Vermont Snow Updates 2010-11

[J.Spin]

As most know, there’s been a lot more snow since my Sunday report. We’ve had about 20 inches of snow down at the house, and the huge upslope flakes continue to fall. Some of the west slope communities and the mountains are in the two foot range for accumulations at this point, so the NWS was fairly on track with their predictions from last Thursday.

I’ve added a couple of the BTV storm forecast graphics and their latest totals from this morning for this part of the event:

 

[Tony Crocker]

Nice to see the real season getting under way back there. Perhaps some of the grumpiness will subside. As I noted elsewhere it was the SoCal mountains' turn for the rain on Sunday :evil: .

 

[Patrick]

Talk of 25cm in Montreal.
Some snow in Ottawa. Not sure how much, not 25cm?
Maybe 15cm in Tremblant.
Sutton is talking about 68cm and it's still snowing.
I heard on the radio that London Ontario got 70cm.

October-December = hard to get away from here due to a bunch of commitments.

 

[Tony Crocker]

October-December = hard to get away from here due to a bunch of commitments.

You're not missing much, particularly in your neck of the woods. It's January-March you need to free up more time.

 

[Patrick]

October-December = hard to get away from here due to a bunch of commitments.

You're not missing much, particularly in your neck of the woods. It's January-March you need to free up more time.

Today and tomorrow should be more than 'not missing much'. 68cm at Sutton and it snowed all day ...eyeing a system for early next week, anyway I have to make a return trip to Montreal.

 

[longshanks]

Talk of 25cm in Montreal.
Some snow in Ottawa. Not sure how much, not 25cm?
Maybe 15cm in Tremblant.
Sutton is talking about 68cm and it's still snowing.
I heard on the radio that London Ontario got 70cm.

Well I live 5 minutes N. of London and we have received over 1m of beautiful Pow since Sunday...and not a skiable hill anywhere in site. (The 2 local hills, Boler Mountain & Cobble Hills have 125 and 140 feet of screaming vertical). I've had to blow my lane 4 times in 2 days. There were times when we were getting 5-10cm per hour. I have seen many lake effect events over the years but never anything quite like this...Snowpocalypse.

Blue Mountain (700') near Collingwood (3.5 hours distant) is also getting lake effect snow and plans to open this weekend.

 

[Patrick]

Talk of 25cm in Montreal.
Some snow in Ottawa. Not sure how much, not 25cm?
Maybe 15cm in Tremblant.
Sutton is talking about 68cm and it's still snowing.
I heard on the radio that London Ontario got 70cm.

Well I live 5 minutes N. of London and we have received over 1m of beautiful Pow since Sunday...and not a skiable hill anywhere in site. (The 2 local hills, Boler Mountain & Cobble Hills have 125 and 140 feet of screaming vertical). I've had to blow my lane 4 times in 2 days. There were times when we were getting 5-10cm per hour. I have seen many lake effect events over the years but never anything quite like this...Snowpocalypse.

Blue Mountain (700') near Collingwood (3.5 hours distant) is also getting lake effect snow and plans to open this weekend.

Heard that Beeten north of Vaughan got 100cm. Any word on totals near Mt St-Louis? How much did Collingwood get?

 

[Patrick]

You're not missing much, particularly in your neck of the woods. It's January-March you need to free up more time.

Today and tomorrow should be more than 'not missing much'. 68cm at Sutton and it snowed all day

This is what I was missing. Lucky was unlucky and in the office today.

Mont Sutton today: Wake, Extremeskiboy and Richard from ZSki:

A little 70cm with no one on the hill.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/alb ... 2833282520

 

[J.Spin]

I haven’t provided an update on the ski area snowfall totals that we’ve seen with this event, so I’ve listed some of the totals I’ve seen below. Bolton Valley is topping the list with around 4 feet of new snow, which is not too surprising the way the upslope snow has been focused on the western slopes of the Greens:

Jay Peak: 34”
Stowe: 36”
Bolton Valley: 47”
Mad River Glen: 26”
Sugarbush: 24”
Killington: 21”

Totals fell off a bit south if the I-89/Route 2/Winooski corridor as sometimes happens with these events. BTV put together a map with some three-day snowfall totals from this event, and the trend is clearly displayed there:

South of Killington, I saw that Okemo had 4 to 6 inches in the past 72 hours, but the snow totals really seemed to fall off south of there, consistent with BTV’s map.

