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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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 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.
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.
