There’s been a bit too much skiing and other stuff so I haven’t been able to get out daily updates, but I’m catching up now. Between the inverted trough, the big upslope that followed that, then the Nor’easter with its own upslope, there’s been so much additional snowfall since Saturday (almost 2 ½ feet down at the house) that conditions are really changing quickly, but the weekend updates should serve well to indicate what’s underneath there and how we got to this point.
Conditions were already pretty good on Saturday morning with the combined snow from the midweek clipper and then the inverted trough (an image from Saturday midday is below), the only issue at Bolton was that it wasn’t quite good enough to open up much natural terrain. Details from that point are in
my A.M. report from Saturday, and I’ve added some valley and mountain snowfall details below, as well as some material about where we are relative to average snowfall in the valley.
--------------------------------------
Friday, January 07, 2011
I hadn’t looked at the NWS page yet this morning, but I heard Roger Hill mention that winter weather advisories had been extended into our county (Washington) so I stopped in for a look. Our point forecast has us down for 3 to 6 inches of snow through tomorrow, and the BTV storm total graphic suggests about 5 inches of accumulation in our area. For the southern part of our county (Waitsfield, Warren, Sugarbush, Mad River Glen, etc.) the forecast is a bit higher and is calling for 4 to 8 inches. Roger mentioned that the more northern areas will get into the action as we head farther into the weekend and upslope comes into play, affecting Jay Peak in the north, southward through Smuggler’s Notch, Stowe, Bolton Valley, Mad River Glen, and Sugarbush. Hopefully the mountains can maximize the initial synoptic storm and upslope to get a decent dump, because we’re moving into the heart of the ski season and they could use it. With the complexity of the storm system it should be interesting to see where the snow totals wind up by the end of the weekend.
-------------------------------------------------
Event totals: 0.5” Snow/0.05” L.E.
Friday 1/7/2011 10:00 P.M. update: For much of the day in Burlington, I could see the low clouds and snow flirting with the mountains, especially those south of I-89 as forecast, but the snow never seemed to get too serious. A bit before 5:00 P.M. however, snow actually started to fall in Burlington; the flakes were very small but the snowfall was steady. The snowfall actually tapered off once I reached Williston to the west, and only rematerialized once I passed Richmond and headed into the mountains. The snowfall disappeared one more time in the Bolton flats area before returning around the Bolton Waterbury line as I approached the house.
In the evening we popped over to the outdoor ice rink in the center of town and it was a classic scene with the snow coming down. I kept humming the Charlie Brown Christmas song from the skating scene to myself. The snowfall was steady, but the flakes very small – I found the flakes to be in the 1 mm range or even smaller. Even the small flakes looked cool in the rink lights though; I took several pictures and added one below:
Once back at the house I was in no rush to check the snowboard since the snow was accumulating so slowly, but I finally decided to take a measurement at 10:00 P.M. as the flake size seemed to be bumping up a bit to the 3 mm range. With such small flakes I wasn’t too surprised to find that the snow was a fairly standard 10% H2O. Some details from the 10:00 P.M. observations are below:
New Snow: 0.5 inches
New Liquid: 0.05 inches
Snow/Water Ratio: 10.0
Snow Density: 10.0%
Temperature: 21.9 F
Sky: Light Snow (1-3 mm flakes)
Snow at the stake: 6.5 inches
------------------------------
Powderfreak wrote:
"How are you guys doing snowfall-to-date relative to normal? It has been a bit sparse at times but I was talking to NZucker about this recently how BTV is just above normal to date. Yesterday they were like 2" above normal-to-date and 8" above normal since December 1. They'll probably add to that with this little system. The only reason they aren't more above normal is because of the crappy November... but BTV airport in the Champlain Valley pulled 28" in December.
I'm curious as to what J.Spin is relative to the past 5 seasons or so that he's lived at his location... I don't think snowfall has been all that bad in NW New England, and the general 15-30" (isolated higher amounts) from the early December upslope event really helped this area. Have had solid snow cover since December 5th. Though there does seem to be an area in central VT, central NH, up through the ME coastal plain that has been having a harder time getting it to snow... the Boxing Day storm really helped that corridor."
I mentioned a little about this in
a message on Tuesday (1/4). At that point we had just passed 50 inches of snowfall for the season, but we were still 15 inches below my calculated average. The clipper helped out some, and now we’re at 55.5 inches and only about 12 inches below average. That’s still just keeping pace for the most part, not really getting ahead, and certainly not on a 2007-2008 La Nina pace (97.2 inches by this date). Depending on how the next few days play out though, we could make a little more ground, we’ll just have to see.