I haven’t been out on the slopes since Sunday, but Greg Petrics has a good 9 pages full of the usual over the head photos of Vermont powder skiing in “VTah Part V — The Most Accurately Predicted Over-the-Top Snow on Earth!”. Those images give a nice view of where things went around here since the weekend.

Bolton Valley is opening up tomorrow, and it will be interesting to see how much they decide to open with the four feet of snow. It’s that very fluffy Champlain Powder™ stuff of course, so it’s not the best for base building, but four feet is still fairly substantial no matter how you stack it. I don’t know the exact number for their total liquid equivalent obtained from the event so far, but down at the house we’ve picked up 0.78 inches of liquid, and Mt. Mansfield has picked up 1.97 inches of liquid since Friday, so I would say Bolton is in that range, or even higher with the way the snow hit the western slopes. I’ve added a grab from Bolton’s snow report from yesterday talking about the new snow:

The forecast looks good for skiing this weekend, with a big storm coming in Sunday into Monday. The HPC QPF maps suggest close to two inches of liquid equivalent for this area. It could be another two feet of snow, but the track of the storm is quite marginal so we’ll have to watch how the mixed precipitation plays out. There’s new snow coming on Sunday in any event, and even in a worst case scenario, this next round of precipitation is really going to substantiate the base, and Powderfreak still suspects a net gain in snowpack if that were to happen. On the backside of that there should be more upslope snow, and then potentially another retrograde event like the one that just occurred. That’s where things are at for now, and we’ll see how it plays out, but there’s plenty of snow on the slopes for making turns at this point.

 

[Patrick]

Blue Mountain (700') near Collingwood (3.5 hours distant) is also getting lake effect snow and plans to open this weekend.

Blue Mountain opened today...
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id= ... 4&comments

So did Edelweiss, however we only got a fraction of that snow. Montreal got dumped on. St-Sauveur about the same as here. Tremblant more. I'm not even talking about the Eastern Townships and VT. Lucky got a second damn patrol day before heading to work. Really bizarre.

Tony.... ](*,) Responsibilities at work that I couldn't walk away from (plus elsewhere), no way I could damn patrol at Sutton.

 

[longshanks]

Blue Mountain (700') near Collingwood (3.5 hours distant) is also getting lake effect snow and plans to open this weekend.

Blue Mountain opened today...
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id= ... 4&comments

yes that looks nice...however, I wonder if that video wasn't maybe of a poached run from yesterday because nobody is there and the lift they pass wasn't running. The website did say only 2 of 15 lifts and 6 of 36 trails open, so maybe that run was indeed from today and was on one of the closed trails. Anyway, it will likely be packed this weekend and what ever opens will be skied out by Saturday at noon when the masses from Toronto have had their way with it.

 

[Patrick]

yes that looks nice...however, I wonder if that video wasn't maybe of a poached run from yesterday because nobody is there and the lift they pass wasn't running. The website did say only 2 of 15 lifts and 6 of 36 trails open, so maybe that run was indeed from today and was on one of the closed trails. Anyway, it will likely be packed this weekend and what ever opens will be skied out by Saturday at noon when the masses from Toronto have had their way with it.

That what I was thinking first, but there was a cat track at the bottom, so maybe ... if I recall Wildcat's surprise opening in October 2005 (look it up here using the search function), they started open a few trails, but ropes were being dropped all day. What do you expect where there is 3-4 feet of new snow. It was an Epic opening for sure... similar to last year's at Snow Ridge.

 

[J.Spin]

Bolton Valley, VT 10DEC2010

Yesterday morning I headed up to Bolton to catch some opening day turns and check out the four feet of new snow they’d picked up over the week. On the way up I could see that Timberline was just loaded with tracks from all the folks that had been earning turns there. We’d had our coldest temperatures of the season on Friday morning, and although it was still somewhere in the single digits when I arrived at the mountain, the wind was calm and it turned out to be very comfortable.

They had the usual early season options going, but also some natural snow terrain such as the lower part of Wilderness. I saw that VT 200 was open at the top, but it still looked somewhat bony. I found that Wilderness and the routes over there were the places to be though, one could get some nice steeper turns in about a foot or so of powder in the junction areas of Swing, Lower Crossover, and Work Road, and then down on the Wilderness lift line it was mellow powder cruising.

I did some depth checks, finding 10 inches of powder atop the base up at the Vista Summit plateau, 17 inches off to the side of Sherman’s Pass a little lower down, and 27 inches at the bottom of Alta Vista. I also checked out Lower Turnpike and found 15-20 inches of settled snow on it, but without some grooming or at least some skier compaction, that would be deep for that pitch. In general though, there must have been some very impressive depths in spots on the mountain before that stuff had settled.

