Just got home from work and was surprised to find 6 fresh inches of snow on the ground with it coming down so hard visibility is down to about 1 town block.

The last storm and all of the rain yesterday was a bit of a disappointment, but maybe this storm will end up being a pleasant surprise!!

heck, the rain on the snow that was there just made for a good base for the new stuff, something that didnt exist in canaan last year! i think its appropriate to now say, holy crap this is off the hook for it to be still fall!

Over 10" now and still coming down hard. This isn't the super fluffy stuff that we normally get so it probably won't compact as much as normal. Still drifting like crazy because the wind is going nuts.

Dave's Weather Site is reporting close to 9" of snow at 7 pm... and they are still calling for 4-8" more overnight! Man - I wish I could skip out of work tomorrow and head back over to Whitegrass for another dose of fresh POW... hmmmm come to think of it... I feel like I might be getting a stomach bug

It's almost too good to believe, but I think I can actually pull off playing hookie from work tomorrow and heading to Whitegrass for a POW day! After many missed chances the stars are aligning for me tomorrow and I'll start the season with some WV fresh. Just gotta decide whether to tele or snowshoe-and-board. Or both! Whooooooo!

Dang, it sure is coming down here too. I was in the woods for a few hours today and watched everything go from wet and ugly to white and beautiful. It was a nice afternoon/evening to be outside. Now I get on here and hear about all of this snow that the Valley is getting and it just makes me want to go skiing! Oh well, I am going to make it. Tomorrow is my 2nd to last day stocking the shelves at 4 in morning at Target and I graduation is still scheduled for the 20th. Just a little bit longer.....

David,
What are you doing after graduation. I vaguely remember mention of med school?
The Colonel

Ended up with over 14". Not bad at all.

Yeah, med school. As for right after graduation though.. I will be skiing. I got in on a cool house deal right outside the Valley and I am going to teach at Timberline on the weekends. Hopefully I'll get a lot of midweek days in this year!


You ain't kidding!!

Any idea of internship location after med school?

Not yet. I am hoping to get away though. I am actually working on getting a scholarship through the Air Force where they pay all tuition and everything else, plus a monthly stipend, for 4 years in return service on my part. If I get it I can do residency at a hand full of Air Force bases or in just any program throughout the country that I get into.

That would be awesome. You get a lot of experience in a short time in the military, especially in these times of combat. And you could also become a flight surgeon (of course I have to make a pitch for that) and you get to fly, as well as get into the world of aerospace medicine which is soooo different from the rest. Best wishes on getting something with the military. And ski lots and lots....

Looks like its snowing again in the highlands... I wonder how much Canaan Valley will pick up this week?

Looking at the web cam it looks like Ullr is kind of upset about the rain that he let slip through the past few days. I hope he gets mad...... real mad

this is probably the best possible set up for a ski season. Early season snow then rain then snow then rain with the rain always immediately followed by sub freezing temps is perfect. Builds a thick hearty base that should last all year. Canaan and t-line should have a great base on even the non snowmaking runs after this weeek with a thick base with plenty of powder on top. If we just had snow followed by now without any periods of warm temps or rain then the base would probably not last long whenever a thaw comes, but the base we are currently building should survive even an extended period of warm temps.

Heck even the base that is not on the slopes but all around the area will be tough to melt -- 5-6" of cement plus all the snow on the way.

probably more than 5-6" by now if i had to guess, whitegrass still reporting over 10 in most areas... could be 80 for 3 days before that melts all the way!

Anyone make the drive up to Canaan on Tuesday night in the storm? Wow, that was one of the toughest drives to Canaan I've had in 7 winters. It was snowing hard from Petersburg all the way in. I think it took me an hour to make the last 20 or so miles from Seneca Rocks to Timberline.

Normally, West VA blows VA away when it comes to plowing the roads. Usually they have plows working both sides of the Allegheny Mountain pass on 33, and more plows working 32 from Harman up to Canaan. Tuesday, I saw one plow all night - where there was no snow. One of the guards at the Timberline gatehouse told me that there was only one operable plow truck at the Harman depot. Any idea what gives?

I hope this is just a case of the West VA DOT getting caught out by the early snows - and not a sign of state budget pressures taking a toll on road maintenance. If it keeps snowing like it has been, there could be some tough drives on white roads this winter.

Tom

according to the canaan weather guru: "Total snowfall this month so far makes it the second snowiest November in the past 64 years, based on Canaan Valley's official observations. The most snow ever in November was 55 inches in 1995"

ill take it... and i kinda like the 1995 analog!

Don't say that!!!



