Snow Archives - Page 58 of 70

December 10, 2011December 13, 2011

Bolton Valley, VT 10DEC2011

A December image from the mid mountain area of Bolton Valley looking up toward Ricker Mountain — Checking out a December scene from mid mountain as the snow clouds pull away

With lake-effect snow coming off the Great Lakes, and some upslope hitting the Green Mountains, we picked up about a half inch of snow at the house overnight. The local ski areas also picked up an inch or two, which was enough to get me interested in heading up to Bolton for opening day. Checking their morning update on the website, I found out that they weren’t opening until 10:00 A.M., so that gave me a chance to take it easy for a while in the morning.

At some point after 9:00 A.M., I headed up to the mountain – I did check in with E and the boys to see if they wanted to head up for turns, but none of them were interested. I can’t blame them, since I knew it was going to be pretty vanilla with just Bear Run off the Mid Mountain Chair and the Mighty Mite learning area going. In terms of natural snow, at the base of the Bolton Valley Access Road (340’) the snowpack was sitting at around an inch, with snow melted out on south-facing slopes, pretty much like it is at our house. At around 1,000’ the snowpack became consistent on all aspects – the depth was only about an inch or so, but the consistent snowpack gave everything a much wintrier look. Up above 2,000’ in the Village there was a general 2-3” inches of snow everywhere – not enough to open any natural terrain, but certainly enough to know that winter was here. Temperatures were in the mid 20s F, and there was on and off light snow falling, so that really helped to fill out the wintry scene.

An image from the Bolton Valley Village area - December 10, 2011 — Checking out the snow in the Bolton Valley Village area this morning

I still had some time before the lift would be loading, so I skinned up Bear Run to catch an early descent. I could see that the mountain had made just enough snow to get the Bear Run area open wall to wall, and it sounds like they were crunched for time to even do that. Up at Mid Mountain I enjoyed the solitude while I de-skinned, and took in the scene for a few minutes. There were patches of blue sky appearing as the snow clouds began breaking away, and it was turning into a nice December day. I had a nice mellow descent of Bear Run, enjoying my first groomed turns of the season. The snow was a little firm since it was almost 100% man-made, but it was decent enough for opening day. I poked around a little off the edge of the trail at the junction with Sprig O’ Pine, and there was that roughly half inch to inch of new snow to be found, but they had groomed essentially everywhere that they had put down the man-made base so there weren’t really any fresh turns to be had. The few inches of snow on the natural snow trails actually looked pretty nice aside from the tall grass sticking through, and there’s plenty of snow out there to make it a paradise for junkboarders.

It was just after 10:00 A.M. when I got to the bottom, and a queue was already forming at the Mid Mountain Chair, but I decided to hop on and catch a lift-served run before I left. I got a nice little burn going from continuous Telemark turns, and was reminded of the benefits of lift-served skiing in that regard. Heading down toward the lodge after my run I ran into Jason, one of the instructors I know from the summer glade crew, and we chatted for a while. They had about 200 people from some group visiting the resort that were skiing and taking lessons, and they were all still quite keen to go despite the limited terrain. I popped into ski patrol to pick up my Powder Pass tickets from summer glade work, and then I was able to find patroller Quinn in civilian clothes up in the lift queue to thank him for getting all of us the tickets. The mountain appeared to be running the lift a little slow, perhaps to keep any trail crowding to a minimum, and there had been some starts and stops of the lift, so the queue was actually getting pretty big. It would have been a bit of a wait for another lift-served run if I had been planning to do any more.

A picture of some of the Vermont food vendor tables at Bolton Valley - December 10, 2011 — Vermont food vendors hosted by Bolton Valley Resort upstairs in the main base lodge

I checked the time and decided that I could catch the start of the Vermont food vendors display that was going on upstairs in the main lodge, so I stopped down at the car, changed out of my gear, and then headed up. I sampled everything they had and got some of their business cards to keep for holiday gift options, clearly timing was great in that regard for all the vendors that participated. The mountain really got together a lot of fun stuff to make opening day festive; they were having an Eastern Mountain Sports Telemark Demo Day and a Christmas tree lighting and visit from Santa later in the day as well.

