Tuesday, March 31^st, 2009

Summary: 0.8” snow total in Waterbury (495’) as of 6:30 A.M. EST

Tuesday, March 31^st, 2009: 6:00 A.M. update from Waterbury, VT

New Snow: 0.6 inches

Liquid Equivalent: 0.10 inches

Snow/Water Ratio: 6.0

Snow Density: 16.7%

Temperature: 33.6 F

Humidity: 98%

Dew Point: 32.9 F

Barometer: 30.21 in. Hg

Wind: Calm

Sky: Light/Moderate Snow

Storm snow total: 0.6 inches

Storm liquid equivalent total: 0.10 inches

Current snow at the stake: <1 inch

Season snowfall total: 178.4 inches

I happened to take a look outside last night between 10:00 and 11:00 P.M. and noticed that it was raining moderately, but snow was starting to mix in even down at this elevation. It was in the mid 30s F at the time, but I figured if the temperature kept coming down there might be some accumulation. That was the case this morning as the whole yard has a new white coating instead of the just the leftover spring snow areas. Mt. Washington picked up 5 inches of snow in the past 24 hours, but I haven’t seen any reports out of the local Vermont mountains yet this morning.

J.Spin

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I’ll put together some pictures later, but here’s a quick mountain weather update from this morning. With 0.8 inches of snow this morning at the house (495’), I headed up to the mountain to see how things had gone up there. At the base of the Bolton Valley access road (340’) there was just an irregular coating of snow on parts of the ground and nothing on the trees. However, only about 100-150 feet higher (elevation ~500’), as soon as I topped the first steep pitch of the road… BAM! Everything, the ground, the trees, it all turned white. It was one of the more tight snow lines I’ve seen recently. Consistent with that tight snow line, the depths of the new snow increased rapidly as I went up in elevation. I initially wasn’t sure how much snow there would be up high, but as I started seeing cars come down the access road with what looked like a half foot of snow on them, I figured that the mountain had received a good shot of the white stuff. Up at the Bolton Valley Village area (2,100’) the temperature was 29 F and I found 5 new inches on the ground at around 7:30 A.M. Then up at the mid mountain elevation (2,500’) I measured 6 inches of snow. There had been some wind up above that level, but in undisturbed areas I found about 6 to 8 inches above that point up to around 3,000’. Bolton Valley’s snow report from today says 8 new inches, so that seems pretty consistent with what I observed. The new snow was dense at those elevations, but not wet. It was probably in the 10-12% range, sort of like freshly-fallen Sierra cement stuff, and it did a nice job of covering up the old spring snow base. When I was leaving the mountain, at around 10:00 A.M. the temperature in the village was 31 F, about 34 F at the bottom of the access road, and then 39 F in Burlington. The low, tight, snow line was really cool driving through the Winooski Valley this morning, and I got a few pictures of that as well. I didn’t have a chance to see any of the local Vermont ski resort totals before I headed up early to the mountain, but here are some that I’ve seen as of this afternoon, listed north to south along the spine:

Jay Peak: 2”

Smugg’s: 6”

Stowe: 5”

Bolton: 8”

Mad River: 3”

Sugarbush: 2”

Killington: 2”

Okemo: 3”

J.Spin