The chill arrived today and it was okay. Actually, it was good, unless you were intent on skiing off piste this morning. The groomed runs were excellent again. You know they were good because many of the Squaw regulars have been showing up at Alpine lately.
One thing that surprised many today was the lack of wind. Summit, nor any other lift, started the day on windhold. ABC and Yellow were off the schedule today. That makes sense with fewer people on the mountain this week and heading into the latter part of the season.
There was also no specific COVID patrol out today and the lift ops were trying out the most unusual configuration for the corral at Summit. It sent two lanes of traffic around a central octagon. It looks like the goal was to create a smooth merge without a line control person. Personally, I think Captain Dan was missing an opportunity to set up a quick pickup hot dog stand at the center of the octagon.
The cornfields were slow to soften today, roughly 60-90 minutes later than usual. Once that corn loosened up, there was perfect corn to enjoy off of Sherwood, Scott and Lakeview (in that order). My guess is that the off piste terrain eventually loosened up later in the day as well. A more regular spring schedule will resume tomorrow and Friday, with temperatures about 5-7 degrees warmer than today. That chance of snow for Saturday has evaporated, but we will see cooler temps for Saturday.
There finally is some possible storm activity within the one week horizon. Not all of the models are in agreement on that. The GFS is more bullish than the Canadian or the Euro. The GFS sees a cutoff low moving in from the south as early as next Thursday. That one could come in kind of warm. A second storm takes a more northerly track about 9 days out. The Canadian and the Euro aren’t really jiving with that solution at all. It does give us some “hopium”, a term I’ve seen lately in the Weather West blog comments. We’ll keep watching, as winter should not end yet.