A California Christmas

In my family, it’s been a tradition to go skiing on Christmas Day since I was about 12 years old. It’s not a tradition I would give up any time soon. Usually it means opening presents on Christmas eve, or putting it off until after we go skiing. Spending time with family and friends skiing at our favorite mountain is maybe the best gift of all. Last year I missed out as we had a ton of family in town and a tons of snow filling our driveway. It was quite the contrast today, with temperatures reaching 54° at the base area this afternoon.

There was blue skies with little wind. There were a few Santas and several elves skiing around the mountain today. There were also people skiing and riding in tee shirts. In a few select areas of the mountain, the snow is trying hard to turn into corn snow. Unfortunately the water content of the snow is still too high and that lead to some sticky conditions where there was a lot of sun.

None of that mattered though. We were skiing with family and friends and doing an “around the world” tour delivering cookies and Christmas candy to every liftee, ski patroller and mountain host that we found. There were a lot of smiles out there today, even though many lamented their lack of wax.

Santa brought a big present. Both Sunspot and Terry’s Return got groomed last night. Having another option down for Summit, and an option to skip Rock Garden is much appreciated. Thank you Santa!

We have one more day of non stormy weather this week. Tomorrow should bring partly sunny skies with increasing winds as the day goes by. Highs should be about 10 degrees cooler than today, hopefully meaning conditions should be less sticky. It’s the first day of the Base Pass blackout period, and it’s anybody’s guess exactly how that pans out this year.

So far just about everything I have forecasted about the weather in the last week has been right on. So I’ll take a stab at this week here. We’re still looking good for getting more than one AR event this week. It’s going to start a bit wetter than we like, but it still promises to bring a lot of snow by next weekend. That’s a good thing as some areas are suddenly feeling thinner. I’ve tagged rocks on Ladies Slalom, Mountain View and Sherwood Run this week. Coverage is not as deep as you may think.

Here’s a quick overview:

• Monday: Partly sunny with increasing winds for most of the day
• Tuesday: Rain to 9000 feet with strong gusty winds probably closing most, if not, all lifts. Snow levels drop to base level by nightfall or slightly later.
• Wednesday through Saturday: Snow and heavy snow, with windy periods. Travel over 80 will likely be shut down at times. Some lift closures and delays in opening possible.

Here’s the current thinking on snow levels (Donner Pass is 7200′. The base at Alpine Meadows is about 6850′):

One thing that the latest models show is that the first AR is not quite as strong as previous runs showed. So we won’t see huge amounts of snow by Wednesday. Later in the week, that zonal jet dips way down into Southern California, so successive waves of the storm are all snow. By the end of the week, totals at Summit could again reach 5 feet or more. Yeeeewwww (just kidding)! Whether that pattern continues into the next week…we shall see.

Thank you again to every employee that showed up on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, or both, just so all of us could come out and slide on the snow today. I know for many, it is our religion and Alpine Meadows is our church.