The resort is planning to go top to bottom on the main mountain for next weekend, which should be possible with what looks like decent snowmaking temperatures for the coming week (low in the 10s and 20s F, and highs generally in the 20s and 30s F). In terms of natural snow, the next shot appears to be in the Wednesday through Friday period; it’s not expected to be any huge dump as far as I know, but we’ll see what plays out when we get there.

December 7, 2011August 12, 2012

Vermont’s first notable storm of December on the way

An image of the winter weather advisories put out by the National Weather Service in Burlington for the morning of December 7, 2011 — The initial Winter Weather Advisories are up in Vermont for the upcoming snow event in the eastern and southern parts of the state

A storm that was initially looking to hit Southern New England with the heaviest snows is tracking a bit farther north, so most of Vermont will now be getting a shot of snow out of it. It’s not a huge storm, but it should provide a nice start to a base for the ski areas, since it will likely be cold enough to keep it around for the foreseeable future. The initial warning map put out by the National Weather Service Office in Burlington is posted to the left and the first map of snowfall estimates has been added below:

An image of the projected sowfall from National Weather Service in Burlington for the morning of 07DEC2011 — A few to several inches of snow are expected to fall overnight tonight throughout the state of Vermont.

Thursday, December 8th, 2011: The snow totals for the storm in this area are shown in the map below, in general the storm produced 2 to 6 inches of snow throughout the state:

For the full details on this storm, head to the detailed report at the winter weather section of our website.

December 3, 2011August 12, 2012

Vermont’s first snows of December

We picked up our first December snow yesterday, just 0.4 inches here at the house, but Mt. Mansfield picked up a couple of inches and the slopes are looking much nicer with the fresh coat of white. Powderfreak put up some great pictures of the new snow from both yesterday and today over in the New England Regional Forum at American Weather. I’ve added some of my observations from yesterday below:

“I’m not sure of the temperature, but it was raining lightly when I left Burlington around 5:00 P.M. At the Waterbury Park and Ride, the precipitation looked like a mixture of rain and snow, and the only accumulations I saw were a fairly thin coating of slush on the cars. True to form though, once I hit the Cider House a couple miles west toward the spine, I started seeing accumulations of snow on the grass, and at the house I found 0.3” of slushy snow on the snowboard and a temperature of 33.3 F. The snow picked up for a bit after the 6:00 P.M. board clearing, and we received another tenth of an inch of snow, but the snowfall has tapered off since then and it’s very light now. It is nice to have the first accumulation of December in the books though, hopefully there will be plenty more to come.” Some details from the 6:00 P.M. observations are below:

New Snow: 0.3 inches
New Liquid: 0.06 inches
Snow/Water Ratio: 5.0
Snow Density: 20.0% H2O
Temperature: 33.3 F
Sky: Light Snow (1-2 mm flakes)
Snow at the stake: Trace

For the full details on this storm, head to the detailed report at the winter weather section of our website.

November 23, 2011November 24, 2011

Bolton Valley, VT 23NOV2011

An image of fresh snow on an evergreen at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont — Fresh snow from our pre-Thanksgiving storm coats an evergreen near the 2,800' elevation as I ascended Bolton Valley's Schuss trail today.

Our first big Northern Vermont storm of the season came in with a nice thump of snow during the overnight hours, and I awoke to find 7.1 inches of moderately dense snow on the snowboard for my 6:00 A.M. report to CoCoRaHS. Later in the morning the National Weather Service Office in Burlington put out a map showing the overnight snow totals, but the snow was still coming down. Snow continued to fall at the house all morning, and while it gradually tapered to very light snow, we picked up a few more inches to bring us into double digits for the storm total.

We played out in the snow for a while with the boys, and then in the mid afternoon I had to decide if I wanted to get out and make some turns in the new snow. Ideally I was looking for a place where man-made snow had been put down as a base, but unfortunately most of the mountains that had been making snow were actually opening for lift-served skiing. I thought about Sugarbush, since they aren’t opening until tomorrow, but they’ve been a bit testy with people earning turns in recent years and I didn’t want to drive over just to get turned away.

