Vermont Snow Updates 2010-11

[J.Spin]

Thursday was another great one out on the hill; we picked up some denser synoptic snow from the Nor’easter and then the Northern Greens topped it off with their world class fluff. Some snow, weather and skiing details are in my Bolton Valley report from Thursday.

Next up is the holiday weekend, where I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Mother Nature decided to kick it up yet another notch.

 

[J.Spin]

Powderfreak sent in a nice Stowe update to SkiVT-L that summarizes how the local conditions have been over the past week or so. He appropriately called it "A Week of Powder" and it has his usual collection of excellent photos from various days. It gets a little hazy in there in terms of exactly how much snow has fallen recently, but it's definitely measured in feet. Powderfreak has skied a lot of deep snow and when he quotes: “... so the net result was some of the deepest powder I've ever skied.”, you know the snow has been quite deep.

 

[J.Spin]

I put together my Bolton update from Saturday, where there was excellent chopped up snow on piste and 20 to 30 inches of powder off piste, with another clipper starting up around noontime. We didn’t really start heading to the powder hard until Sunday and Monday, but Saturday was a good all around day on the hill.

 

[J.Spin]

I put together my report from Sunday at Bolton, which was essentially more fluff on fluff, topped off with… additional fluff during the day.

I noticed that Johannes has generated his report from Sunday at VTSkiReport.com entitled "Preacher", so that's another good look at the day from his perspective.

I’ve still got Monday’s report to finish up, which was a Champlain Powdery tour of some of Bolton’s Nordic/BC network. This weekend seems to be featuring more cold than snow, but I’m warming up the boots now and planning to head out for a short tour and see what this week’s snowfall has done. We had a midweek coastal storm and then a Great Lakes/Mid Atlantic low pressure sandwich job at the end of the week that added to the snowpack; Bolton says they’ve had an additional foot of snow from those.

 

[J.Spin]

I finished up my report from Monday up at Bolton; it was basically more of the usual from the past few reports, but it’s hard to complain about monotony when it’s light and deep:

 

[J.Spin]

Here’s a quick update from yesterday (Saturday, January 22nd, 2011): I headed out for some turns, and figured I’d get some insight into the current state of the powder after this week’s snows. Bolton has reported over a foot of additional snow this week from the two events. I suspect they must have picked up at least another inch of liquid equivalent, because we picked up roughly 8 inches of snow and 0.80 inches of liquid down at the house. A lot of this recent powder was the more typical, medium-weight stuff, so it wasn’t as billowy as what we had earlier in the week, but it was still great powder skiing. It was expected to be somewhat chilly, so I opted for a tour on the Nordic/backcountry network, and I generally found 12-24 inches of powder snow on top of what are really just layers of more densely-settled powder; it’s hard to say where the powder ends and the base begins. There were no signs of any mixed precipitation in there, so any concerns about crust are definitely south of this area. It actually wound up being warmer than predicted, with temperatures 10 to 20 F even up on the lower parts of the mountain, so in untracked areas off piste it was essentially another sunny, bottomless powder day in Vermont.

Our current cold snap is supposed to end on Tuesday, so I’d say wait until after that point, but skiing should be at least good on piste and excellent off piste for those that want to come up. There’s a chance for this area to get in on the coastal storm predicted for midweek, but even if we get fringed again with that one as has happened with all the other big events this season, it will just be a freshening up already great surfaces.

 

[J.Spin]

I haven’t finished up my full reports from the weekend yet, but I figured I’d pass along a couple of quick updates on conditions.

