New Snow…I Think

There is a lot to unpack here after a very good day of skiing, which was not at all a powder day. That said, it was a great windbuff day. I saw and heard a lot of people having a great time today, and only a few that grumbled about the lack of powder after an 8 foot snowfall. But the thing is, every storm is different, and the more experienced skiers and riders already knew that this was not going to be a powder day.

But the traffic on Highway 89 this morning told the story. We arrived at our normal weekday time and found myself at about the 100th spot in Lot 3 versus my typical first or second spot in Lot 3. There was the usual frenzy of people trying to boot up and rush to the Summit lift, and TLC since there was a question about Summit opening on time. Here’s a pair of interesting tweets:

Yes, that says 9:17 for the upper lots and 9:45 for all lots full. That is insanity considering it is a non-holiday Tuesday in March beyond peak season. Granted, about a 1/3 of Lot 3 is covered by snow, as well as parts of the other lots. Hidden Valley was not used today. If I had to take a guess it’s still under a bunch of snow. But, the shiny boxes were on windhold on the Alpine Meadows side, which meant the parking lot did its job of limiting the number people on the hill. Love it.

Fun Fact: When we post these galleries, you can click on any photo to see them full size and see captions.

Other than the the first 20 minutes at Summit and much of the morning at Scott, there were essentially no lift lines today. There was also very little traffic anywhere on the mountain, including the usual “very hectic” spots like Sandy’s Corner, Rock Garden and the Chalet Speedway zone. The running joke today was “where are all of those people going off of Scott?” We saw very few people in Scott Chute or the Promised Land. Reports from Gentian Gully ranged from “meh” to “alright”. My guess is that they were just well spread across the mountain, and at the lunch hour there was a huge crowd in the lodge getting out of the brisk wind.

Anyone that was looking for super deep powder would have been disappointed today. Anybody that is a “windbuff buff” was delighted today. It was not necessary to do any real hunting for great buff today, as it was easy to find in many locations. Myself, I chose easy access and good lighting. No, never went to Summit today.

Not everything was super duper awesome. There was the ice, yes, I said ice. This is in the locations where the new snow all just blew away. The top of all runs off of Lakeview and also Standard Run were completely scoured in the top sections. On Rolls and Knolls, the top of the knoll was completely wind scoured. We found random unexpected ice in a few other places, not what you expect after 8 feet of snow. Still the skiing was fun today, as long as you expected buff and not powder.

Run of the day, according to several that I polled was High Yellow Gully. It was described as “an eight lane freeway with no bumps”. In second place was South Face for its long sustained pitches of wind buff. Lower on the mountain, Sunday School (God’s Knob) and Gunner’s Knob offered excellent buff.

A Closer Look At The Blizzard of ’24 And Beyond

I mentioned on Sunday that the storm did come in as I forecast at about 8 feet of new snow. This was not the storm of the century, just the largest of this season. I heard some people claim that this was just an ordinary Sierra storm. It was not. Our average storms in the Sierra typically bring 1-3 feet of snow. Once or twice a season, we get storms that bring 5 or 6 feet of snow. Storms that bring 8 feet or more are more of an every few years thing. But the snow was not the real story for this storm, it was the winds.

We had almost 100 hours straight of hurricane force winds above 7500 feet. That is an unusual thing. Typically we get those sort of winds for a twelve hour period or so as the front moves through. That’s what created the blizzard conditions, limiting visibility, shuffling snow all around the mountain and making life miserable for mountain ops staff and those that thought they needed to drive over Donner Summit during the storm.

That lead to a lot of unexpected conditions after an 8 foot snowfall: not really a significant amount of powder skiing, some of the biggest wind lips I have ever seen on the mountain, and those previously mentioned icy spots. On a larger scale, some areas of the mountain don’t even look different. The same rocks that were exposed on Sherwood Face last week are still exposed. Then there’s Scotty’s Beam, where 8 feet of snow fell and 9 feet of snow was stripped by the wind.

Where are we for the season at his point at Alpine Meadows? According to the UC Berkeley Snow Lab on Donner Summit, the Central Sierra stands at just about 100% of average snowpack. We are not quite there at Alpine Meadows. We are slightly east of the crest, so somewhat snow shadowed. More importantly, the official records for Alpine Meadows are measured at the base. Since we saw a lot of rain early season, we are close to average for total water content. We are still a bit behind for snowfall.

• February: 72 inches of snowfall out of a 76 inch average over 53 years or 94% of normal for the month
• March (and it’s only the 5th): 67 inches of snowfall out of a 73 inch average or 92% of normal for the month
• Season To Date: 158 inches of snowfall compared to 252 average or 63% of average.

Yes, we are absolutely in better shape at the top of the mountain. We are certainly in a better off place than the 49% of average at the end of January! If I had to call it right at this moment, we are looking at possibly an average March. Remember how consistent the models were about the Blizzard of ’24? That consistency is gone and we are back to super inconsistent flippity floppity. The storm that looked like it would bring a foot of snow today is bringing just a flake or two. Some of the models are showing a possibility of a storm or two in the next week, but there is little consistency yet.

The models are still pretty consistent about bringing a strong ridge to the western US around mid-month. If that happens, there will not be a Mega March, just an average March.

It’s Gonna Be A Busy Weekend

We already mentioned that there is a lot of demand for skiing and riding this week after the big storm. If Tuesday parking reservations are any indication, it will be a whopper of a weekend in Tahoe. During the 12:00pm reservation storm, free reservations at Alpine Meadows were gone by 12:03. I would assume the same for Palisades. I did manage to get my reservations, but a number of friends did not. Good luck at the 7:00pm ReservationQuest™.