Is This Thing On?

Yes, I do pay attention to how many people are enjoying Unofficial Alpine. Typically, I know that Friday posts see the lightest number of readers. Generally speaking, anytime there is a big 49ers game on, nobody wants to read a ski blog. But today, two different people on the mountain responded “What game?” when asked if they were going to watch the “big game” today. So there is some hope that my efforts here will be meaningful today.

Also, that title is a double entendre, as it can also be interpreted as asking if the “big one” forecasted to start off a snowy February will really happen. In short, here’s what my Magic 8 Ball says today. But I will take a deeper look at that later in this post.

First let’s talk about the weekend and how it skied. It was a balmy 51° at mid-mountain today, very similar to yesterday. So the skiing was very spring like…not corn like yet…more slush like. If you’re into that sort of thing, then you probably liked the conditions today. Personally, I prefer those sort of temperatures in March and April, not January. It’s especially alarming due to the snowpack still be far below average this season.

There was a huge amount of terrain expansion for the weekend. We saw the opening of Lower Beaver, opening a huge expanse of “traverse to” terrain below Estelle. We saw the opening of Sherwood, which opened a huge expanse of terrain across High Traverse, and removed a lot of closures around Lakeview. That gave people far more room to spread out, and that is a good thing as it was very busy on both side of the mountain this weekend. Because I had a herd of family in town, I chose to be the family guy, spending an inordinate amount of time on Meadow and Hotter Wheels this weekend.

Speaking of the chair known by many names: Treeline Cirque, TLC, Hotter Wheels and TurboWeasel – it earned a new nickname today. The lift ended the day on maintenance hold yesterday, as it was totally getting a workout. It had the longest lines at Alpine Meadows both Saturday and Sunday. You know how some cars go into “limp mode” when they need service? The Tepid Wheels chair was in limp mode today. Initially they were skipping somewhere around every 8th chair to avoid overloading the lift and causing it to stop. By the end of the day they were skipping every 4th chair and running it somewhat slow to keep it rolling.

Fortunately, the older set of my grandnieces (9, 11 and 13) have advanced in their skiing where they were comfortable skiing most terrain off of Roundhouse this weekend and that made a big difference. By this afternoon, we coerced them to check out Sherwood. They thought they were going to do Sherwood Run, but instead learned they could survive the various faces of Sherwood. This is a monumental step, as most ski parents know. Still, there was not much Summit happening and certainly no High Traverse in my weekend. But there is always Monday.

There has been some grooming expansion that went unannounced. Sunspot and D8 were groomed for the first time of the season for Saturday. The right side of the Yellow run also got groomed for the first time this season overnight. More grooming is great when we are seeing these spring like conditions. Still not groomed was Sherwood Run, so more rocks are appearing there. Hopefully they won’t close Sherwood because the Sherwood Run is poor, as the off piste terrain is skiing great in these spring conditions. I skied my nice Bob Ross Pros this weekend with zero rock damage.

I am enjoying this little bit of spring in January, but hopefully it won’t go on much longer, as we don’t have all that much snow on the ground, and south facing terrain will suffer quickly. We still have at least two more days of spring ahead of us.

The Big Storm…ON or OFF?

The models are still holding together pretty well for a stronger low to make a better push into the west than recent storms. We’ve suffered from a long string of cutoff lows for much of this season that are basically pretty wimpy. For the third time this season, forecasters are seeing the possibility of a stronger extension of the jet stream that pushes the low into a more effective position to bring Sierra snow.

Here’s the animated GIF showing how the low moves in beginning about Wednesday and continuing through next weekend:

This one is a “model trend” GIF of the last twelve runs of the GEFS ensemble for total snowfall over the next 9 days. The important thing to notice is that the amount of orange coloration deceases in the later runs. The orange would indicate a possibility of 36″ inches of snow out of the system. The later runs seem to indicate more like 20-24 inches of snow over 10 days.

The reason that the models have reduced those amounts is that the jet stream has trended farther south into SoCal. We have seen this happen twice this winter where the jet then just disappears and the lows just flounder off the coast. So these are snowflakes I would not count on just yet. The mere mention of a big storm will drive the demand for free parking reservations for next weekend through the roof. So back to the Magic 8 Ball response above, we will have to keep an eye on this one.

Snow levels are forecast something like 6k feet Wednesday, 5K feet for Thursday and possibly 4K feet by Friday. I hope so.

The Niners looking a little rough so far…somewhat like those cutoff lows floundering out in the Pacific…24-7 Lions at halftime….and 180 people have given up on the game and read this post so far.

Update: The Niners did the miracle comeback thing in the second half, winning 34-31. It’s like the energy of a dozen atmospheric rivers drove them to score all of those points. Maybe this winter will make the same sort of comeback during the second half of winter?