Happy Groundhog Day!
Today was a repeat of yesterday, except that as of now, both Summit and ABC are on windhold. Gusts over the crest exceeded 100 mph for much of the morning, and blew pretty consistently at 22 mph mid-mountain. For the first couple of hours of skiing my watch also reported a temperature of 22°.
If you read my post yesterday, I added interest to the morning by diversifying my routes down the mountain from Roundhouse. In honor of Groundhog Day, the movie, today I did the opposite. I put myself on repeat this morning. Each run took me down Rock Garden to Red Ridge to Ladies Slalom and then Tiegel. So I can’t report on any part of the mountain other than that.
How was it? It was fantastic until it wasn’t. The grooming was A+ and the wind had dried the snow to make for perfectly grippy corduroy. But as each run went by, more corduroy got scraped off and the wind picked it up and blew it away, leaving a firm icy surface. It really doesn’t matter how things skied today, as beginning tomorrow we begin our return to our regular spring programming. That will make skiing much more interesting.
The east winds are still going to be there tomorrow, but at roughly half the strength of today. That should get us back on the Summit chair. Temperatures should also be about 10 degrees warmer, which should allow sunny areas with southern exposures to soften a bit. By Friday, the winds are next to nothing with a high near 40°. The weekend will continue to warm, to possibly unseasonably warm by early next week.
Yesterday, there was just a bit of hopium in the forecast, with a couple of model runs trying to bring in a storm on day 16. Today, those same models said “Just kidding!” We are stuck in Groundhog Day when it comes to weather. We’re currently on day 25 of no precipitation at Alpine Meadows. It’s beginning to get close to record territory. Rob Carlmark, from ABC10 in Sacramento, published this list this morning:
That list is specifically for the Sacramento area, but is likely a reasonable match for Alpine Meadows. Rob pointed out that if the next 16 days does stay dry, we are going to be dangerously near the top of that list. Ouch. Weather West wizard Daniel Swain has started referring to the current ridge as the RRR, or Ridiculously Resilient Ridge, again. It’s dry out there. Fortunately the snow pack is barely holding on to average status for now. It’s the upcoming wildfire season that worries many of us if winter does not come back soon.
Punxsutawney Phil reportedly saw his shadow this morning at Gobbler’s Knob, leading to a forecast of 6 more weeks of winter. If you believe in the forecast ability of rodents, the snow will return. I’ll keep staring at the computer models…hopefully we won’t have to wait 22 days for a storm.