next had a chance to look outside at around 4:45 P.M. I saw moderate snowfall driven by some strong south winds, and the snow was just starting to accumulate on the ground. The snowfall had become less impressive by the time we hit the area of the Richmond exit for I-89 (300’) and stayed at that light intensity right through to Waterbury (~500’). I suspect we were just outpacing the front edge of the snow however, since as I drove from the park and ride to the house, the snow seemed to be intensifying. I used my odometer to get a distance measurement on the visibility, and it was around 0.20 – 0.25 miles, but it was also starting to get dark which could affect the visibility. We had essentially a dusting of snow on the snowboard at around 5:40 P.M., but when I looked outside at 6:00 P.M. the snow was coming down furiously with a mixture of flakes sizes, some up to ~ 1 cm in diameter. I went out and checked the snowboard and found 0.7 inches of accumulation as of 6:00 P.M., and the air temperature was 30.4 F.

J.Spin

 

[J.Spin]

Summary: 1.0” snow total in Waterbury (495’) as of 9:00 P.M. EST

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009: 9:00 P.M. update from Waterbury, VT

New Snow: 1.0 inches
Liquid Equivalent: 0.06 inches
Snow/Water Ratio: 16.7
Snow Density: 6.0%
Temperature: 32.4 F
Humidity: 82%
Dew Point: 25.9 F
Barometer: 29.38 in. Hg
Wind: 0-5 MPH
Sky: Light Snow
Storm snow total: 1.0 inches
Storm liquid equivalent total: 0.06 inches
Current snow at the stake: 18 inches
Season snowfall total: 132.1 inches

After our initial bout of heavy snow, the snow really tapered off and it’s very light now. Some intermediate snow accumulations are listed below:

6:00 P.M.: 0.7”
7:00 P.M.: 0.9”
8:00 P.M.: 1.0”

J.Spin

 

[Patrick]

Great skiing tonight on one of the locals, not sure how much snow fell.

If Powderfreak and Josh Fox are right, it should be good.