On Saturday we were up at Bolton, and while there weren’t any significant storms last week (Bolton’s Saturday report was just 5 inches in the previous 7 days), the temperatures have been so consistently good that conditions are excellent on just about everything. On piste we found packed powder on all the runs we skied, although we didn’t hit any steep snowmaking terrain, so I could still imagine some of those trails like Spillway would still be harder than packed powder. Off piste in the areas of highest traffic (marked glades etc.) the snow was packed powder with a couple inches of fresh that had been falling during the day, and then in lower traffic areas it was either chowder, or just straight out bottomless powder. On piste there are still some thin areas on many steep natural snow trails, but we found coverage issues to be at a level that really affected the skiing in a minimal way. Even though we haven’t been hit hard with any big synoptic storms for the past month, or for that matter the entire season, all the fluff has apparently been adding up. The mountain was basically 99% open; I think they had everything except Upper Tattle available. I have an excerpt from my Saturday evening update at Americanwx.com with some weather/snow info:

Saturday 1/29/2011 6:00 P.M. update: I checked the depth of new snow on the snowboard around 11:00 A.M. this morning just as we were heading up to the mountain, and I found 0.8 inches of very fluffy stuff on there that had accumulated since I’d cleared it at 7:00 A.M. I’m not sure how much additional snow fell down at our place in the valley, but it definitely snowed on and off up on the mountain. At times we had light snow, at times more moderate snow, and at times we had some sun. I’d say they picked up a nice inch or two today, and as of their 3:00 P.M. update Bolton is indicating a couple of new inches. It was really a gorgeous day on the mountain; even though we haven’t had any massive dumps this week, the consistently cold temperatures have kept everything mid winter, and there’s tons of powder around:

On Sunday we were at Stowe in the afternoon, and I was worried that we’d experience the banal (or worse) conditions that had seemed to greet us quite often on Sunday afternoons last season. Previously this season we’d been lucky with fresh snow on both Stowe Sundays that we have been out, but even without a fresh shot of powder, the conditions we experienced at Stowe were basically on par with Bolton. That was a very pleasant surprise. There were still some steep, natural snow trails that were apparently closed due to insufficient coverage, but most were open and skiing amazingly well. There were thin spots on them, but like Bolton it was the sort of situation where they were scattered enough that the skiing didn’t suffer much. Even monitoring the weather and snowfall very closely, I’m just not sure how the mountains are offering up such great snow. A huge story in my mind on Sunday was all the fantastic skiing off piste. Even at Stowe on a Sunday afternoon we were finding fresh lines all over the place in Spruce Peak’s off piste areas. I dragged my group through quite a lot of untracked lines, and I’m far from an expert on Spruce Peak’s off piste offerings. The good conditions were enhanced by some pretty consistent snowfall that dropped another inch or two while we were there. Below is an excerpt from my Sunday evening update to Americanwx.com:

Sunday 1/30/2011 6:00 P.M. update: We were up on the mountain at Stowe today, and as Powderfreak mentioned, it was snowing pretty nicely at times. We decided to stick to the Spruce side, and on one ride up the Sensation Quad we went from a fairly insipid winter environment at the base (~1,800’) with a little snow in the air, to a winter maelstrom of nice big flakes and evergreens drooping with caked whiteness near the summit (~3,400’). Powderfreak had some great shots of the snow and snowfall, but I added one that I took from the base of Sensation around 2:30 P.M.:

We’ve been in one of those periods where, especially at Bolton with its lower traffic levels, but amazingly even at Stowe to some degree, every day is a bottomless powder day. We’re not talking on piste every day of course, but one sure doesn’t have to travel too far and wide off piste to routinely get into some amazing snow. The mountains appear to be getting just enough sneaky snow, along with consistent temperatures, that conditions just seem to stick at a high level.

On that note, it looks like we may get in on our most substantial shot of synoptic snow yet this season. The highest totals are probably still going to be to our south, but in this case more like Southern Vermont instead of Boston and New York. We definitely look to be closer to the heavier snows with this system up here in Northern Vermont relative to what has gone on the past month. I posted the latest weather advisories and storm snowfall total maps from the Burlington NWS below:

 

[J.Spin]

I've added in my latest report to Americanwx.com below as a quick update from yesterday. In general the totals for the Groundhog Storm were in the 1.5 to 2 foot range for the mountains around here. There are more storms in the pipe, the main question seems to be how much snow they deliver this far north.

