Hey man, thank you! I'm always shocked at how frosty my plants get as well :D
I had to do a little googling, New York is pretty vast with wilderness and does have some higher elevations, but the city I reside in reads 380−440 ft (116−135 m) elevation according to search engine results.
Do higher elevations increase frostiness? This is something I've never really given much thought.
I always try to keep the buds as close to the lights as I can without damaging them, but I don't know if this is why. It could be a myriad of things, right down to the growing medium I'm using. It might be interesting to do a little investigating of what I am feeding them exactly. It's a bit of a cocktail and I use some slow release fertilizers that I think you've recommended against lol. I fill 20 gallon buckets up with soil, then add a handful of fertilizer pellets and a handful of bloodmeal, then a handful of crushed up eggshells, thoroughly wet it and cap it off air tight. I use a soil that is lower in nutrients for seedlings, then transplant them into the more nitrogen rich cocktail later on when I know the plants can handle the increase in nutrients. Maybe I'll make a post about it :)
Thanks always for the kind words and support man! :)