Continued Patience Required

Today was maybe not the day we were looking for at Alpine Meadows. We just finished what was essentially a three week vacation period and today was the day for which we have been waiting. When I looked at the satellite view in the morning, it looked like clear skies. But that was not the case. By the time the lifts rolled, a high cloud deck came in, and the light went flat. Then to add to the insult, people just kept streaming in from the parking lot.

Sure it was less busy than yesterday, but for a Monday, it was odd to see Lot 3 fill, and cars continue to arrive. It wouldn’t have been that big of a deal, but with the flat light, few people were skiing off piste. The very well groomed slopes and lack of kids around seemed to give some people the idea that it was “wanna be World Cup training day.” Consequently, I spent as much time as possible off piste skiing the moguls in flat light. Still, at some point you still had to endure the busy-ness of Rock Garden or the Chalet Flats Speed Zone.

I wonder if some of that busy-ness today was due to pent up demand from those people that could not or would not get a parking reservation for the weekend?

It did look like the sun broke through later in the day for a bit so those fellas that were skipping work could ski even faster laps. By that time, I was already Costco bound for the post holiday restock. Tomorrow is another day. It’s likely it will be challenging, as will Wednesday and Thursday. Then we’re back into another holiday weekend. Here’s the break down:

Tuesday Windfest ’24

A dry cold front will be passing through the Sierra on Tuesday. That should bring cloudy skies and very high winds, the kind that will put some lifts on wind hold. Here’s the pictogram from the Reno NOAA office:

Winds at 80-100 over the ridges could eliminate some of the upper mountain next door, plus Summit at Alpine Meadows. I haven’t missed a day yet at Alpine Meadows this season so I plan to be there to make the best of it. There could be a couple of inches of snow.

Morning update: So far winds are holding at 40-55 mph at Summit at sunrise . The high wind advisory does continue through the day. Here’s the 7:40 am wind report, no big deal so far:

Wednesday “Will It?” Or “Won’t It?”

The next snow maker moves in Wednesday morning and I am just not sure what to say about this one, other than there is a lot of model disagreement on this one. But, both the Sacramento and Reno offices of NOAA are placing their hand on the “Believe” poster above the office door. Both have issued Winter Storm Warnings calling for up to 20″ of snow on Wednesday and Wednesday night. They both mention 100+ mph winds over the Sierra ridges, leading to more wind holds.

Here’s the confusion. Check the difference between these two model runs. On the left is the GEFS ensemble for total snowfall through Thursday AM of about 6-8 inches. Most trained meteorologists insist on only looking at ensembles. On the right is the most recent run by the Canadian model, which shows the potential for 20-24 inches. Yup, model inconsistency should set off alarm bells. As the popular saying goes “I’ll believe it when I ski it.”

In a very quick scan of BA’s teaser this morning, he did the big waffle, calling for 6-18 inches of new snow. He knows what’s up with the models for this one.

On a side note…🚨NEW TERRAIN ALERT!!! 🚨…ha, I bet you did not know I knew how to do that, didja? At Alpine Meadows, the Scott chair is supposed to make its debut on Wednesday. Best I can guess, that would be only Ridge Run, Bobby’s and Summer Road. The west faces of Scott are still quite bony. If 100 mph winds are indeed true, Scott may not run for long on Wednesday. Over at Palisades, KT-22 is scheduled to premiere for the season. There is no word on what that actually means as that is a low elevation. That low elevation does mean it will likely run on Wednesday, even with strong ridge winds.

Thursday Powder Panic

If a large amount of snow does materialize on Wednesday, Thursday will be a very busy day again. Businesses around the area will close their doors as everyone suddenly has that appointment with Dr. White. Schools will run out of substitute teachers and substitute teachers will run short of students to teach. With this being only the third powder event over 47 days of operations, there is a lot of pent up demand.

The Holiday Weekend

It will start on Thursday afternoon and run into Monday. Now that new snow is falling, the servers at AirBnB are running on turbo and CPUs are running hot. There is another storm possible on Saturday that is possibly AR-ish. Snow levels could be significantly higher. There is a very high boom or bust potential on that storm. We will have to take a look later in the week. It’s going to be a busy weekend. There are NO doubts about that.

Sorry for the late report today…