Fourth round of early season Vermont snows brings accumulations to the Green Mountain valleys

An image showing a CoCoRaHS weather observations map with snow accumulations in Northern Vermont from an October snowstorm
An image showing residual accumulations of snow on Mount Mansfield on one of the webcams at Stowe Mountain Ski Resort in Northern Vermont after an October snowstorm
Residual accumulations visible on the Stowe Mountain Resort webcam thanks to our most recent round of early season snows

The first flakes of the season at our site in Waterbury were back on the 16th of the month with that last big snow event, but thanks to the system moving through yesterday into today, we accrued the first accumulations I’ve seen here. Temperatures were certainly above freezing here in the valley, but the intensity of the precipitation is what brought on the accumulation when one of the more active cells on the radar came through our area.

A radar animation image showing a cell of precipitation bringing the first accumulating snows to the Waterbury area of Vermont
Accumulations finally started to take hold down at our elevation of 500 feet in the Winooski Valley in Waterbury when one of the more potent cells of precipitation crossed the spine of the Green Mountains in our area.

Based on posts that were showing up in the Northern New England thread at the American Weather Forum yesterday, it was clear that many valley locations were starting to see accumulations as the temperatures came down. Temperatures dropped well into the 20s F overnight, so by morning, CoCoRaHS reports revealed valley accumulations of anything from a trace to as much as a few inches in a stripe across Northern Vermont.

An image showing a CoCoRaHS weather observations map with snow accumulations in Northern Vermont from an October snowstorm
As our latest fall snowstorm moved through the area yesterday and into the night, many sites in a stripe across Northern Vermont reported accumulations to CoCoRaHS this morning.

Stowe, VT 17OCT2024

A view of some of the snowy trails of Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont from the Mountain Road under brilliant sunshine with foliage after a mid-October snowstorm
Ski tracks in powder snow on the Perry Merrill trail at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont after a mid-October snowstorm brought more than a foot of snow to the higher elevations
A view of some of the powder turns on Perry Merrill. While yesterday was definitely the best day to get out in terms of fresh snow quality, today still delivered some very nice turns as long as you were high enough and early enough to avoid the warming temperatures.

With this latest round of autumn snow culminating in over a foot of accumulation on Mt. Mansfield, the setup was calling for some early season turns. With the way the temperatures were expected to rise today, I think yesterday was the way to go for potentially the best overall snow quality for powder turns, but I was too busy to get out to the slopes. I did get out this morning though, and while snow preservation was undoubtedly better yesterday, the clouds totally disappeared today to reveal incredible snowliage in the sunshine.

An image of Mount Mansfield in Vermont with the snowy ski trails of Stowe Mountain resort visible in bright sunshine after a mid-October snowstorm brought over a foot of snow to the higher elevations
A view of the beautiful snow and foliage from the Top Notch area on my approach to the mountain today.

I started my ascent from the Gondola base at 1,600’ and walked with my skis on my pack for a few minutes to get above the areas with the most melting, then I transitioned for touring and skinned up from there. The snow was already becoming spring-like down low in the sun, and areas in the shade featured refrozen snow. So even yesterday, the freezing level made it above the base elevations. I encountered my first real winter snow that had not seen a thaw-freeze cycle at about 2,800’ in the shade, and then at around 3,200’ I began finding some winter snow even in the sun. I made snow depth checks along the way, and here’s the depth profile I found in the late-morning to midday period:

1,600’: T-2”
2,000’: 4-5”
2,500’: 9-10”
3,000’: 12-13”
3,600’: 13-14”

Depths had consolidated a bit even up at 3,600’ based on Powderfreak’s pictures from yesterday, and the sun was really doing a number on the snow down low. The Gondola terrain gets hit by the sun, and the accumulations down near the Gondola base were just about gone by the time I finished my descent.

An image looking eastward from Mt. Mansfield in Vermont out toward the snow-capped White Mountains of New Hampshire while ski touring at Stowe Mountain resort after a mid-October snowstorm brought over a foot of snow to the local peaks
An eastward view out toward the snow-capped White Mountains of New Hampshire on today’s descent

In terms of the skiing, I encountered just about every sort of condition that Mother Nature can throw at you, from dense, silky powder, to refrozen areas with unbreakable melt crust, to spring snow, to sticky, freshly melted snow. Once you were down below the driest snow up top, the best approach was to fucus on the snow that was in that happy medium between seeing the most sun on the skier’s left, and that which had seen no sun on the far skiers right in the shade of the trees. The snow on the skier’s left that had seen some hours of sun was getting sticky, and snow that was shaded by the trees was still frozen with either an unbreakable or breakable melt crust, but in between there was an area of quality snow that had seen just enough sun to soften up but not get sticky. Once you were down below roughly 2,000’, everything was melting, so you just sort of kept going until you felt the snow was too thin. You could still make it all the way to the base with the help of shaded areas depending on what level of rock skis you might be on, but I took off my skis for the last few hundred vertical because I didn’t want to beat them up too much.

