Groomers FTW Today…Snow Back In The Forecast

I don’t know that anyone is truly going to miss the cold temperatures of the last two days. While not record setting, they are some of the coldest temperatures we have seen in several years. It was –9° at my house this morning, so the 13° temperatures at the base of Alpine Meadows this morning felt somewhat balmy. But with Summit back on the schedule today, the winds and the windchill did a good job or removing any excess heat from our bodies.

The grooming team wasted no effort last night smoothing out the ravages of yesterday’s east winds. Alpine Bowl was groomed super wide, as was the new Summit Direct line at the bull wheel, and Sunspot. Terry’s was all buffed as was D8 and Wolverine. So smoothness was the general rule today. Firmness was also the rule today on the upper mountain. D8 got the most votes for best snow quality this morning. A few areas looked good but were not. I sampled the wind buff off of Tower 19 and over at Solar Flare, and both were mighty crusty.

In the morning, it was actually the lower mountain that skied better. The groomers were much more pliable, with Ladies Slalom and Kangaroo Ridge getting the People’s Choice awards. Off piste, you still could not go wrong with snow conditions around Roundhouse and Yellow. Moguls are growing in some lines, but not in all places.

In the afternoon we toured Sherwood, Lakeview and Scott. The groomed terrain was firm in all of them, and the off-piste needed to be skied in more. That was not happening with so few people on the mountain today.

A Return To A Snowy Pattern?

The weather models are starting to pick up on a more snowy pattern, but there’s still some flippity floppity going on. I would not commit to your non-refundable short term vacation rental just yet. Just to note, word on the street is that as of today, Alpine Meadows has seen 325 inches of snow this season. The 50 year seasonal average for snowfall at Alpine Meadows is 357 inches. Some of the model runs today suggest we may get close to that number by Monday. Don’t count your chickens just yet as that storm is 5 days out…just touching on the realm of believability.

First we see a day of springlike weather for tomorrow. I imagine we will get some stickiness in sunny areas. If your timing is right, you should not have trouble finding fun. Thursday will see some increasing winds ahead of a nothingburger storm. Thursday night into Friday we see a dust on crust type situation. It will be the “sacrifice fly” of storms before the real one moves in around Saturday night. The latest model run of the GFS shows no snow making it to Tahoe. This one will just help knock down the ridge and moisten the atmosphere.

The bigger storm moves in Saturday night until Monday morning. The last model run of the GFS is very bullish, showing the potential for 20-30 inches of snow from that storm, as well as your typical strong winds. Never believe a singular model run! But it’s notable that the trend over the last few runs has been wetter. The Sacramento office of NOAA said in their afternoon forecast discussion that 1 to 2 feet of snow is likely. That could be a decent reset for the mountain.

So if you are traveling this weekend, both ends of the weekend will likely be a junk show. We’ll have to see if we get another weekend of traffic nightmares in Tahoe. It’s been so delightful the last two days to spend less than an hour in the car a day.

In the longer range…we still have the flip flops. Most of the model runs leave us in the “dirty ridge” position with a possibility of inside sliders next week. Other model runs keep us dry. So not a snowy pattern…just another random storm or two.

Where Is My E-Mail?

I’ve been fielding a few complaints from people that missed a post or two last week because it did not arrive in their Inbox. So again, I’ll give the gentle reminder that I view UnofficialAlpine.com as a website versus an e-mail newsletter. I can’t make promises that it will always work, so set a toolbar favorite and know that in the ski season we post just about every day.

That said, I spent a few extra hours yesterday afternoon running updates and verifying SPF records and checking the other things that make email delivery work. At one point last week, I noted that the mailserver I share with at least 100 other sites was blacklisted because somebody was sending out spam. So e-mail from UA may have ended up in your spam folder, even though they previously had not. It looks like my host has cleared up that issue now. If you find any of our posts in your spam folder, make sure to mark them as “not spam” to reduce the possibility of further failures. Honestly, you might just find it easier to enjoy our posts with a beverage each evening on the website, as the emails don’t include videos, like the one of Dottie from yesterday, or photo galleries, or other readers commentary. Yeah, if you look at the e-mails on iOS, you’re getting no pictures…even Apple engineers have no clues there.

Thanks for enjoying UnofficialAlpine.com!