Tony Crocker":yzkf23xd said:
JSpin is a scientist and reports snow data in meticulous detail beyond even the level of my usual interest. He has an official weather station in his back yard that is checked multiple times per day. I'm sure he knows exactly how often it rains there, and when rain changes to snow and vice versa. So it strikes me as strange that he chooses not to report that info here.
That info is frequently reported here, and even from the mountains when I’m out there, several examples from this very thread are below:
“I've added in my EasternUSwx observations posts from last night and this morning for reference below. We had another 0.31 inches of liquid precipitation overnight, which was presumably snow in the higher elevations (Mt. Mansfield is currently at 30 F at 3,950'), and it is still raining, but no doubt the snow level has been rising based on what I've seen down here, so the skiing should certainly be done sooner rather than later. Bolton Valley at 2,100' is already 34 -35 F.”
“Once the snowfall slowed down yesterday evening at around 10:00 P.M., the precipitation gradually changed over to all rain, and glimpses of the projection thermometer during the night revealed that the temperature just kept rising from the lowest readings in the 33 F – 34 F range during the snow. At 7:00 A.M. this morning the temperature was 41 F and the precipitation was light rain. A few observations are below:”
“We actually got accumulating snow down into some of the lowest valleys again, with 0.7 inches of snow here at the house. We had snow here early on Saturday morning, which changed over to rain during the daylight hours, and then we went back to snow on Sunday. The precipitation was pretty much snow from there on out. It snowed almost continuously for the next couple of days, although it was just a bit too warm to accumulate much in the lower valleys. At the Mt. Mansfield stake they did record 34.1 inches of snow for the month of October, and set October records for both snowfall and rainfall. As of yesterday there were 10 inches of snow at the stake.”
“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.”
“I'm still finishing up my report, but we skied the Bolton Nordic/backcountry network on Saturday and the base was in great shape (we were in the 2,000' to 2,700 elevation range). We skinned up the Bryant trail to the cabin, and saw a couple small streams with running water off to the sides of the trail, but that was it. The natural snowpack in there was a couple of feet deep, and didn’t seem to be going anywhere, it’s just that the snow was wet so it wasn’t powder and wasn’t all that much fun to ski. Rain wasn’t really an issue with this event (we had a tenth of an inch at the house) so that’s presumably why the streams didn’t open up. It was just warm, so any areas where the snowpack was thin due to traffic or wind opened up. It was the on piste areas with exclusively natural snow that needed to be closed. The mountains did get about a half foot of new snow today, and I can see in Bolton’s report that they have been dropping ropes on additional trails.”
People need to remember several things about my posts in this thread, and these factors should provide some perspective:
1. The meticulously-detailed weather analyses of which Tony speaks are rarely posted here anymore. I used to put there in here, but I believe it was established a while ago that the information in those wasn’t very useful to the typical skier. Those are all freely available at Americanwx.com in the Northern New England thread.
2. Aside from grabbing the snow totals for the ski areas throughout the state (which are easily available through
SkiVermont.com or the ski area websites), I don’t follow what’s going with the weather outside the northern part of Vermont. I get some weather information about our broader area in the NNE thread at Americanwx.com, but the most frequent Vermont posters there are all clustered right around our area. One can open up
the map made by “eekuasepinniW” and click at the top of it to display where the NNE members are located. The BTV office of the NWS doesn’t even cover the southern two counties of the state, so I’m really not up on the specifics of what happens there with each event.
3. Aside from checking my gauge and reporting in to CoCoRaHS, if rain is a substantial part of the precipitation around here, and is to the point where it is even affecting the mountains, then I’m probably not skiing. In these situations I get a break from the slopes, a break from constant snow measuring and core sampling, and a break from having to continually write up observations and comments. At that point I’m putting as little effort as possible into any of that stuff until such time as the weather changes to make the ski conditions great again. Not surprisingly, once that happens the talk will likely be about snow.
4. As was already
highlighted in this thread by berkshireskier, Northern VT (along with northern NY, NH, and ME) is a different climate zone than places farther to the south, even Southern Vermont. While rain happens, storms that are exclusively rain are pretty infrequent, so there’s almost always some powder to talk about with each storm, whether on the front end, back end, both ends, or whatever. Even with the really crappy weather pattern that the Northeast is currently in with regard to snow, the northern half to one third of the state is pulling out some great powder days like
Sunday. I’m not likely to talk about mysterious green radar blobs passing through the southern half of the state in general, but especially when there’s powder to be discussed up here.
So yes, mixed precipitation and rain do get mentioned in my updates as the examples from above indicate, but they are mostly in the context of my own experiences. I’m not sure I get paid enough yet to really spend time discussing rain events that don’t interest me, as much as I know it might be helpful to Tony’s analyses. For the most part this topic comes up when folks who don’t even ski in this part of the country or contribute routinely to the thread, suddenly gain a keen interest in comprehensive weather coverage of the region and pop in to inquire about the deficiency. These inquiries have always seemed rather suspicious.
-J