I eventually decided that I’d pop up to Bolton and see how the snow looked. I wasn’t expecting much in terms of skiing without a prior base, but perhaps I’d be pleasantly surprised. The temperature had gone a couple degrees above freezing at our house (elevation 495’), so the snow had been falling off the trees and the snow in the yard had also settled a bit. As Powderfreak had mentioned, the snow accumulations really did fall off as I headed a couple of miles west past the Waterbury/Bolton line. At the base of the Bolton Valley Access Road (340’) it was really amazing, there were just a couple inches of snow on the ground from the storm. It had me really worried about what went on up at the mountain, but fortunately the snow depths began to increase as I climbed in elevation as usual. Up at around 1,000’ near the Bolton Valley Resort sign, it looked like there were about 4 inches on the ground, and by the time I reached the Timberline base at 1,500’ it was notably deeper. I stopped in near the lodge and did a quick measurement with my pole to reveal 8.5 inches of settled snow. I saw one guy putting his skins on his skis for a tour, and noticed a couple of other cars that might have belonged to skiers, but I decided to head up to the main base area and see if things got a bit deeper. While at the base of the access road the temperature had been a couple degrees above freezing just like at our house, it dropped to around the freezing mark by the Timberline base, and it was a couple degrees below freezing up at the village (2,100’). As soon as I parked the car I checked the snow depth there, and found that it was about 10 inches. To read the full report and check out the rest of the pictures, head to the Bolton Valley trip report from today.

November 22, 2011August 6, 2012

First major winter storm of the season for Northern Vermont

An image of the Winter Weather Advisories and Warnings map from the National Weather Service in Burlington for November 22, 2011 — Winter Weather Advisories are up throughout the state of Vermont for the upcoming storm

While the Northeast has already had a couple of big, snow-producing synoptic storms so far this season (one on October 27^th, and another on October 29^th), for Northern Vermont these events were fairly minor because the area was really on the fringe of the precipitation. A storm is developing now however, which is expected to bring more substantial accumulations to the northern part of the state. This storm is expected to head into the Ohio Valley later today, and then track east across Southern New England overnight. This storm may have some mixed precipitation with it, but the current forecasts do not indicate much mixing in the northern areas, and the chance is there for greater than 6 inches of snowfall. Many local residents are already predicting damage to their homes and are already seeking services from the likes of https://seiroofing.com/roofing-services/. Snow can easily damage the roof of a home, especially if there is a lot of it. It’s a good idea to get roofs regularly maintained to make sure they are strong enough to cope with this snowfall. Perhaps some homeowners might want to consider contacting those at JAE Construction for help with their roof maintenance. It’s always better to prevent roofing damage where possible, regular maintenance can help with this. Damage from the storm could include water damage that homeowners may need to address with restoration services. Water damage can put stress on a home’s water pipe network and cause leaks. With this being the case, services that can clean up sewage leak incidents may well be in high demand following severe floods so it may be worth looking up such services local to you in advance. For a few more details, part of my morning report to the New England Regional Forum at American Weather is added below:

It was 17.6F and dropping when I left the house this morning around 6:00 AM, so this will certainly come in as the coldest morning of the season at our location thus far. I flipped on The Weather Channel before I left the house, and was surprised to see that the local forecast called for 6 to 10 inches at the Winter Weather Advisory level, but after reading the BTV forecast discussion, they spoke of the potential for mixing keeping totals down. The current point and click for our area down in the valley calls for 4 to 9 inches of snow, but doesn’t mention any mixing at this point.

Graphical point forecast for our location in Waterbury from the National Weather Service in Burlington for November 22, 2011 — Snow is expected from tonight through Wednesday night, even for our location down in the Winooski Valley.

Today: Sunny, with a high near 34. Calm wind.

Tonight: Snow, mainly after 1am. Low around 24. South wind at 6 mph becoming north. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New snow accumulation of 1 to 2 inches possible.

