This is not the way we expected this storm to turn out. This second round of snow was supposed to be colder than the first, bringing us champagne powder. Instead, this wave came in quite warm. So today was a “snain” day at best. That said, it is definitely one of the better snain days that I have skied.
Temperatures hovered in the mid 30’s for much of the day. Sometimes the stuff falling out of the sky looked like snow, and at other times it looked like rain. As long as your clothing could handle the dampness, I found the skiing to be enjoyable. Everything was soft and with the exception of Weasel and Dance Floor, it was easy to be away from people.
Sometime around 1:30 the snow started getting a bit soggier as it soaked up rain. That caused the snow to get more grabby, particularly in ungroomed areas. In the interest of knee preservation, we called it a day.
On piste, the coverage is still quite good. Off piste, you should be in rock skis. One of my friends is famous for saying all skis are rock skis. I only had my powder skis at Alpine today and that was a mistake. Still I found some lightly moguled ungroomed terrain on Charity, the upper end of Kangaroo Ridge, Red Ridge and Skadi Hill that were velvety soft. I managed to only lightly tap one rock today, but I have also skied this mountain a lot, including each day this season. Hopefully the powder skis will be more appropriate tomorrow.
So what happened to this storm? It’s all about the jet stream.
For storm number one, the jet stream was essentially passing directly over Tahoe, resulting in a cold but not super cold system, with high winds. The expectation was that the jet stream would sink southward for the second storm. Typically all of the cold air in a storm is on the north side of the jet stream, so as the stream moves south, storms end with colder air.
This time, the jet stream moved northward, leaving us on the warmer side of the jet. That resulted in higher temperatures, less snow and more rain. The cold air should reach us tonight, and we should still get a decent shot of snow tonight and tomorrow. My fingers are crossed. We could still see 20 inches of new snow by Monday morning.
So tomorrow should be a powder day again…hopefully. Hopefully it will go smoother than yesterday. Somehow, over at Palisades, most lifts opened late yesterday. That sent some huge numbers of people to Alpine, as it turns out that people do not want to ski a magic carpet and First Venture on a 20″ powder day. The official operations blog explained that somehow they were caught off guard and did not realize that the lifts would freeze overnight.
We are fortunate that the mountain ops team at Alpine Meadows knew what was up, as always. All lifts opened on time or early yesterday. Kudos to the mountain ops team. Just noting that it did rain today and will freeze again overnight. đŸ™‚
I wanted to highlight a comment made by a reader yesterday:
Imagine if there was still competition between Alpine and Palisades…would Palisades have fewer days where they seem to be caught with their pants down and completely unready for opening after a storm. Imagine how different it would have been at Alpine if Palisdaes opened with 5 lifts on time. – Posted by Imagineer
I’ve also mentioned this before. Maybe the “powers that be” should consider making teams at the two mountains more competitive. It could improve the customer experience greatly if teams were rewarded for getting the most terrain and lifts open more quickly. This is how most agencies and businesses make teams more effective. That said, maybe they don’t have to worry about customer satisfaction when they are already selling more and more passes each season.
Here’s to hoping we have a powder day tomorrow with all scheduled lifts opening on time on both sides of the ridge. See you out there…
Curious about cell coverage…
Im an AT&T subscriber. There was no cell coverage at all today. I overheard someone saying there is no electrical power to Summit and that, therefore, cell tower on the mountain does not work. Same source suggested that this might be a regular thing–no cell coverage for many, many people. Has anyone else heard anything?
Aww man! I was meaning to include this in today’s report. There is still a power outage at the top of Summit. That means there is no Remote Data sensor there for NOAA and…as many have discovered…there is no ATT coverage at Alpine Meadows at this time. Consequently the WiFi at Alpine was also overloaded at Alpine the last few days. Whether or not this is something that impacts the operation of the Summit lift, I am unsure. I saw the lift spin the other day so it can run, but I am nit sure what it took to make that happen. That this power situation has not been fixed yet is alarming…but that may have something to do with access to the upper mountain is limited right now until roads are rebuilt.
Saw that Palisades snuck in the opening of Siberia and Shirley today. Awesome for those that were there. Sunday at Palisades is likely a better choice than Alpine.
It is 10:50. I’m at the Chalet condos — 7,000 vert ft. It is still raining. Fingers crossed.
I had to stop looking at the remote sensors… đŸ˜¢