Thursday 2/3/2011 6:00 P.M. update:

Waterbury event totals: 13.4” Snow/1.11” L.E.

We got a couple more tenths of an inch of snow this morning at the house to finish off the midweek system, and eventually the sun came out to provide some amazing views of the new snow. I was up at Bolton this morning for a few runs, and the skiing was excellent as one might expect. I did some depth checks while on the slopes, and found generally 9 to 14 inches of settled powder on piste in the 1,500’ to 3,000’ elevation range, although I’m not sure if some areas had been skied during part of the storm. Off piste I was getting depths of around 26 inches of powder, but since there’s no real base layer underneath areas where people haven’t skied, it sort of depends on how hard one wants to push down to get a snow depth. The 26” accumulation number that I reported from Bolton’s website this morning was their 72-hour total, which should go back to Monday morning, but in their snow report from this morning they are going with a 22” storm total for the 48 hours of this event, so they must have had a little extra before this system:

“Let's keep this simple. Here are our snowfall totals: 2-3" daytime Tuesday, 2-3" Tuesday night, 3-4" early Wednesday morning, 5-7" during the day Wednesday, and at least 4-5" last night. That's a storm total of 16-22" in under 48 hours. Conditions ought to be transcendent. And yesterday's bad news becomes today's good: as a result of Wednesday's wind hold keeping our lifts quiet, almost all of that powder lies waiting to be carved up."

It’s really great when they lay out the numbers like that though, because one can see where it all comes from. I wasn’t out on the hill yesterday during the storm, but I guess wind hold had the lifts down. I was surprised by that because I hadn’t seen much wind at all in the valleys during my travels. I added an image from the day below; I think the wind-scoured steep face of Upper Tattle Tale might have been the last holdout in terms of getting everything on the mountain open, and it skied really nicely today:

Some details from the 6:00 P.M. observations are below:

New Snow: 0.2 inches
New Liquid: Trace
Temperature: 12.0 F
Sky: Clear
Snow at the stake: 26.0 inches

 

[J.Spin]

It looks like a potentialyl moderate snow event is coming through the region for the overnight period, and winter storm warnings are up for part of the area:

This should be a good follow up to the midweek event, since that storm was really the first big synoptic event around here, and it’s the synoptic storms that are needed to get that snowpack growing. Based on the text in the storm warning it looks like good timing for turns tomorrow for those that are interested in coming to VT. I’ve added BTV’s projected accumulations map and some text for Northern Vermont below.

URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BURLINGTON VT
356 AM EST SAT FEB 5 2011

WESTERN ESSEX-EASTERN ESSEX-ORLEANS-ESSEX-WESTERN CHITTENDEN-LAMOILLE-CALEDONIA-WASHINGTON-WESTERN ADDISON-EASTERN CHITTENDEN-EASTERN ADDISON-INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...LAKE PLACID...PORT HENRY...TICONDEROGA...NEWPORT...ISLAND POND...BURLINGTON...JOHNSON...STOWE...ST. JOHNSBURY...MONTPELIER...MIDDLEBURY...VERGENNES...UNDERHILL...BRISTOL...RIPTON
356 AM EST SAT FEB 5 2011

...WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 4 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO 7 AM EST SUNDAY...

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN BURLINGTON HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM WARNING...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 4 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO 7 AM EST SUNDAY.

* LOCATIONS...ESSEX COUNTY OF NEW YORK AND CENTRAL AND NORTHERN VERMONT...EXCEPT FRANKLIN AND GRAND ISLE COUNTIES.

* HAZARD TYPES...HEAVY SNOW.

* ACCUMULATIONS...6 TO 10 INCHES.

* TIMING...SNOW WILL DEVELOP THIS EVENING AND CONTINUE OVERNIGHT BEFORE TAPERING OFF AFTER SUNRISE SUNDAY.