Wednesday: Snow, mainly before 4pm. High near 35. North wind between 3 and 8 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New snow accumulation of 3 to 7 inches possible.

Wednesday Night: A chance of snow showers, mainly before 7pm. Partly cloudy, with a low around 20. North wind around 6 mph becoming calm. Chance of precipitation is 30%.

I didn’t really see much of a bump in the point forecasts for the local mountains, so we’ll have to see if that gets refined for the higher elevations. I’ve added the projected snow accumulations map from National Weather Service Office in Burlington below:

An image of the projected snowfall accumulations for the upcoming November snowstorm in Vermont — The National Weather Service projected snowfall accumulations map for the northern portions of Vermont and New York as of the early morning on November 22, 2011

Tuesday, November 22^nd, 2011 – Afternoon Update

The National Weather Service Office in Burlington has put out their afternoon update for snow accumulations, and our area has been upgraded to a Winter Storm Warningto reflect the potential snowfall. The latest advisory and projected accumulations maps have been added below:

An image of the afternoon updagte for the Winter Weather Advisories and Warnings map from the National Weather Service in Burlington for November 22, 2011 — Winter Weather Advisories have now been upgraded to Winter Storm Warnings in some parts of Vermont and Northern New York to reflect the anticipated snow accumulations.

An afternoon update the projected snowfall accumulations for the upcoming November snowstorm in Vermont — The afternoon update for expected snowfall from the National Weather Service in Burlington

Tuesday, November 22^nd, 2011 – Evening Update

This evening, Matt Noyes posted his latest snowfall prediction map for this storm, and he’s pretty bullish on some of the totals in Northern New England, including parts of Northern Vermont. I’ve added his map below:

Matt Noyes' snowfall map for Northern New England snowstorm on November 22, 2011 — Matt Noyes’ snowfall map for Northern New England with the upcoming storm

For more full details on this storm, head to the detailed report at the winter weather section of our website.

November 12, 2011August 8, 2012

November snows starting to accumulate in Vermont

An image of November snow on the trees and ground up at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont — A couple inches of snow greeted us on our Bolton Valley hike up at the 2,500′ elevation.

Just last week we had our first snows of November in Northern Vermont – Ty and I found that areas above 2,000’ still had snow when we were up at Bolton Valley last Sunday. We got another round of snow yesterday, and this one was substantial enough that along with the mountains, many valleys got a coating as well. We even picked up our first accumulation for the month at our house in Waterbury. Today we were up at Bolton Valley picking up the rest of our season’s passes, and there was plenty of snow in the higher elevations. The snow first appeared just above the base of Timberline at around the 1,600’ – 1,700’ elevation range, and by the time we were up around 2,500’ there was quite a solid coating of a couple inches. The boys had fun making snowballs, and we had a great November hike.

An image of Dylan with a November snowball up at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont — Dylan and a nice big snowball he rolled in the recent snow up at Bolton Valley

More details on the storm associated with this snow can be found in the detailed report at the winter weather section of our website.

October 30, 2011November 6, 2011

Pico, VT 30OCT2011

An image of Erica skiing powder on the Birch Glades Trail at Pico Vermont - October 30, 2011 — E enjoys some of the October powder at Pico after back to back storms set up some great ski conditions.

On Thursday, Vermont got hit with its first major storm of the 2011-2012 winter season. The greatest effects were felt in the central and southern parts of the state, where areas like Killington picked up about a foot of snow. Then yesterday, an early season Nor’easter came through the Northeast, and it turned out be historic for the Mid Atlantic and Southern New England, where some areas picked up more than 30 inches of snow. That’s a good dump of snow for any time during the winter, but it’s incredible for October, and numerous October snowfall records were shattered. Through the combination of the two storms, some areas in the Berkshires of Massachusetts had already picked up over three feet of snow for October. Up in Vermont, the Nor’easter was focused on the central and southern parts of the state, just like the previous storm. We did actually pick up 1.2 inches of snow at our house in Waterbury last night, but with areas south of us getting another good dump of snow on top of the base they already had from the previous storm, our eyes were definitely drawn southward for some potentially great October skiing.

