2024: Less snow than normal

[skiguy]

Don't disagree. However, ski areas do the most reporting of snow totals so when you look for how much snow has fallen, only the ski areas come up. I could've eventually likely found something else, but I'm not doing research for a paper...just musing on the internet.

To add, it was percentages of fallen vs. a normal year, so if one assumes they pad their totals, both of the amounts (average and so far this year) would both be padded, so the number would still be relevant.

Ski areas donot even come close to correct measuring points. If your just musing then I suggest your probably geeting an educated guess of the correct amounts. In support of the OP there is better data out there.https://www.weather.gov/source/crh/snowmap.html

Not sure how many ski areas you have been to with the above list cited. I have skied all those areas multiple times and with those areas have seen geometric differences from near local towns to the summit of the mountains listed. I would not call ski areas an objective source.

 

[maineguy]

https://www.weather.gov/btv/historicalsnow

 

[skiguy]

https://www.weather.gov/btv/historicalsnow

Now we are talking. Thanks for posting.

 

[JoshandBaron]

These are all the numbers for avg annual snowfall that I've found for Jay, several different ones from Jay themselves:
150-200
251
322
347
356
359
377

The consensus on the interwebs seems to be that Jay is among the worst for inflating their numbers.

 

[helmethiker]

Don't disagree. However, ski areas do the most reporting of snow totals so when you look for how much snow has fallen, only the ski areas come up. I could've eventually likely found something else, but I'm not doing research for a paper...just musing on the internet.

To add, it was percentages of fallen vs. a normal year, so if one assumes they pad their totals, both of the amounts (average and so far this year) would both be padded, so the number would still be relevant.

It depends on whether they pad the totals or invent the totals. Or if the totals somehow include their manmade snow, which is neither but as useless as the invention for any correlation with natural snowfall change from seasons past to seasons present. It would only be useful if it is actual padding.

 

[Dr. Dasypodidae]

I have not recently chimed in on the snowfall discussion, but I think that we may be comparing apples and oranges here. The snowfall data like that reported at the Burlington, VT, NOAA site are from hourly measurements in a large calibrated can with flaps around the top edge that are then summed for daily, weekly, monthly, and annual totals. The hourly snow catch is then melted down for measurement of snow water equivalent (SWE) that allows calculation of snow density, especially useful for mixed precipitation events. The Mount Washington Observatory makes the same hourly measurements, although the snow catch in their can near the deck is subject to strong winds that blow some unknown percentage of the snowfall into the ravines, despite these cans having flaps around the top edge whose purpose is to dampen the wind flow across the top of the can.

For convenience, ski areas report snow depth accumulation based on stake measurements in shielded locations from the wind but not shielded by overhanging conifer limbs, which is tricky to get right. The USFS and MWAC make their snow depth measurements from a stake near the leach field downslope from their cabin in Tuckerman Ravine, an open area surrounded by trees that create a partial wind break.

Theoretically, snow stake cumulative measurements will be less than hourly measurements in cans because of settling of the snowpack even over short time increments during a storm (apples and oranges).

At the USFS Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest (HBEF) in West Thornton, N.H. (where acid rain was first discovered in the Northeast), besides the standardized snow can measurements, bi-weekly measurements are also made with a threaded T6100 aluminum snow tube, 2” in diameter, with cutting teeth at the bottom to ensure penetration into the bare ground beneath the snowpack for each measurement. These measurements require snowshoeing a course with multiple sites at different elevations and exposures (east, west, etc), a daylong adventure throughout the winter and spring. During one winter when in college, I worked at HBEF a couple days per week and was extremely envious of those making the snow course measurements. The snow tube was carried with a strap over one shoulder, along with a heavy-duty spring balance to weigh the tube and its snow content at each site, which allowed for a quick calculation of average snow density of the snowpack (i.e., the snow samples were not melted down to determine SWE).

Just more to keep in mind when comparing snowfall measurements between ski areas and NOAA sites.

Edit: Just talking over lunch today with a friend who was on ski patrol for a couple decades at Loon Mountain where they measured the snow depth at a stake in a sheltered spot twice per day, early morning and late afternoon.

 

[dug]

https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/boston-total-snowfall-this-winter/3636399/

"In Burlington, Vermont, for example, there's been 60.9 inches of snowfall so far this season. That surpasses the norm of 59.1 inches for that city, and almost doubles last year's 34.9 inches of snow during the same period."

I wouldn't dare make a comment beyond what is written in the article....

 

[dave.m]

A perspective from a Christian socialist scientist...

I grew up surrounded by people convinced the Earth was 6500 years old due to their literal interpretation of the ages and genealogies in the Bible. It would be easy to dismiss these people as stupid or ignorant but that doesn't explain my uncle, who holds a PhD in chemistry from Princeton. Something deeper going on.

