Patience Rewarded

For all practical purposes, the first two hours of the day was a test of your love for skiing. High winds caused wind holds on everything but TLC, Meadow, Subway and the Big Carpet. Fortunately, a good number of people chose to end their vacation early and not go skiing today. The parking lots did not fill. That said, the line at TLC was possibly the biggest I have seen yet this season. How long was it? At one point you could walk out of the breezeway and step off the deck, and be standing in the singles line for TLC.

We took our first ride on TLC this morning and made it more worthwhile by doing a super traverse to something that seemed like fresh snow with some pitch. After that, we went around the world riding each of the other lifts. Meadow and Subway were rocking in the wind this morning. We even did a quick ride on the Big Carpet, where Scotty was bumping the tunes on a string of JBL speakers. It made me smile the whole way up.

We pondered what to do next and it turned out to be enjoying a Treats breakfast and a ski waxing session.  We also saw that Roundhouse was spinning up. That was the real start of the day. There was four inches or so of new snow overnight, and it was slightly less dense in Deer Camp. As it turned out, there was a lot of fun snow off of Roundhouse if you knew where to look. Today that was anything in the area of Ladies Slalom and Yellow chairline. As a bonus, with Yellow chair not spinning, few other people caught on to that detail. Instead, they went off to Kangaroo and Sherwood which opened around noon. We took a ride over to Sherwood, but immediately decided to skip it after seeing the line from the top. We instead headed back to Roundhouse, which was pretty empty by that point.

So no, I was not skiing every minute of the day, but it sure turned out better than I expected. I think I had a better day than those that left after a run or two and went home. When I came back to Truckee this afternoon, it was refreshingly quiet after a three week holiday. Safeway was nearly empty and I could drive down Donner Pass Road without stopping for a pedestrian crossing the road, or a car backing out of a parking space. We should have four more days of relative quiet before the next holiday rolls in next weekend.

It’s Going To Be A Big Storm But Not The Super Storm

Fortunately, the grandaddy of all storms that we have been watching for Monday and Tuesday has been somewhat downgraded in impacts. Over the weekend storms we saw the same. All though we did see some snow and a lot of wind, the biggest impacts were in the coastal areas of California. In a quick summary, here’s how things have changed for the next two days: the overall amount of moisture has been reduced to a more normal size, and snow levels will not rise as much as previously expected. The largest push of the storm is headed south of us, and that also puts us into the colder air.

Update: Monday morning and it looks like rain to mid mountain. So the auto forecast below is not correct 

As of now, it looks like Alpine Meadows will see all snow, although it may be a bit wet and heavy tomorrow with snow levels running about 6500 to 7000 feet. By Tuesday they lower to about 5000 feet, which will bring us a little higher quality snow.

The models this afternoon suggest that 4-5 feet of snow is possible by Wednesday. That is still a whopper of a storm, but it’s a far better forecast than the 20 feet of snow that models were suggesting could happen. Winds are still going to be very problematic, with your typical 100+ mph ridge winds expected tonight and through Monday.

Skiing tomorrow, Monday, is likely going to be very limited again. It probably won’t be like the last two days, where the afternoons turned sunny. We’ve seen more stormy days in the last month than fair weather days and although it may be a drag to miss some skiing – it’s a bit more of a drag for those mountain ops people and ski patrollers that have been dealing with resetting the mountain and making it safe for all so much over the last month. Snow continues into Tuesday, but there should be less wind. That may allow for more lifts to open.

Wednesday has the best chance of being the closest to fair weather this week. Another system with mixed precipitation moves in by Thursday, and more snow over the MLK weekend. The snow will continue…if anything some of the teleconnection signals get stronger as we get into mid January with an active MJO pattern ready to add moisture into the flow. Hopefully this is all setting us up for a very long season of skiing. I’m coming up on day 50 of the season this week. I might just exceed my personal best.