Well…it was a great run over the last few days, with seemingly endless powder turns. Today was significantly different, as the ridge pushed the colder air to our east, bringing a wetter “mixed precipitation” to Alpine Meadows. I checked the Remote Data site at NOAA as soon as my eyes opened this morning and saw that 2 inches had accumulated at the base. Two hours later, it still said the same, even though the web cam showed that something was falling out of the sky.
So cream cheese was the main course this morning at Alpine Meadows. A lot of things fell into place for me. I happened to bring my skis home over night for a good hot wax, and I remembered to wear my most waterproof ski pants. Doing those two things alone meant that I can say that the skiing was actually quite fun this morning.
When the cream cheese gets too thick, it can build into moguls pretty quickly. That was not the case today. Just enough cream cheese coated the groomed slopes to provide for silky turns on every run. Off piste was quite a bit more variable. We gave it a go on Chicken Leg and on Gunners Knob. One moment you felt pretty good, and a second later one ski would be dragging behind as you found some snow with a higher water content.
After two hours, our gloves were like sponges. I declared that my day 84, out of 84 days in Alpine Meadows season, was over. In the back of my mind, I was ready to come back out if the upper mountain opened. But the winds did persist, and those lifts were taken off the schedule.
Looking at tomorrow, the temperatures stay cold, and a north wind will blow. Hopefully that will mean we’ll see some wind buff conditions up top for tomorrow. Temperatures will remain cold for Wednesday.
There’s another storm in the system for Friday and it is another tough forecast. As of today, five days out, the GFS shows the potential for just over a foot of snow. The Euro and Canadian are less bullish. In this series of storms the GFS came closest in predicting storm totals. Looking at the models, as of now, there is again little cold air support, with more of a zonal flow. We may see snow levels running a bit higher than we like, so let’s keep an eye on that.