The Forecasts Are Beginning To Agree

It’s been a difficult season for forecasting snowfall in the Sierra. We often talk about here how the last half of the 16 day model range is “Fantasyland”, where you really can’t count on much being for certain. During this early portion of winter, Fantasyland has been redefined as anything more than 3 to 5 days out. Professional and amateur weather forecaster alike have been calling for some sort of major pattern change, and the beginning of that event is now in the 5 day window. Still forecasters are still couching everything with a lot of double speak. One forecast discussion author yesterday just came out and essentially said “we have no idea how this is going to turn out.”

Then there is popular local forecaster Bryan Allegretto of OpenSnow.com, who posted a report today titled “Zero to 100…” I have never had a subscription to Open Snow, nor any other weather blogger, so I can’t say for sure what he actually meant. It could be that there could be anywhere from zero to 100 inches of snowfall next week. It could be that mountains will go from 0% operations to 100% operations by the time we are done with the upcoming storm cycle. The most likely thought is that there is somewhere between a 0% to 100% chance of snow next week.

I’m starting to become a believer in the pattern change though. In my last post three days ago, I cautioned that a simple extension of the jet stream across the Pacific Ocean was no guarantee that we would see snowfall. But things are looking different at the moment. Rather than looking like a zonal flow, the models are picking up on Rossby waves, which is a fancy way of saying it’s getting entwined in low and high pressure systems, and that keeps them moving along, rather than stagnating in the Pacific. Here is Daniel Swain PhD tweet on that today:

Twitter cannot die soon enough. You can no longer embed tweets on posts anymore without paying money to a mad man. The workaround was to do a screen recording to create a MOV file, then use an online convertor to create this GIF.

Swain brings up a very important thing here. We are going to be seeing some snow level swings as things progress. Some snow levels are going to be higher than we like, especially at first. It is NOT going to be a big “powder day” type system. This is going to look more like spackle and that is exactly what we need to cover up the very rocky terrain that is Alpine Meadows. Eventually, we should see snow levels get lower, but “champagne powder” is not typical for El Niño winters. Yes, we saw a lot of it last year. Last year was a La Niña year. Here’s more on snow levels from The NOAA Sacramento office today:

EXTENDED DISCUSSION (Sunday THROUGH Wednesday)… Ensembles and clusters are converging on a wet pattern for late this weekend into Wednesday as a aeries of Pacific storms move through. Confidence is high in the shift to a wet pattern with periods of light to moderate rain, high mountain snow, and gusty winds. This is a relatively warm system, with snow levels expected to be at or above 6500 feet Sunday into Tuesday, lowering to 5500 to 6500 feet on Wednesday. Snowfall impacts are expected to be limited, largely around Sierra pass levels, where travel delays are possible. Projected storm total rainfall through midweek has been trending upward, around 1.25″ to 2.5″ inches in the Central Valley and 2.5″ to 7″ inches in the foothills/mountains.

It’s this convergence of the ensembles that is leading to forecast confidence. Over the last week, there has been very little run to run consistency with any of the models. One run would show 80 inches of snow and the very next run would show 0 inches of snow. Lather, rinse, repeat. Yesterday, I started seeing the models shaping up, with several runs in a row calling for a big dump. The GIF below is the last dozen runs of the GFS. I like it. The big question is how snow levels will pan out.

Looking Ahead To The Weekend

Yes, we are still skiing on just TurboWeasel to the mid-station. It’s been very good skiing the last three days with excellent coverage on the groomed portions. The small amount of off piste terrain available is getting tired….as in growing moguls and exposed obstacles.

• Roundhouse is looking way better already and I would expect that for Friday. Coverage on Rock Garden and Weasel One looks excellent. The snow guns were blazing away top to bottom on Red Trail today. There’s a few more nights of good snowmaking available, and hopefully they will pop Red Trail during the weekend.

• We also noted that they were working on Yellow today and word on the street is that Yellow may also spin to give people options. It’s doubtful that the Yellow terrain will open, but I would ski it. I have attempted to memorize every rock while looking from TLC this week.

• The Evil E did a number on Alpine Bowl over the last couple of days. Things look quite a bit more scoured up there now. I would not expect Summit until next week’s storms pan out.

I have not been over to the other side all week to note if any progress has been made on terrain expansion. I sure hope they are adding something!

It’s Going To Be Busy

We’ve been warning you, there’s a number of factors conspiring to make this a much busier weekend for skiing at riding or Alpine Meadows or Palisades. There’s a number of events scheduled over on the other side and evidently Shaq is a pretty big draw. The Tahoe Live even takes place mostly outside of skiing and riding hours and they encouraged guests to arrive after 1pm.

But…for the first time this season, there are no free parking reservations available on the Palisades side for the upcoming weekend. Who knows what factors are responsible for that. I believe it has something to do with that big event using some portion of the parking lot and that a lot of spaces may have been held back for paid reservations, as those are still available.

Free parking reservations are currently, as of this writing, still available on the Alpine Meadows side. That may bring more casual guests that just want to ski and ride to our side of the hill.

Also…question of the day…when will reservations open for the midweek holiday period, Dec 25-29th? Next Tuesday should be the day to reserve for December 23rd and 24th. No clarification has ever been given about the other days. I’ve called this whole program a kludge…and it still is.