The calendar says we have one more month to go before the ’20-21 season gets underway at Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows. More employees are being called back in to work. Some are preparing the mountain to be ready for snow, either natural or from the snow guns. Others are busily making the changes required to make skiing and riding in a pandemic year a reality that just might work.
The thing that is not quite cooperating yet is Mother Nature. The current forecast remains dry through the first week of November. While there’s a well advertised blast of cold coming in over the weekend, the forecast then returns to slightly warmer conditions later in the week. Overnight lows could allow for overnight snowmaking on Sunday and Monday. But by Tuesday night, overnight temps warm again.
One thing to keep in mind is that those blasts of cold weather in the fall that allow for substantial snowmaking opportunities are often due to north and east wind events. Unless those winds are accompanied by rain and snow, we get set up for extreme fire events in California. The Tubbs fire in Santa Rosa and the Camp fire in Paradise are both powerful reminders of the power of those cold wind events. Some models for this weekend show the potential for winds to exceed some of our biggest recent fire events.
At least we have been enjoying one of the best fall color seasons in recent memory this season. Over the last few years, early hard freezes turned everything brown before we got to progress from light green to yellow to orange to bright red. Here’s my view this morning.
Winter will arrive eventually…