In the parking lot I met members of a group from Pennsylvania that was up skiing for the week, staying at the Trapp Family Lodge with a timeshare setup. They had skied Stowe earlier in the week and were catching Bolton’s opening. I’m not sure if they had this trip planned out long in advance, or came up because of all the new fluff, but either way I’d say they got some decent snows for early December. I think this is the third season in a row that Bolton has been able to open up with at least some natural snow terrain options. Pushing the opening to early December certainly seems to help in that regard relative to starting up in November.

J.Spin

 

[J.Spin]

Bolton Valley, VT 11DEC2010

Last week’s virtually endless upslope snowfall had finally stopped by Friday, but another small system passed through on Friday night. It wasn’t supposed to deliver much, but when I looked outside around 11:00 P.M. on Friday night, we were getting a pounding of one-inch diameter flakes at the house. By morning we’d actually picked up a couple of inches, and the mountains in the Bolton-Stowe section of the Greens had received up to four inches, so we were in for another good coating of powder for the day’s skiing activities.

The morning’s adventures got started right on the ascent of the Bolton Valley access road. Once we got up to the big steep S-curve pitch at around 1,200’, we could see that traffic was stopped. It turned out that a couple of cars were struggling with the ascent. The road didn’t seem that bad from our perspective, but I later heard some comments suggesting that it wasn’t prepared as well as usual. In any event, the benefits of 4WD/AWD were obvious, not just for getting up the slick road, but having the ability to start right back up and get going from a dead stop on a steep slope. I met Stephen right in the parking lot as he was getting out of his car, and we made plans to meet up later.

While I was parking the car, the boys had warmed up on the Mighty Mite, and then I brought E and the boys right over to Wilderness based on my experiences from the previous day. I knew that the fresh snow and moderate pitch over there would be great for E to work on here Telemark turns off the groomed. In places that had seen some traffic, we found about 4 inches of new, but there were still spots that hadn’t been touched on Friday and had a good foot of powder.

We met up with Stephen and his kids, did a mid mountain run, and then it was back to Wilderness for some more powder. The mountain had dropped the ropes on 8 more trails for Saturday, but without the Wilderness or Timberline chairs, by 10:30 A.M. or so a queue began to form for the Vista Chair. It was a good time to be done, so Johannes and I did one more run and then we called it a morning since everyone had other obligations in the afternoon anyway.

J.Spin

 

[J.Spin]

Stowe, VT 12DEC2010

E and I headed out to Stowe yesterday for the school program training session, wondering what we were going to experience in terms of weather. Happily, the first flakes appeared just after we arrived at around 8:00 A.M., the snowfall quickly ramped up in intensity, and then it dumped hard all morning and into the afternoon to make for great riding conditions.

This year we both decided to go with the snowboard training session, since out of necessity E seems to spend most of her time boarding instead of skiing, and it would supply me with some additional tools to serve as an alternate snowboarding coach when needed. We joined up with Stan Biasini’s group, since he would be advising everyone on how to work with the students that were early in their snowboard progression. We started out with techniques for the “never evers” at the Magic Carpet, then stepped it up to Inspiration, followed by the Alpine Double, and finally the Sunny Spruce Quad. We got a raft of good teaching techniques, and Stan made ample time to ensure that everyone got plenty of their own instruction as well. I learned that Stowe no longer requires leashes for snowboards, and that the slope of the Inspiration trail is an impressively consistent 8% grade for teaching.

With the dumping snow and comfortable temperatures, the riding was great, and everyone had a blast working on their skills. The snow was reasonably dense, so a few inches were all it took to really get the floating going. As time wore on, there was some elevation dependence in the density of the snow, and down near the base area the powder was getting slightly heavier.

We got our pass photos taken around 1:00 P.M. after the noontime rush was over, then we had a long lunch at the Great Room Grill where we took care of paperwork and Stan filled us in on how to deal with medical emergencies and other logistics. We also got to sample some of Stan’s cheese, since his family makes artisan cheese (Mount Mansfield Creamery). Apparently, all Stan’s cheese varieties are named after trails and lifts on Mt. Mansfield like the “Gondolier” that we got to sample. Stan was joking with some of the group about requests for “Goat” cheese, but I’m not sure if he’s gone there yet.