Since Killington had already opened for lift-served skiing, we decided that Pico would be a much mellower option for earned turns, with similarly great snow. Despite many days of skiing at Killington in the past, nobody in the family had actually ever skied Pico, but it’s hard not to admire the way 3,967’ Pico Peak towers well above Sherburne Pass on Route 4. Since the base area of Pico sits at an elevation of ~2,000’, it’s got plenty of elevation to help keep the snow dry if lower elevation temperatures are above freezing.

E hosted a Halloween pumpkin-carving party last night, but I still had plenty of time after clean up to prep some of the gear and put the skins on the skis so that we’d be able to save time this morning. After a hearty breakfast to ensure that the boys were charged up for the mountain ascent, they got dressed very quickly and headed out to play in the snow while we got everything together for the trip. I recorded the final couple of tenths of an inch of snow that had accumulated on our snowboard from the morning’s light snow, and we were on our way southward. To read the details about the skiing and see all the pictures, head to the full report from Pico on October 30th, 2011.

An image of Sherburne Pass from Pico ski area in Vermont with October snow — Looking down from the trials of Pico at the base area and Sherburne Pass, October almost seemed like mid winter.

October 29, 2011August 7, 2012

Second major October snowstorm of the season for Vermont

The map from the National Weather Service for Vermont Winter Storm Warnings and Advisories for October 29, 2011 — Winter Storm Warnings and Winter Weather Advisories are up in Vermont for our second October snowstorm in three days.

Our second significant snowstorm for October, and in fact our second significant snowstorm of the past three days, is on our doorstep. As with the storm from Thursday, Vermont snowfall will again focused on the southern part of the state, and this is likely to be a record snowfall event for areas of Southern New England, and the Mid Atlantic Region. Although this storm is still focused to our south, it is large enough that even our area is under its first Winter Weather Advisory of the season. The winter weather advisory maps from the National Weather Service Office in Burlington have been added here, and more updates about this historic early-season winter storm can be found at their website.

For the full details on this storm, head to the detailed report at the winter weather section of our website.

October 27, 2011November 6, 2011

First major snows of the season for Vermont

An map of the winter weather advisories in Vermont for October 27, 2011 — October 27, 2011: Vermont's first winter weather advisories of the season

The National Weather Service Office in Burlington put up the first Winter Weather Advisory for the state of Vermont today, thanks to a storm that is passing to our south. The southern and central parts of the state have been receiving the snow, with generally just clouds north of I-89. The Killington area picked up a nice shot of snow; adk from Americanwx.com reported up to 14 inches of snow there in his post in the Northern New England thread. You can find more about his trip at Famous Internet Skiers – they’ve got snowy skiing pictures from both October 27^th, and October 28^th. The great news is that there may be another storm coming in on Saturday night to cover up all the tracks that people have been making and set us up for some great October skiing.

Snow accumulations map for October 27, 2011 from the National Weather Service Office in Burlington, Vermont — Snow accumulations with this storm have been in the southern and central parts of the state.

October 22, 2011

Accumulating snow today on Mt. Mansfied

An image of snow that has been accumulating at the snow measurement stake up near the top of Mt. Mansfield in Vermont — October 22, 2011: The fabled stake atop Mt. Mansfield, picking up the first accumulating snow for Vermont's Green Mountains this season

I was reading the Northern New England Thread on the New England Regional Forum at American Weather, and just got the word that Mt. Mansfield received its first accumulating snow of the season. Thanks to Powderfreak for passing along the message, and including a picture of the snow at the Mt. Mansfield Stake, which I’ve included here. As far as I’m aware, this is the first accumulating snow in the Green Mountains of Vermont this season due to the fairly warm October. It does look like the weather is going to cool down this coming week, so there will likely be more chances for snow in the high country. We’ll keep our eyes on the mountains, weather forecasts, and weather boards to see if any of the white stuff shows up in the near future, but as we approach November, the season of snow and skiing is certainly close at hand.

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