Will The Storm Door Open?

We skied the afternoon shift at Alpine Meadows today, having had a previous commitment for the morning. Rolling into the parking lot at noon, there were more cars than I expected, but it seems to have had everything to do with the high school snowboard race today. For the most part the mountain was relatively empty. One employee summed it up as “Thankfully the mayhem is over”.

That’s the last of the big holiday periods for this season…from this point forward, there are some scattered college breaks and a storm cycle or two that will make for some busier days. But this is also the time where kids start Little League and people start thinking more about mountain biking. Will we make it to an Easter crowd this year? Who knows…

While I missed the morning corduroy session, the afternoon snow was delightfully soft and skiable, with just a few areas feeling super sticky by 2 pm. I did not get over to Sherwood but the corn is now pretty well ripe at Scott. It’s not the sweetest corn ever just yet. It’s more like the corn you buy at the supermarket that sat in cold storage for a month, versus the fresh picked out of the field sweet corn you would find at a farm stand. Give it another day or two to fully ripen. Of course that looks like all of the time we have before we head back to another winter cycle.

Tomorrow promises to be another warm springlike day, actually being the first day of meteorological spring. Wednesday will also be warmish, with a southwest wind coming in ahead of the front.

Thursday is still a bit unpredictable. This storm is not the inside slider type that we have been seeing. A strong atmospheric river is currently flowing into Oregon and Washington, and is forecast to sag into Northern California Thursday. As we sit on the southern edge of that flow, the storm will come in a bit warmer, cooling as the front passes. It’s more likely that we will see more typical sierra cement rather than the champagne powder of the last two storms. Snow levels seem to be forecast around 5-6k feet rather than 2k feet.

The morning models showed the possibility for around a foot of snow. The afternoon runs don’t seem so certain, showing a possibility of the front stalling and developing some negative tilt…that generally leads to splitting. That’s a trend to watch. Forecasting AR events is just as difficult as forecasting an inside slider. Why can’t we just get a typical Gulf of Alaska low?

We’ve been highlighting that the PNA Index is looking negative through mid-March and that is a good sign. Over the last few days, the MJO has not moved from Phase 3 to Phase 4. Instead it seems to be moving to Phase 0, where it’s really not active at all. So that won’t be a helpful forecast sign. The long range models do show some storms lined up after Thursday, first an inside slider and then a couple of more after that. The huge caveat is that a model run is not a forecast. There are a half dozen models that most weather dweebs follow, and most of those have 4 runs a day of output. The thing to look for is run to run consistency and agreement between the models. We’re not quite there yet, but it is hopeful to see some things in the possibility stage.