As Forecast

Everything went “as forecast” for Sunday at Alpine Meadows. The forecast amounts of snow were within the range expected by NOAA, with somewhere around 17 to 20 inches of snowfall between Saturday and Saturday night. The snow was dry and light, with a reported ratio of 20 to 1 (inches of snow per inch of rain). The winds exceeded 100 mph for much of the day Saturday, closing most lifts. Then we woke to a bluebird morning for Sunday, which brought the largest crowds of the season to Alpine Meadows.

As long as you had realistic expectations for how this would all play out, it was a day for some very good skiing, probably the best of this 44 day old season. There was definitely going to be some traffic. There would definitely be some powder panic. There would absolutely be the longest lift lines yet.

Today was a test of the new parking reservation system, with both mountains reportedly sold out of parking reservations, of both the free and paid variety. This was supposed to assure everyone that they would have a parking spot when they arrived at the mountain, which would allow for people not rushing to the mountain, thus magically curing all woes related to parking and traffic. But the reality is, this was the first decent powder day of the holiday. Nobody was going to wait to drive to the mountain later, and very few would opt to drive to a remote bus lot so they could transfer their gear and then sit in traffic on the bus. There definitely was traffic, taking roughly twice as long to arrive at Alpine Meadows from Truckee as a typical weekend. So no major gains in the world of traffic. I still saw Insta posts with traffic backed up onto Highway 80

Yes, the lift lines were long. People sent photos. You can look at the photos and say, “Wow, I am glad I was not there”. Or you just made the best of it, chatted with your ski partners, or made new friends in line. When all of the parking lots are full, but Scott, Lakeview and Sherwood are still not open, there will be lift lines, just “as forecast.”

Something that was awesome is that Summit and Roundhouse reportedly spun early today at 8:45. I wouldn’t know as I casually strolled out at 9:00, not wanting to be a part of the powder panic. But, kudos to the mountain ops and ski patrol for making that happen. With the Summit corral overfilled by 8:15, there could have been a mutiny if there was a delayed opening today.

Yes, the untouched powder was also gone pretty quickly, “as forecast.” But because the snow was soft and light, the cutup powder was also a real delight to ski today. The only caveat was the potential for icy moguls, rocks and other obstacles below the snow. While I won’t necessarily talk about lower mountain powder stashes here, I will say that my favorite area of the mountain today was Werner’s to Boomerang with perfectly sized fluffy bumps.

Here’s an assortment of photos from the morning:

More Snow Soon?

It was certainly nice to be able to do a bit powder skiing, and people are already talking about the next storm this week. I wish the models were a bit more certain. I was looking at the models this afternoon at the same time that my wife was reading me the latest weather advisories, and there was not a good match up in the details. Then I ran across this comment from Daniel Swain, PhD at WeatherWest.com:

This is one of those weeks when fairly subtle initial differences between models and their respective ensembles have *enormous* implications for the subsequent weather downstream, including over CA. Right now, ECMWF and GFS (and even their ensembles to an extent) are diametrically opposed in terms of sensible weather out around day 10. It’s impossible at this stage to know what’s going to happen….

So the current forecast warnings suggest that the next system, in the late Tuesday to Thursday range, could be similar to the previous system. That would mean 12 to 18 inches of new snow and similar or slightly higher snow levels. That will be great if that happens, but looking at the models just now, the trend would be to cut expectations back. The GIF below is the ensemble trend of the last 16 model runs for total snowfall through Friday. Note the orange colors (indicating 20+ inches of snow) that were there in yesterday’s runs are now replaced by light purple colors. That would indicate 6 to 8 inches of snow.

As I have said several times this season, the models are having a very tough time coming up with consistent forecasts, especially outside of a day or two. Quoting Swain again from WeatherWest.com, “It sure has been a tough season for predictive modeling…”

I am super anxious to see more natural snowfall. It’s not that I need it to be a powder day to enjoy skiing, it’s just that I am ready to have access to more terrain. We love Alpine Meadows because it offers a wide variety of terrain, and a wide variety of different exposures. We also know that there are a lot of people that enjoy skiing Alpine Meadows because they love the mountain, or because they just need to mark it off on their Ikon Bingo card. I can deal with parking reservations and don’t mind leaving early to avoid traffic – but it sure would be nice to have shorter lift lines and more room to spread out. We get a short reprieve over the next few days before we are into the Martin Luther King holiday weekend.

See you out there.