An image of the Gondola base are of Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont with melting snow after a mid-October snowstorm brought over a foot of accumulation to the higher elevations of Mount Mansfield
Snow cover was disappearing in sunny areas down at the base elevations of the resort as I approached the end of my descent

That was a solid dump for the middle of October though, and with the bonus snowliage it was a great way to kick off the season.

First Vermont snows for the 2023-2024 winter season

An image from the famed snow stake on Mt. Mansfield in Vermont showing some of the first accumulating snow of the 2023-2024 winter season.

Today we got our first taste of the coming winter in the Northern Green Mountains. While Mt. Washington in New Hampshire has had a number of rounds of snow thus far in the autumn, and there were some reports of possible frozen precipitation in far northern Vermont a week or two ago, today saw the first notable accumulating snow on Mt. Mansfield. As of midafternoon today, Powderfreak reported that the snow level was down to ~2,500’, and he sent in an image of a half inch of accumulation at 3,000’ as of 3:30 P.M. By early evening he provided a few more pictures and indicated that the snow level had dropped below 2,000’. Up at the Mt. Mansfield Stake at roughly 3,700’, the report was that there was about an inch of accumulation over a third of an inch of ice. A check of mountain webcams around the area revealed that just about all the mountains were seeing flakes with accumulation, but those views will have to do for now.  Unfortunately, it’s been far too cloudy to get any nice shots of the snowy peaks from afar, but hopefully we’ll get to see them appear in a day or two.

An image from the famed snow stake on Mt. Mansfield in Vermont showing some of the first accumulating snow of the 2023-2024 winter season.
A shot of the famed Mt. Mansfield stake from today featuring the season’s first accumulating snow.

So, Oct 22 will go down as the date for our first accumulating Mt. Mansfield snow for the winter of 2023-2024, and we can now add it to the books and see how it compares to the averages. The stats for first accumulating snowfall of the season on Mt. Mansfield are below for comparison – today’s date of Oct 22 is later than the mean date of Oct 11, but well within 1 S.D., so quite normal in that regard. Assuming a normal distribution, about 25% of seasons will have later first snowfall dates than this one.

The dates of first accumulating Mt. Mansfield snow for some recent seasons are shown below as well, so this season sits later than the past few, but ahead of most of that stretch in the mid-2010s, which was a surprising run of later October dates.

Date of first accumulating Mt. Mansfield snow:

Mean:  10/11
Median:  10/10
Mode:  10/17
S.D.: 15 days
N:  67
Most Recent:  10/22
Most Recent Days Deviation:  +11
Most Recent # of S.D. Deviation:  +0.732
Most Recent S.D. % Lower:  76.8%
Earliest 8/28/1986
Latest   11/17/1985

Date of first accumulating Mt. Mansfield snow by season:

2008: Oct 3
2009: Sep 30
2010: Oct 7
2011: Oct 30
2012: Oct 8
2013: Oct 24
2014: Oct 26
2015: Oct 17
2016: Oct 26
2017: Oct 27
2018: Oct 13
2019: Oct 18
2020: Oct 17
2021: Oct 18
2022: Oct 8
2023: Oct 22

First snows of the 2018-2019 winter season in the Green Mountains of Vermont

An image showing Camel's Hump in Vermont with the first snows of the 2018-2019 winter season in the Green Mountains
An image showing Camel's Hump in Vermont with the first snows of the 2018-2019 winter season in the Green Mountains
Camel’s Hump showing signs of the first snow of the season for the Green Mountain of Vermont

While the first half of October was fairly warm, the weather models have been suggesting a shift to more seasonal temperatures as we hit mid-month.  The potential for some mountain snow was in the forecast last night, and indeed as of yesterday afternoon snow was already being reported at Whiteface Mountain across the lake with video of the flakes.  Here on our side of the lake, we heard from Powderfreak early this morning that snow had been sighted in the mountains around Stowe, and he was heading up for some investigation.  An hour or two later, he had send along pictures, and indicated that accumulations on Mt. Mansfield were about a half inch and started at an elevation of roughly 2,300 feet.

“…it looks like we’ll have more opportunities for snow this week with accumulations potentially even down to the mountain valleys.”

Here at our house, I did a morning check to find that the cloud ceiling was still only about 2,000 feet and there were no obvious signs of snow below that level.  I gave the clouds some time to think about clearing a bit, and then headed out in the neighborhood during the mid-afternoon period to see what snow might be visible.  Indeed the cloud ceiling had risen by about another 2,000’ and I was able to catch Camel’s Hump as the clouds had just about broken away.  The snow line at that point looked to be around 3,000’.

The first snows of the 2018-2019 winter season are in the books here in the Greens, and the National Weather Service Office in Burlington says it looks like we’ll have more opportunities for snow this week with accumulations potentially even down to the mountain valleys.  We’ll see what transpires as even colder air moves in, so stayed tuned for more October snow updates!