* IMPACTS...HAZARDOUS TRAVEL CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED OVERNIGHT WITH SNOW PACKED ROADS.

* WINDS...NORTH 5 TO 10 MPH.

* TEMPERATURES...LOWS IN THE LOWER 20S TONIGHT.

* VISIBILITIES...AS LOW AS 1/4 MILE AT TIMES IN HEAVIER SNOW BANDS.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

A WINTER STORM WARNING FOR HEAVY SNOW MEANS SEVERE WINTER WEATHER CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED OR OCCURRING. SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF SNOW ARE FORECAST THAT WILL MAKE TRAVEL DANGEROUS. ONLY TRAVEL IN AN EMERGENCY. IF YOU MUST TRAVEL...KEEP AN EXTRA FLASHLIGHT... FOOD...AND WATER IN YOUR VEHICLE IN CASE OF AN EMERGENCY.

PLEASE STAY TUNED TO NOAA WEATHER RADIO...YOUR LOCAL MEDIA...OR GO TO http://WWW.WEATHER.GOV/BURLINGTON FOR FURTHER UPDATES ON THIS WEATHER SITUATION.

 

[Tony Crocker]

After a substandard start, Vermont's ski season has been doing quite well. This will be 4 consecutive "A" weekends, not that common an occurrence. Usually there's at least one rain/spoiler weekend over a one month stretch.

 

[rfarren]

After a substandard start, Vermont's ski season has been doing quite well. This will be 4 consecutive "A" weekends, not that common an occurrence. Usually there's at least one rain/spoiler weekend over a one month stretch.

The majority of the EC has benefitted from the lack of rain over the last month or so.

 

[berkshireskier]

After a substandard start, Vermont's ski season has been doing quite well. This will be 4 consecutive "A" weekends, not that common an occurrence. Usually there's at least one rain/spoiler weekend over a one month stretch.

The majority of the EC has benefitted from the lack of rain over the last month or so.

So true, no real "January thaw" or heavy rain events for the past four or five weeks from central New England north and plenty of snow events. Some of the best snow conditions in 15 years. However, moderate rain this afternoon in central NE into southern VT, but temps right around freezing, so no huge loss of snow from this event and actually softened up the snow surface some. Two more snow storms predicted for this week.

 

[j howard]

i'd say some of the best conditions since 2001... ugh and i busted my arm falling down the front steps, of course

upstate NY has been particularly good. even during the early snow drought, we've had a ton of lake effect. i'd even say the conditions here were better a couple weeks ago. lol, probably worth the drive down from VT! it was so cold that the lake effect was like rockies powder. i've had more than one knee deep day. that, and there's enough base to ski in the woods anywhere you want, you just have to watch where the bands are going. unfortunately, the groundhogs day storm for us was 6" of snow and a bunch of ice. just a bit to the north in the adk's was just fine. hit or miss as usual around here! if the temps are in the low teens and there's lake effect, look to greek peak and plattekill. temps in the low 20's and east west winds: snow ridge season's not over yet, i'll be back

 

[J.Spin]

I've added a couple of my updates below for the current storm cycle, more storm details from this exciting storm are available in the NNE thread at Americanwx.com.

Saturday, Feb 5, Evening update:

We were up at Bolton today, and conditions were nice. This midweek storm wasn’t entirely ultra light Champlain Powder™, so this powder has seemed to settle down and consolidate a bit quicker that some snowfalls. Temperatures were probably around 30 F, and it was really comfortable on the slopes. In the morning we had blue skies, which gradually transitioned over to clouds as the next system approached.

Sunday 2/6/2011 6:00 A.M. update:

Waterbury event totals: 7.6” Snow/0.99” L.E.

