Wednesday, December 17^th, 2008

Summary: 3.6” new snow in Waterbury (495’) as of 6:00 A.M. EST

Wednesday, December 17^th, 2008: 6:00 A.M. update from Waterbury, VT

New Snow: 3.6 inches

Liquid Equivalent: 0.39 inches

Snow/Water Ratio: 9.2

Snow Density: 10.8%

Temperature: 20.7 F

Humidity: 83%

Dew Point: 14.6 F

Barometer: 30.30 in. Hg

Wind: Calm

Sky: Snow/Heavy Snow

Storm snow total: 3.6 inches

Storm liquid equivalent total: 0.39 inches

Current snow at the stake: 8 inches

Season snowfall total: 43.2 inches

There was no snow falling at our house in Waterbury when I last looked outside at around 11:00 P.M. last night, and I expected to wake up to an inch or two this morning, but found 3.6 inches on the snowboard and snow falling at a rate somewhere between moderate and heavy. I didn’t have a chance to meticulously monitor snowfall rates, but putting numbers on it I’d say it was falling at somewhere between 1/2 and 1 inch per hour, which is a decent amount of liquid falling from the sky based on the water content I determined. I couldn’t believe there was already almost 4/10 of an inch of liquid in just those 3.6 inches, but the flakes are mainly small, with diameters in the 1-2 mm range along with some needles, so the snow has only moderate loft. It appears as if the Burlington area is also doing well from this event, as I measured ~4 inches of snow accumulation here on the UVM campus (380’) as of ~7:00 A.M. With the liquid equivalent we’ve picked up so far just from part of this event, and the way the parade of storms is lined up to affect us in the coming days, it appears as though the snowpack is poised to get a good bolstering and resurfacing at all elevations.

J.Spin

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Summary: 6.2” storm total in Waterbury (495’)

Wednesday, December 17^th, 2008: 5:00 P.M. update from Waterbury, VT

New Snow: 2.6 inches

Liquid Equivalent: 0.26 inches

Snow/Water Ratio: 10.0

Snow Density: 10.0%

Temperature: 27.7 F

Humidity: 84%

Dew Point: 21.9 F

Barometer: 30.06 in. Hg

Wind: Calm

Sky: Light Snow/Flurries

Storm snow total: 6.2 inches

Storm liquid equivalent total: 0.65 inches

Current snow at the stake: 9 inches

Season snowfall total: 45.8 inches

We’ve had very light snow most of the evening, but it’s so light that there’s not even a tenth of an inch of additional snow on the snowboard as of ~9:30 P.M. We put almost 2/3 of an inch of liquid equivalent into the snowpack with this event down here, so the local mountains should have done at least that well, and the snow is pretty decent medium-weight resurfacing material.

With the dump of fresh snow and mild temperatures, the boys and I headed up to Bolton to catch some evening runs under the lights. We got up to the mountain to find that the cloud deck was right at the village elevation (~2,100’) and the temperature was around 30 degrees F. We stuck to the lower mountain, riding the mid mountain lift, and from what I heard about the conditions before this event, it sounds like they got a nice resurfacing – at least for the beginner and intermediate terrain that we skied. They were reporting 8 new inches, and there was still a lot of loose snow around, enough that we couldn’t ski Bear Run/Sprig O’ Pine because it just wasn’t steep enough for Dylan to keep moving. So we switched over to Beech Seal and that worked out well. You could still occasionally touch down to the old base, but this new snow was dense enough that it really seemed to stick well and cover everything. There was still a good amount of untracked powder off to the sides of Beech Seal and the boys and I had a lot of fun with that. Below I’ve added a summary of the accumulations reported by some of the Vermont ski areas, listed north to south along the Green Mountain spine.

Jay Peak: 8 inches (5:00 P.M.)

Smuggler’s Notch: 11 inches (4:05 P.M.)

Stowe: 8 inches (12:50 P.M.)

Bolton Valley: 8 inches (6:15 P.M.)

Mad River Glen: 6 inches (4:22 P.M.)

Sugarbush: 9 inches (2:49 P.M.)

Killington: 8 inches

Okemo: 4 inches (2:25 P.M.)

Bromley: 3 inches (7:20 A.M.)

Magic Mountain: 3 inches (8:00 A.M.)

Stratton: 6 inches (3:15 P.M.)

Mount Snow: 4 inches

J.Spin

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Thursday, December 18^th, 2008

Summary: 0.9” new overnight, 7.1” storm total

Since all the flurries and light snow coming down yesterday evening hadn’t added up to a hill of beans (less than a 10^th of an inch) over the span of several hours, I hadn’t expected that I’d have any accumulation to report this morning, and I hadn’t even thought to check the snowboard as I was leaving the house. However, after running the snow thrower through the driveway late last night and getting it pretty cleaned up, I was pulling out of the garage this morning and could clearly see that there was a substantial new layer of fluff on the ground. I quickly measured what was on the snowboard and found that there was close to an inch (0.9 inches) of dry, upslope-looking snow (probably 4% H₂O or less) on there. I had time to stack 5 cores and clear the board, but I won’t have time to measure the liquid until this evening. Fortunately, I had resisted the urge to empty my rain/snow gauge last night just in case we got some of this stuff at the tail end of the event, so assuming things clear out today I’ll have that liquid total for the storm to report on as well.

J.Spin