In the 2:00 P.M. to 3:00 P.M. range the snow started to change over to rain, so we decided to head out and relieve my mom from babysitting duty instead of catching the last part of the day. At that point it was 37 F at the base of the mountain, but 35 F when we got back to the house. We’d actually picked up a couple inches of new snow at the house as well.

We did get some rain overnight, but it didn’t seem to do much to the snowpack in the mountains. Fortunately it looks like we’ve got another week like last week in terms of snowfall around here. It’s currently snowing, and the BTV NWS guys are talking about another round of measuring feet of new snow.

J.Spin

 

[J.Spin]

Event totals: 5.4” Snow/1.82” L.E.

Tuesday 12/14/2010 6:00 A.M. update: The small flakes that we were picking up yesterday evening were replaced by much larger flakes this morning. I found 3.2 inches of snow on the board this morning for the 6:00 A.M. report, and the big flakes were coming down quite hard at that time. The 3.2 inches of snow contained 0.21 inches of liquid for a calculated density of 6.6% H2O, although that value represents an average of both the earlier smaller flakes and the more recent large ones. I’d say that the snow that was falling this morning was more likely in the 4% H2O range, and with the fluffy snow, there was already another 0.7 to 0.8 inches on the board when I left at 7:00 A.M., so as of that point we’d passed 6 inches for the event. Hopefully the right side up density/temperature gradient in the snow will allow some bonding to the old base as Powderfreak mentioned. Some details from the 6:00 A.M. observations are below, and north to south overnight totals from some of the Vermont ski areas follow:

New Snow: 3.2 inches
New Liquid: 0.21 inches
Snow/Water Ratio: 15.2
Snow Density: 6.6%
Temperature: 14.0 F
Sky: Heavy Snow/Snow (5-10 mm flakes)
Snow at the stake: 6.0 inches


Ski area/ 24 hr snow
Jay Peak: 4”
Burke: 3”
Smuggler’s Notch: 8”
Stowe: 5”
Bolton Valley: 5”
Sugarbush: 5”
Killington: 3”
Okemo: 4”
Bromley: 4”
Stratton: 5”
Mount Snow: 4”

 

[J.Spin]

Event totals: 12.3” Snow/2.13” L.E.

Saturday 12/18/2010 6:00 A.M. update: At some point, last night’s flurries turned into accumulating snow overnight, and we wound up with 0.9 inches on the board this morning. Just when it seems the low pressure up north is done, it keeps on having an influence. From the BTV discussion this morning:

.NEAR TERM /THROUGH TONIGHT/...
AS OF 358 AM EST SATURDAY...PERSISTENT LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM REMAINS OVER NORTHERN PORTIONS OF ONTARIO/QUEBEC THIS MORNING. WK SFC RIDGE BUILDING IN ALONG THE COAST IS CREATING LGT WSW WINDS OVER MUCH OF THE CWA. THIS FLOW MVG OVER LK ONTARIO...IS CONTINUING A LK EFFECT SNOW BAND. BULK OF -SW IS FALLING OVER SOUTHERN DACKS/ST LAW VALLEY...WITH SOME MOISTURE WORKING INTO THE CVLY. LOW TO OUR NORTH WILL RETROGRADE FURTHER WEST DURING THE MORNING HRS...ALLOWING FOR LK BAND TO ORIENTATE MORE N-S AND EVENTUALLY OUT OF THE CWA. AREAS NEAR LK ONTARIO WILL SEE ANOTHER 1-2" BFR TAPERING OFF...WHILE REST OF AREA CVLY AND WEST...WILL SEE AN INCH OR LESS. CLD COVER SLOW TO ERODE DURING THE COURSE OF THE DAY SO DO EXPECT SOME LGT -SW/--SW W/ NO ADDITIONAL ACCUM. GOING INTO TNGT...RIDGE IN PLACE OVER THE NE REGION. MOST AREAS WILL SEE SKIES GOING PCLDY W/ TEMPS DROPPING INTO THE TEENS.