The short version of this rant is that as we think about rebuilding our democracy, we will need to think hard about how we build democratically managed information infrastructures that allow us to collectively make better decisions. These include elections, news, lobbying, and advertising. If these can't be managed, we can't maintain a democratic republic.

Longer version... I try to think of our behavior as herd behaviors. Talking about a single person's views or actions is like talking about a single cow's or deer. Or that of a single bee in the hive, fish in the school, etc.

How we create, take in, process and understand information is first and foremost a social process. Which is to say, when we're discussing or debating science and its implications with others, we aren't merely talking to a single rational individual as Descartes might have us think, but rather to an individual that is operating with strong evolutionary cognitive abilities shaped primarily by the need to exist in a tribe or group in the context of larger competing informational infrastructures. IMO, we should spend less time trying convince individuals and more time thinking about how to regain some semblance of democratic control over these infrastructures.

In my lifetime, we've seen the destruction of oversight of the media (Reagan and Cllinton's destruction of the Fairness Doctrine), the legitimation of bribery and corruption by the wealthy (Citizen's United), and the rise of radically new communication and sense making tools (the internet, social media, and AI).

The US is not alone with these changes. Globally speaking, there is a move to the right which can't be explained by the idea that too many individual people are ignorant or uneducated. Better to say that the human species is swimming in fish bowl full of toxic informational water. We would be better served to be thinking about how to change the water so that we can flourish together.

I don't have any near-term hope for those of living the core of our decaying empire. IMO, we've let our democratic organizational muscle atrophy. In my religious circles, you often hear about the need to teach people "how to do church", which means things like paying tithes, maintaining the facilities, serving on boards, engaging with denominations/conferences, running Sunday schools and so on. In a similar manner, we've forgotten how to organize and mobilize. Democracy has been hollowed out to mean nothing more than voting and that is an insufficient understanding of it.

I've concluded that the best and only way for us to fight global warming and all of the other horrors facing us is to turn my attention to local organizing. Unionize the work place, establish tenant unions, join a socialist organization. Yes, these things fall short of addressing global warming. But they help get democratic juices flowing again. They begin to open up the imagination needed to evolve our system to the next stage.

Let me be clear. I accept that significant climate change is baked in, that countless millions of humans will be displaced, that metrics for human thriving (hunger, infant mortality rates, life expectancy) will go backwards and that governments will fall and their constitutions rewritten. This is all a part of the bumpy evolutionary path of the human. The question is, what will come next. For the next thing to be just, durable and democratic, we collectively will need to internalize what that looks and feels like.

 

[skiguy]

I have not recently chimed in on the snowfall discussion, but I think that we may be comparing apples and oranges here. The snowfall data like that reported at the Burlington, VT, NOAA site are from hourly measurements in a large calibrated can with flaps around the top edge that are then summed for daily, weekly, monthly, and annual totals. The hourly snow catch is then melted down for measurement of snow water equivalent (SWE) that allows calculation of snow density, especially useful for mixed precipitation events. The Mount Washington Observatory makes the same hourly measurements, although the snow catch in their can near the deck is subject to strong winds that blow some unknown percentage of the snowfall into the ravines, despite these cans having flaps around the top edge whose purpose is to dampen the wind flow across the top of the can.

For convenience, ski areas report snow depth accumulation based on stake measurements in shielded locations from the wind but not shielded by overhanging conifer limbs, which is tricky to get right. The USFS and MWAC make their snow depth measurements from a stake near the leach field downslope from their cabin in Tuckerman Ravine, an open area surrounded by trees that create a partial wind break.

Theoretically, snow stake cumulative measurements will be less than hourly measurements in cans because of settling of the snowpack even over short time increments during a storm (apples and oranges).

At the USFS Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest (HBEF) in West Thornton, N.H. (where acid rain was first discovered in the Northeast), besides the standardized snow can measurements, bi-weekly measurements are also made with a threaded T6100 aluminum snow tube, 2” in diameter, with cutting teeth at the bottom to ensure penetration into the bare ground beneath the snowpack for each measurement. These measurements require snowshoeing a course with multiple sites at different elevations and exposures (east, west, etc), a daylong adventure throughout the winter and spring. During one winter when in college, I worked at HBEF a couple days per week and was extremely envious of those making the snow course measurements. The snow tube was carried with a strap over one shoulder, along with a heavy-duty spring balance to weigh the tube and its snow content at each site, which allowed for a quick calculation of average snow density of the snowpack (i.e., the snow samples were not melted down to determine SWE).

Just more to keep in mind when comparing snowfall measurements between ski areas and NOAA sites.

Edit: Just talking over lunch today with a friend who was on ski patrol for a couple decades at Loon Mountain where they measured the snow depth at a stake in a sheltered spot twice per day, early morning and late afternoon.

Interesting post. Seems as though what you're saying is that we are trying to play the same game with different balls. Where in does go the calibration to come up with non basis results that are not tainted from the others.