Seasonal Change Leads To Pre-Season Prognostication

There’s a change in the air. The temperatures this week will range from the 60’s into the low 70’s over the next ten days. Most kids are now back in school. The beaches and mountain bike trails are once again blissfully quiet during the middle of the week. Many remote workers have been asked to return to the office. It’s shoulder season again in Tahoe, and we love it.

What started me thinking about writing another post for Unofficial Alpine this week was this post from the Reno office of NOAA last week. It was the obligatory post showing the first snow of the fall season, which fell at the summit of Mount Rose ski area, which is actually closer to the summit of Slide Mountain. What really tickled me was their effort at educating the public that September 1st is indeed the meteorological beginning of autumn. If you have been reading this site over the last year, I have been working on that campaign to let you all know that the various equinox and solstice dates your seventh grade Science teacher taught you are not the beginnings of seasons. Yup, it’s fall, and that means that people are starting wonder what the ski season might bring us in terms of snow conditions.

The main message you may have heard is that we are still looking at a strong El Niño for the heart of the snowy season, and those signals continue to amplify. What does that mean? It means that there is a large portion of warmer ocean waters in a particular spot of the Pacific Ocean. Blobs of warm ocean water are not always a good thing. You may remember a large blob of warm water in the Gulf of Alaska lead to the coining of the phrases “The Blob” and “Ridiculously Resilient Ridge”, or RRR for short, during the dry ’14-’15 season.

This year, that blob of warm water is set up in an area of the Pacific, that usually results in a strong southern jet stream that brings storms right into California. Most of the time this results in big snowfalls in the Sierra. But that is not always the case. Both 1987 and 1992 were strong El Niño years and they both ended up being drought years. I have said time and time again, that a slight shift of the jet stream can really have significant impacts to our weather. So what are forecasters thinking for this season?

Daniel Swain PhD, author at WeatherWest.com, is pretty much the authoritative figure when it comes to weather these days. It seems like I have been following the guy since he was a sophomore in college. Now you see him chiming in on national news outlets for just about every major weather event in the US. He did a series of posts on the former bird site last week regarding the upcoming El Niño season.

This is the pattern you typically expect during a strong El Niño year. Conditions in the Pacific Northwest could be very dry, which is the last thing they need. Also note that Northern California would possibly be on the dry side of things, and that could include the Tahoe region. But then he later noted that El Niño is not the only factor that will affect weather patterns. I am just going to grossly oversimplify here and say that could result in something more like this:

The key difference is the flow. In a typical El Niño, the flow is oriented from the NE to the SW. The model above paints a picture of a more zonal flow, W to E across the Pacific Ocean. That sort of scenarios is where we see trains of storm after storm rather than regular periods of troughs followed by ridging. So we could see a second big winter in a row.

The NOAA winter outlook takes a more broad brush approach to things, offering “equal chances” of drier than average or wetter than average conditions in California, Utah and Colorado this winter. They offer little hope for the Pacific Northwest.

Just a quick reminder of our recent past, last year was a La Niña year. Typically that results in a drier than average winter in the Sierra. We all know how that turned out. Before I can think too much about what will happen during ski season, we have to think about how things will play out over the next two months. We have enjoyed a relatively cool and wildfire free summer season this year. I keep looking ahead, hopeful for signs that rainy weather will arrive before the onset of any big fires. The fires in Maui that destroyed the town of Lahaina have already caused enough grief for this season.

What’s Happening Around Alpine Meadows?

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been to a big BBQ and then a wedding that included many Alpine Meadows employees, past and present. While I briefly talked with a few of them, it wasn’t the time to start a Q&A session to see what projects are underway.

Randy sent this photo of work under way to replace the snow making plumbing on Ladies Slalom. Anything that will improve coverage in that area will be awesome. For much of last season there was a big iceberg mid-way down that run due to a leak in the system. There was a pretty large pile of that green pipe sitting near the base of the Summit lift at the end of last season. I imagine there’s probably some other snowmaking improvements going on around the mountain.

Looking at the view from the webcam at the base of Alpine Meadows, there is a whole lot of work being done with pavers in the area of the deck expansion. Meanwhile, over at the gondola base, theoretically work has been done to complete the gondola support building, where cabins can be removed from the line and stored during storms. Both these projects ran short of time when snows arrived early last October.

Mentally I am more than ready for ski season to begin. That said, I still have work to do. Taking stock of the ski collection in our garage last week, we had 21 pairs of skis in our ski corral. We off loaded a number of those with serious core shots or decambering. I have five different sets to prep and list for sale. I have one new pair to get mounted with bindings and one that needs serious reconditioning after a long spring and summer ski season.

I’ve already watch some ski movie trailers. My social feeds are starting to focus back to skiing instead of bike riding and camping. We are now 77 days from the scheduled opening day at Palisades Tahoe, which theoretically would include Alpine Meadows. We’re 66 days away from the scheduled opening of Mammoth Mountain.

After writing all of the above yesterday, I had my first ski dream of the fall season. I can remember it vividly. The new snowmaking upgrades allowed for the earliest opening of Alpine Meadows ever. We were skiing top to bottom on a wide WROD in the October sun. Palisades Tahoe COO Dee Byrne and mountain manager Jeff Goldstone were at the top of Summit handing out free beer to celebrate the opening. A guy can dream, can’t he?