I heard on the radio last week that many areas that are normally salted are not going to be this year. They were saying that the price of salt is up so bad that the DOH can't afford a lot. I'm sure that will also contribute to lack of funds to pay drivers and such..

David - That is actually fact that the WVDOT has purchased far LESS salt this year than in years past. Strictly due to the cost of salt. I'm not sure what is driving the cost up, but in order to spread out the salt all winter, the state is lowering the ratio of mixture of salt and cinders.

Salting roads is stupid. I doesn't work. It often turns dry snow into something like grease which is much worse and it is bad for the environment as well as expensive. Where I come from (and admittedly a long time ago) they did a good job of plowing and then spread sand, Sand or cinders for traction is a lot better than salt. In the spring street sweepers picked up the excess sand so it wouldn't clog storm sewers. In N VA they are under the impression that they can salt away 6" of snow. It ain't gonna happen.

I agree, Denis. VDOT has this thing about salting instead of plowing when it's getting bad. The worst white knuckle drive I ever had was comming over Shennadoah Mountain on Rt 33 during a heavy dump. WV had their side plowed and sanded. VA had been running the trucks with blades up, salting. The VA side has windy banked turns that if you slow down too much causes you to slide to the inside of the turn as well as down the mountain. Kind of like skiing a double fall line on boiler-plate. Baaaad news.

Shoot, I saw more cinders on the road my last two trips to Snowshoe than I remember in the past. In fact, my car is clogged with them -- I can hear them rattling around in the disc brake shields when I go in reverse. I was sort of hoping to hose off my car this weekend, and it will surely result in a pile of cinders in my driveway. Last year, a similar hose off resulted in several shovel-fulls of the stuff. I wonder just how much of that migrates from WV to other states.

Actually the salting of the roads works, when it's made part of a pre-treatment AND treatment after the roads have been scraped down to the point of fractions of inches of precip left behind.

A perfect example of this from 2-3 weeks ago when we had the first snow here in Hardy Co. When I left for Winchester at 7am the Hardy and Hampshire county roads were wet, but 100% clear. Not even ice on the bridges on Corridor H which was my largest fear. The roads had been iced and pre-treated all night before the inch and half of snow came through so when the snow and rain hit the pavement, it instantly melted or stayed water from the salt and chemical mixture.

However on 259 when I crossed from Hampshire Co to Fredrick CO VA things got bad and got bad fast. Going down that slight hill around 55mph (roads even looked clear) I started feeling some wiggling in the car and new this road was covered in ice. Thankfully by letting off the gas and gradually slowing I managed to slow down with out a major incidient even if I felt a few fishtails coming on.

However With seeing 3 wrecks in a 3 mile stretch and about 2.5 mi backup of cars because they were afraid to go faster than 1mph down the last stretch of 8% grade hill where 259 meets Rt 50 showed that the VA trucks hadn't done a thing. In fact there was a VADOT truck behind me that morning spreading cinders and some salt but obviously was too little too late.

While salt won't melt away 6" of snow, when doing the pre-treating it's been a lifesaver up here without a doubt.

I drive every day from Davis to Oakland for work and I prefer the snowcovered roads to the chemically treated roads in Maryland. I just have to drive more slowly on the snow covered roads, whereas the treated roads cause a big mess with kickback and you are constantly using your wiper fluid and the car becomes a big mess.

Hoping for more snowcovered roads soon!!

One more thing about using salt. It does attract more deer (as if we needed that).

Snow covered roads are great... as long as you don't live in an area prone to frequent freeze/thaw cycles. When all you have is snow and it's not melting, you can almost drive the speed limit. In CO they add sand or gravel (not much, just a little), and the result is a surprisingly easy surface to go around on, you just need to take it easy on the curves and stopping.

But when you get freeze/thaw cycles a lot, untreated snow becomes ice and slush very quickly, which makes driving miserable. Further, if ground/road temperatures are above freezing, you get this great base layer of water that freezes and makes things even worse. On top of that, places with heavy volume traffic will see the nice, loose snow become hard packed really quickly, if not rutted out with "snotholes" (snow potholes).

One thing I've come to conclude, having now driven in snow out west, back east, and down south, is that ONE reason (not the only reason, but an important one that no one thinks too much about) that southern drivers are so bad in the snow is because the iciness of the roads is far greater there than it is in many other places.

So driving in Western MD with no salt might be okay because you can get 1, 2, 3 weeks of sub-freezing weather that keeps the roads in good shape. That's just not the case in most metro areas in the east though (maybe Boston). Plus the traffic is not as heavy out there as it is on, say, the Beltway or I-66.