The overnight snow here came in very synoptic-like in density, right on at 10.0% H2O. It’s certainly down from yesterday’s snow density, not surprisingly since that stack had some snow grains/sleet. Below I’ve added in the 24-hour snow totals I’ve seen for Vermont ski areas that have updated this morning, listed north to south:

Jay Peak: 12”
Smuggler’s Notch: 10”
Stowe: 11”
Bolton Valley: 11”
Mad River Glen: 11”
Sugarbush: 10”
Pico: 7”
Killington: 7”
Okemo: 3”
Bromley: 3”
Magic Mountain: 3”
Mount Snow: 0”

Not every area has reported in yet, but there’s a salient north to south trend in snow accumulations. Presumably this is in association with the mixed precipitation cutting down the snow totals, as I’m seeing some of the southernmost resorts indicating icing of the lifts. In general though, this has been another nice synoptic shot for the mountain snowpack; if we picked up just about an inch of liquid equivalent down here in the valley, then the surrounding resorts must have received at least that amount.

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

New Snow: 3.1 inches
New Liquid: 0.31 inches
Snow/Water Ratio: 10.0
Snow Density: 10.0% H2O
Temperature: 27.5 F
Sky: Flurries
Snow at the stake: 29.0 inches

 

[berkshireskier]

Latest storm on Sunday was a total bust here in Central New England. Started off as some snow showers but then quickly turned to rain and rained moderately hard for a few hours. I would estimate .5 to .75 of water fell, with temps just above freezing. Totally saturated the snowpack and then temps went below 32 over night, so this morning slopes were frozen crust all over. Conditions went from an A/A- to C-/D+ overnight. UGH!! We either need some more snow or temps to hit 40 or above to soften up the frozen surface. Prediction is for some snow (1 to 3 inches) Monday night into Tuesday, but looks like the bigger storm later in the week is going out to sea south of NE.

 

[rfarren]

Latest storm on Sunday was a total bust here in Central New England. Started off as some snow showers but then quickly turned to rain and rained moderately hard for a few hours. I would estimate .5 to .75 of water fell, with temps just above freezing. Totally saturated the snowpack and then temps went below 32 over night, so this morning slopes were frozen crust all over. Conditions went from an A/A- to C-/D+ overnight. UGH!! We either need some more snow or temps to hit 40 or above to soften up the frozen surface. Prediction is for some snow (1 to 3 inches) Monday night into Tuesday, but looks like the bigger storm later in the week is going out to sea south of NE.

I was at gore which got some frozen rain last night. They got some snow afterwards. I thought it skied great today. I would've given it an A or A- for crocker's criteria. The trees were super super fun. Once everything was skied everything was super soft and nice.

 

[berkshireskier]

Farther south, it was all rain from the storm. Never turned back to snow. So when they groomed the trails over night and it went below freezing, the corduroy froze into a solid crust. It was literally rattling my fillings on the first few runs this morning. And there were "death cookies" on many of the trails. Without a doubt, the worst conditions of the year. Giving the skiing conditions a grade of D+ would be charitable.

 

[rfarren]

Farther south, it was all rain from the storm. Never turned back to snow. So when they groomed the trails over night and it went below freezing, the corduroy froze into a solid crust. It was literally rattling my fillings on the first few runs this morning. And there were "death cookies" on many of the trails. Without a doubt, the worst conditions of the year. Giving the skiing conditions a grade of D+ would be charitable.

What area were you skiing?

 

[jamesdeluxe]

Farther south, it was all rain from the storm. Never turned back to snow. So when they groomed the trails over night and it went below freezing, the corduroy froze into a solid crust. It was literally rattling my fillings on the first few runs this morning. And there were "death cookies" on many of the trails. Without a doubt, the worst conditions of the year. Giving the skiing conditions a grade of D+ would be charitable.

I was at Windham in the Catskills for my son's ski lesson. It was the exact same there -- gorgeous conditions yesterday (so I heard) followed by an afternoon downpour that turned everything to concrete today. Ugh.

 

[rfarren]

Head up to the daks. They are sublime right now.