For reference, the running seasonal snowfall averages I have for dates in this timeframe are as follows:
January 4th 65.4”
January 5th 65.9”
January 6th 66.4”
January 7th 67.7”
January 8th 70.2”
January 9th 70.9”
------------------------------------
Saturday, January 8th, 2011
------------------------------------
Event totals: 1.4” Snow/0.13” L.E.
Saturday 1/8/2011 6:00 A.M. update: Consistent with the slightly larger flake sizes (1 to 3 mm vs. ~1 mm earlier) that I’ve been seeing as we moved toward the overnight period, the snow density is down a touch from 10.0% H2O to 8.9% H2O with the 6:00 A.M. analysis. However, as I was finishing up my observations and coming inside, the flake size really started to increase, with some flakes up to ¾ inch in diameter. I wasn’t sure if we were moving into some upslope precipitation or not, but looking at the radar, it seems that we are actually getting hit by that moisture stream from the south, which has finally rotated enough that we are in the flow:
We are well downstream in the flow, but we’ll see how much moisture makes it this far. Some details from the 6:00 A.M. observations are below:
New Snow: 0.9 inches
New Liquid: 0.08 inches
Snow/Water Ratio: 11.3
Snow Density: 8.9%
Temperature: 21.9 F
Sky: Light Snow (1-3 mm flakes)
Snow at the stake: 7.0 inches
---------------------------------
I checked the snowboard and as of about 9:00 A.M. there was another inch on there, bringing the event total to 2.4 inches at this location. The recent accumulation rate was definitely faster than we’ve seen so far with this event, and it may be due to the increased flake size vs. just the amount of moisture hitting us. We’ll see what the liquid analysis says when I next check the board. There’s been a lull in the snowfall over the past half hour or so, so we’ll also have to see if it picks up again. Our NWS point forecast has us down for 3 to 6 additional inches through Sunday, with half of that expected tomorrow. It sounds like they are anticipating a northwest upslope flow to develop, so that’s where some of that would come from:
.SHORT TERM /7 PM THIS EVENING THROUGH MONDAY/...
AS OF 415 AM EST SATURDAY...UPPER LOW WILL PASS EAST OF NEW ENGLAND OVERNIGHT AND SNOW SHOWERS WILL CONTINUE WITH A FOCUS OVER THE HIGHER ELEVATIONS AS FLOW TURNS TO THE NORTHWEST. REGION WILL REMAIN UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF DEPARTING UPPER LOW THROUGH EARLY MONDAY MORNING WITH NORTHWEST FLOW REMAINING. LIGHT ACCUMULATIONS EACH PERIOD EXPECTED...ESPECIALLY THE NORTHWEST FACING SLOPES AND HIGHER ELEVATIONS.
----------------------------------------
Event totals: 3.0” Snow/0.24” L.E.
Saturday 1/8/2011 12:00 P.M. update: It was snowing decently with some larger flakes at the house in the mid to late morning period, so I decided to head up to the mountain to make some turns and see what conditions were like. The powder depths I observed up there are actually a combination of the fluffy snow from the clipper earlier in the week, with this denser snow from the current Great Lakes ULL/inverted trough on top of it. In Bolton’s Timberline area up to the mid station (1,500’ to 2,250’) I found 4 to occasionally 5 inches of powder, but up at the Timberline summit there was a consistent 5 to 7 inches atop the consolidated snow from before the warmth. On the main mountain at around 2,300’ I found 6 inches of powder, and even up at the Vista Summit (3,100’) I never found more than 7 inches. Toward the end of the day we went out for
a tour on the Nordic/backcountry network and I found generally 6 inches of loose snow in the 2,000’ to 2,500’ range.
Down at the house (495’) we picked up some additional snow during the morning, and with some larger flakes, at least at times, the snow density dropped another couple of percent down to 6.9% H2O. By that point we’d received about a quarter inch of liquid for the event. Some details from the noontime observations are below:
New Snow: 1.6 inches
New Liquid: 0.11 inches
Snow/Water Ratio: 14.5
Snow Density: 6.9%
Temperature: 27.3 F
Sky: Light Snow (1 mm flakes)
Snow at the stake: 8.0 inches
