Best Day Of The Year!

Yeah, you are not falling for that, are you? While it was not the best day of the season, it was the best day of skiing in 2025. Yes, it is the first and only day of skiing in 2025. It was remarkably the same as what we have seen throughout this season. Another weak storm wave moved through Tahoe overnight and this morning, bringing cloudy skies, strong winds and light snow showers. While the new snow wasn’t all that significant, there were some areas of nice wind buff to be found. That said, there were also areas that were stripped of snow by a combination of ski edges and wind.

Sadly, I failed to even look at the forecast for the day this morning. I arrived at the mountain at least one layer of short of what would have been comfortable. All of my friends are laughing at this moment, as they know that I tend to under-dress most days. It’s true. I hate being too hot. It makes me grumpy, so I tend to dress on the cooler side.

In thinking about this, I understand why this happens. It used to be that if I was at the mountain and turned up a layer too short, I saw that as a shopping opportunity. It was easy to pop into Estelle Sports and pick up yet another Alpine Meadows hoodie or long sleeve tee to add another layer for the day. The bonus to this is that I still have a pretty large collection of OG Alpine Meadows logo wear in my closet. There is no way I would ever pop into Estelle and consider buying anything with the hideous Palisades logo. I generally reject the ones that are given to me! I should consider putting an extra layer in my locker again.

So with the Summit temperatures running in the mid 20’s today and the winds cranking at 40-50mph at the top of the mountain, I did not ski at all on Summit today. That is likely where the best skiing was today. That’s okay, as yesterday I found plenty of fun stuff that was not off of Summit. Fall Line and Yellow Chairline were skiing excellent yesterday afternoon. Today about 50% of the turns were great and the others boilerplate ice that demanded skipping turns entirely. Gentian Gully was excellent yesterday afternoon, not so much today. Still, I don’t mind being adventurous.

Mountain Ops Is Working To Make Our Lives Better

Notable today was the grooming that happened on the late graveyard shift of Ladies Slalom for the first time this season. I actually noted the groomer coming down the upper portion, which many of us call Red Ridge, when driving into the parking lot around 7:45 this morning. For the last couple of days, Ladies Slalom was the scene of the most recent snowmaking binge, leaving behind large icy whales and a breakable crust surface that made skiing unattractive. It was fun to have something new to ski that kept us away from the holiday mayhem on the main groomers.

Work continued on Sherwood today. More snow was being pushed uphill and track packed in an attempt to tame that wild section in the middle of Sherwood Run where rock bands criss-cross the run. In the morning hours it did not look like tower pads had been installed yet, but hopefully that was happening today. Several staff have said that tomorrow is the day for Sherwood. Kudos to the teams if they make it happen. Last season we did not get Sherwood until January 26th. What a memorable day that was, as the Sherwood groomer itself was nothing to write home about, but the ungroomed terrain was so fun. I am hoping for a repeat.

One More Round Friday

What looks to be the the last of these somewhat weaker zonal flow storms moves through on Friday. Right at this minute it looks like it is all snow. Yesterday it looked like rain to 9000 feet. I have hope that the latest forecast is more accurate. Looking simply at the automated point forecast for Alpine Meadows, it calls for 5-9 inches of snow between Friday and Friday night. Those point forecasts, being auto generated change frequently with each model run, so the numbers above are just a suggestion that this is not a “game changer”.

There is still quite a bit of disagreement between the models. The slow motion GIF below shows this. There’s two things to notice. Some pictures have more deep purple, indicating a foot of snow. The GFS is the most aggressive, even going beyond purple to a possible 18 inches at the crest. The two european models are far less optimistic, showing 2-4 inches of snow. The other thing to note is the width of the snowfall coverage. The wider width in the GFS would indicate lower snow levels. The narrower bands shown on the Euros indicate a higher snow level, as in only at the crest. <end science lesson>

Here’s the current automated snow level forecast. The green box indicates Friday and Friday night, during the storm. Note that the range of snow levels does include a possibility of things starting out wet on Friday. Not ideal for skiing, but generally results in better bonding of new snow to old snow.

The models have been pretty consistent in going back to an east/west dipole again. That would push us into a strong ridge category into mid-January while the eastern US gets a series of overriding storms. If we get into a drier pattern like that, it will be very beneficial to see a large swath of south facing terrain available via Sherwood and the potential for some mid-season corn.

Late Addition: The Stats

I got a quick peek at the seasonal stats. We are really not all that far off of “average”. 65 inches of snow fell at the base of Alpine Meadows during the month of December. The interesting number is overall precipitation. There was 13.74 inches of precipitation. Using a somewhat standard 10:1 ratio for snow:rain, we would expect closer to 130 inches of snow. Yikes. That’s a lot of warm storms. On a seasonal basis, December ends with 97% average snowfall this season to date compared to the stats since 1970.

See you out there tomorrow I am pretty sure. I am setting out that extra layer for my locker right after posting this piece.