The northern portions of Ontario and Quebec seem quite a distance away from here, so I was curious how we were still getting so much influence from that low. I pulled up the surface map from weather.com and it’s possible to just make out the low at the top of the image. The influence of the cyclonic flow is visible right down to the Great Lakes/international border:

Based on my records, we are now far enough along that the 7-day totals kept by the ski areas should represent the snowfall from just this latest event, so for those Vermont areas that report them, here’s what I’ve seen:

Jay Peak: 24”
Stowe: 18”
Bolton Valley: 18”
Killington: 14”


Some details from the 6:00 A.M. observations at the house are below:

New Snow: 0.9 inches
New Liquid: 0.02 inches
Snow/Water Ratio: 45.0
Snow Density: 2.2%
Temperature: 17.4 F
Sky: Mostly Clear/Flurries
Snow at the stake: 7.5 inches

After this event, it seems that the “out to sea Nor’easter” is still on to bring in some precipitation. After the daytime period today, our point forecast doesn’t have any sort of snow in it until Sunday night, which appears to be in association with that event:

.SHORT TERM /SUNDAY THROUGH MONDAY/...
AS OF 358 AM EST SATURDAY...CORE OF SFC RIDGE WILL REMAIN JUST TO OUT WEST SUNDAY INTO MONDAY. THIS WILL SET UP NORTHERLY FLOW OVER THE ENTIRE REGION DURING THIS TIME. PUSH OF CD CANADIAN AIR WILL PERSIST...KEEPING TEMPS NEAR NORMAL DURING THIS TIME. LOW PRESSURE BUILDING OFFSHORE WILL SWING MOISTURE ASHORE INTO THE AREA. WITH INCR MOISTURE/QPF POTENTIAL...CLD COVER WILL INCR ALONG WITH CHANCE FOR SOME LGT -SW. THIS SYSTEM OFFSHORE WAS SYSTEM EARLIER IN WEEK THAT MDLS WOULD HAVE KICKED ASHORE ENOUGH QPF TO WARRANT MAJOR WINTER EVENT...NOW SYSTEM TO REMAIN OFFSHORE.

With that system offshore, it looks like the December trend around here will continue:

.LONG TERM /MONDAY NIGHT THROUGH FRIDAY/...
AS OF 358 AM EST SATURDAY...SIMILAR SCENARIO TO WHAT WE HAVE SEEN FOR MUCH OF DECEMBER WILL TAKE PLACE DURING THE FIRST PART OF THE EXTENDED. EXPECT ANOTHER UPPER LOW TO OUR EAST TO SPREAD SOME ATLANTIC MOISTURE INTO THE REGION FROM THE NORTH AND NORTHEAST TUESDAY AND TUESDAY NIGHT. WILL CONTINUE TO MENTION THE CHANCE OF SNOW DURING THIS TIME FRAME. IN THE WEDNESDAY THROUGH FRIDAY TIME PERIOD...EXPECT NORTH TO NORTHWEST FLOW ALOFT TO DEVELOP OVER THE AREA...WHICH WILL TEND TO CONCENTRATE ANY PRECIPITATION OVER THE HIGHER TERRAIN WEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY. FLOW ALOFT BACK TO THE WEST ON FRIDAY AND BRINGS ANY PRECIPITATION TO AN END. TEMPERATURES WILL GENERALLY BE AT OR SLIGHTLY BELOW SEASONAL NORMALS THROUGH THE ENTIRE PERIOD.

 

[J.Spin]

I just got back from a ridiculously good run on Spell Binder at Timberline. On top of the base I found 11-16 inches of bottomless fluff, which has a beautiful right side up density gradient topped off with 5-6% H2O Champlain Powder™. I have to think it has never seen any wind, and the quality of the powder is literally right at the top of my scale, which is pretty stringent. The temperatures (~20F), wind (zero) and sun (mostly clear) are just about perfect for earning some turns, so get out there. I won’t have time for pictures and more details until later, but the skiing was so good that I had to send out a flash update in case anyone could make use of the information today.

J.Spin

 

[J.Spin]

We spent yesterday in bounds at Bolton Valley, and I can report that conditions were generally excellent on both the groomed and non-groomed areas that we hit. Lots of natural snow through the week made the groomed surfaces packed powder everywhere but the highest traffic, exposed areas that we visited. Steep, natural snow terrain that was open and had seen plenty of traffic, generally had thin cover and patrol had signs posted. Untracked areas generally held 8 to 12 inches of powder with spots up to 15 inches, and a right side up gradient of denser snow underneath. Coverage was definitely sufficient for tree skiing in many areas, although more base snow will be needed to get everything going. More details are in my Bolton trip report from yesterday.

 

[J.Spin]

As I mentioned in my flash update from yesterday, the quality of the powder up at Bolton’s Timberline area was basically about as good as it gets yesterday, and I’ve got some of the details in my 12/19/2010 Bolton Valley trip report.

It’s snowing right now down here at the house, and it looks like we’ve got decent snows coming through Thursday to bump the snowpack up some more. Our current NWS forecast from BTV is calling for 3 to 7 inches through tomorrow night and then additional snows on Wednesday and Thursday.