It’s now official. Plans for a November 24th opening at either Alpine Meadows or Olympic Valley have now been scrapped by Palisades Tahoe. I had to stop looking at the weather models for a week, as there was just nothing happening that meant we could start skiing. It’s been nothing but dry and relatively warm. Here’s the announcement made minutes ago:
As an avid skier, this is disappointing. Being mostly retired and local, it’s not that big of a deal for me. I can just plan some new activities. I’m actually going to get our camper van back out of winter storage this week. For those that planned their Thanksgiving vacation in Tahoe, and especially for those that are waiting to start their seasonal jobs at a local mountain, this is bad news.
I can remember back to the some of the bigger drought years, as a kid, where we headed north to Oregon for Thanksgiving or Christmas. This year, just about everyone is hurting, with little skiing being done on anything but manmade snow. Mammoth continues to be the only game in California, Oregon and Nevada. Much of Utah is also struggling.
The little storm system for this week hit a wall today, leaving nothing more than a chance of showers overnight. No accumulation is expected at Alpine Meadows. It looks like the inversion will mix out and we start getting temperatures that would allow at least a few hours of snowmaking each night, but that doesn’t really start adding up until we get one of those arctic blasts that allows for 24 hours a day of snowmaking for several days running.
The models have started showing some signs of life in “Fantasyland”, way out near the end of the 16 day range. Things were looking really good for several models runs over the last few days, then the 18Z run crushed some dreams today. Hopefully the idea of a big storm becomes more of a reality and makes it into the 7 day “could happen” window.
So keep bike riding and enjoying other activities for now…skiing will get here eventually.
Thanks for your posts keeping us updated on conditions, etc.