It’s Been 207 Days

It’s been 207 days since we last skied at Alpine Meadows, and if memory serves correctly, that is the longest I have been away from the place in the last decade or so. Yes, I did ski about a dozen days at Palisades last May and have done 10 days at Mount Rose this fall, meaning I was only “skiing free” for 6 months, which is still too long. I am not expecting that opening day at our favorite mountain will be epic by any standard, but it’s good to be back at a place where we feel completely at home. Then there is Melanie’s bacon…and chocolate chip cookies…plus the lure of a free breakfast burrito. You would think I am more excited about food versus skiing tomorrow.

There’s been a real mixed bag when it comes to weather over the last 36 hours. Truth be told, it is not as bad as it could have been in the Sierra. We are not seeing flooding, downed trees or closed roads as they are in other areas of the state. The planned power outage never materialized yesterday. Instead an unplanned outage happened in Tahoe Donner yesterday and another unplanned outage affected most of Truckee today. On my end of town, we’ve seen a mix of rain and snow, with really warm temperatures not happening until this afternoon. Temperatures at the base of Alpine Meadows started near freezing this morning, rose to about 40° this afternoon and are now trending downward again.

When I last reported it looked like the ski conditions for opening day could be really unpleasant with heavy rain and strong winds. But now it looks like it’s going to be okay. Here’s the point forecast, as of now, for tomorrow at Alpine Meadows:

Snow showers, mainly after noon. Widespread dense fog, mainly after 2pm. Areas of freezing fog between 4pm and 5pm. Temperature falling to around 31 by 5pm. Windy, with a south southwest wind 25 to 30 mph decreasing to 17 to 22 mph in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 50 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New snow accumulation of 1 to 3 inches possible.

So it could be windy, but at least it will be reasonably dry. With wet conditions today and temperatures near freezing tonight, it’s likely to be a firm snowpack. No changes have been announced so expect only Hotter Wheels to the mid station and Subway tomorrow. From the looks of the new Chalet webcam, it’s still WROD mode out there, with basically no off piste skiing yet on the lower mountain. From the base snow sensor, the natural snowpack peaked at about 11 inches this morning, then condensed down to 9 inches by the afternoon. There’s a whole season ahead to go exploring and jump off stuff. Alpine Meadows does not have a public accessible snow sensor higher on the mountain, but the Belmont sensor over at Palisades shows a 21 inch base today. That’s an indication that the upper mountain is on the way, but not ready yet.

Once we get through tomorrow, that’s when the real storm begins. Yes, some weather forecaster is about to say “Gentlemen, start your engines” on some Bay Area news channel tonight. More importantly, we have a series of storms moving in and they look like all snow and no rain through mid-week. There is a possibly wet AR event out there around Thanksgiving day. I like the looks of this forecast:

What does that look like in terms of snowfall? I looked at the last six runs of the Short Range Ensemble Forecast (SREF) and they all seem reasonably similar. The latest run is below, and it’s like the others, offering 24 to 36 inches of snow by Monday. So the weekend is looking stormy with the travel difficulties we have come to expect in the Sierra. Expect at least one closure of 80 over Donner Summit, and the requisite two or three around Floriston. It’s the way it is.

The storms continue beyond Monday. Looking out week from today, the GEFS is showing 60″ inches of snowfall.

It Takes Time To Open New Terrain

Before you jump in the car and head for Tahoe this weekend, keep in mind that it takes time to get new terrain open. The amount of snow in the forecast is enough to open some terrain, but ramps and roads have to be built, patrol equipment needs to be placed and all sorts of rope lines and signage put in place. Even with the new snow on the way, it’s probably unrealistic to think that we would see much more of the mountain open this weekend. So if you’re down to ski limited terrain on a WROD, come on up. Otherwise, you might want to wait for the following weekend.

Parking Reservations….Huh?

In a post last week, we published the updated calendar for which dates would require parking reservations for this season, indicating December 7th as a start date. But a diligent reader went to check things out and test their password this week. Lo and behold, they saw reservations were available for Saturday, November 23rd. So yes indeed, I do have a parking reservation for Saturday. I also tried making one for Sunday, even though it said “none available”. Yes, I now have a Sunday reservation as well.

More weird, since reserving a couple of days ago, now both the 23rd and 24th show reservations available. What does this mean? Yeah, it’s probably not meaningful. But hey I have reservations and maybe you should too! See you out there tomorrow!