Patrick":2idp0owo said:
Based on JSpin's Waterbury and EC Ottawa Airport numbers.
JSpin snowtotal in Waterbury VT as of Dec 11th: 38 inches
Ottawa Airport Environment Canada snowdata as of Dec 11th: 30 inches
Regardless of surrounding terrain, I would suspect that snow banks and snow quality is currentlygreater in my backyard than at J's house. It definitely snows more in VT, but that higher numbers just says that it's snow more, which isn't necessarily correlated with snow quality or quality of skiing.
I agree that snowfall numbers don’t tell the whole story on snow quality, but if only one parameter could be used compare snow quality between different areas, snowfall is probably the best bet (it certainly is for me). If the value for total snowfall is zero, short of some sort of snowmaking, the rest of the parameters don’t matter much. Even in an area that gets a lot of snow, and has some thaws, high snowfall means that resurfacing can come quickly. If powder is what one wants to ski, then there’s little question that annual snowfall is the best indicator of the ability to get what you want, because it pretty much sets the upper limit on how much fresh snow you’ll ever get to put your skis in. I know there are many folks that would prefer a place that simply has great snow preservation and doesn’t necessarily get lots of snow (say like Lake Louise for example). That’s probably a good bet if you are going to plan a trip long in advance, or aren’t all that interested in powder. But for me, I’d rather live in a place that gets me more snow (powder skiing), even if it means a little more volatility in temperatures like say Northern Vermont or Fernie. Our spot in Waterbury is even a localized example of this, as we get lots of snowfall, but upslope snow contributes a lot to it and that doesn’t have a ton of liquid equivalent that is going to go into the snowpack. Also, with our low elevation we don’t preserve the snow as well as places in the 1,000’ to 2,000’ elevation range because of temperature fluctuations. I bet even Ottawa could have better preservation that our location. One good measure of snow preservation is to sum the depth of the snowpack on the ground for each day of the season. This parameter is often called “
snow depth days” and I haven’t done it, but I could generate the number from my Waterbury snowpack data. I bet the weather service in Ottawa would have that number. Obviously high snowfall AND preservation make for a great combination, but it’s not necessarily going to get you any more powder days.
In terms of the current quality of skiing around here, I think issues with the snow have being dramatically overblown due to the big ice storm that affected areas to the south. We got some mixed precipitation that made a crust around here, but it’s a relatively thin, breakable crust that now has additional snow on top of it (and a little snow on top of a breakable crust really helps improve the skiing over just breakable crust alone because it changes the angle with which you skis cut into it.) For skiing at the house, our snowpack is only at 10 inches at this elevation, but that last storm did throw another inch of liquid equivalent into it, so that is a definite boost to the valley skiing. While there is a base layer below this latest dump and the snow is ready for turns, I’d still probably wait for one more big dump before hitting our local backcountry. I suspect some of our mellower glades would be fine even now since they are at a bit higher elevation and don’t have any rocks, but a place like Hemlock Gully, that is quite steep, faces southward, and drops back down to just a couple hundred feet above the house elevation will need another foot of good base.
The snow in the mountains around here looks to be in nice shape, based even on
Roger’s report from Timberline before any snow fell on top of the crust, and he’s pretty critical of conditions. But we found decent conditions up at
Bolton on Friday night after additional snow fell, and
Jumpin’ Jimmy’s report from Stowe yesterday sounded good. Then of course there’s
Scott’s report with the usual collection of nice pictures to back everything up. I think there’s just been a lot of pissing and moaning about conditions over the past couple of days because the last storm wasn’t 100% powder everywhere, but even the off-piste skiing around here is pretty nice. It’s warmed up into the 20s F today so we’ll probably stop up to Bolton for some turns this afternoon. I’ll provide an update if we head out.
-J
