It’s Feeling A Lot Like Winter

There’s no doubt about it, it felt like winter today. It was really, really chilly. As usual, I was underdressed for the cold temperatures, wind and resulting wind chills that came with an inside slider over Nevada. I have nobody to blame but myself. Yesterday evening got really hectic with a flat tire putting a big dent in my late afternoon hours. It turns out that I looked at the storm for later in the week, but never really paid attention to the forecast for today. So not only was I underdressed, most of my ski buddies heckled me for not mentioning the cold in yesterday’s report.

Why isn’t Andy writing today? Word on the street is that his fingers were too cold to type anything. Was it really that cold? Yes it was. Here’s the midday numbers from the top of the mountain:

Those 17’s represent the actual temperature at midday at Summit. The negative numbers represent the windchill as the winds picked up at noon. My medium weight jacket and gloves were no match for that chill. After five glorious laps in perfect chalk on Tower 19, I had to go visit my friend “Franke” in the Meadows Cafe for a warmup. With no extra layers of my own to add, I borrowed a vest from my wife to put under my jacket. It was so tight it also did double duty in improving my posture, keeping my shoulders back. It added “just enough” warmth to stay out and ski.

Our second round of the day kept us on the lower mountain, still finding soft winterish snow with scattered ice off of Roundhouse. With an extra layer and being out of the wind, we put in another 8 laps before it was time for a warm up with some soup from Treats. It also gave us a warm place to complete the race for parking reservations. Free reservations did not “sell out” as quickly as last week, lasting nearly 7 minutes. I guess we can attribute that to this being the last “black out” weekend of the season for Ikon Base passes.

We finished our afternoon session with more Roundhouse before we pondered where to go next. The reports from Sherwood and Lakeview were not inspirational. So off to Gentian Gully we went, where the sun rarely shines at this time of year. Sure that preserves the snow, but it was tooth chattering cold there. As Andy reported this week, it’s not awesome. We enjoyed firm moguls until the Gentian Gully sign and then the icy phase begins as you get lower in elevation. It would rate 4 cubes on the Ice-O-Meter. Still it was interesting, so we did it again. Upon riding Subway back up, my fingers and toes felt like little stubs and we called it a day.

Tomorrow is likely to be nearly as cold as today. I will absolutely bring an extra layer or three. So should you. No snow is expected until after closing tomorrow. I would like to go back and explore the chalk on the upper mountain once again.

I Don’t Want To Jinx This Thing

We have not seen a weather graphic like that all season. It’s showing an extended period of 100% chance of heavy snow. It’s looking pretty good, especially considering that it is still not your typical winter storm. There is not a trough in the Pacific. It’s more of a zonal flow, which is why snow levels will not be super low. If anything the numbers have been ramped up since yesterday.

Here’s the simplified picture from the short range NAM model. Yeah, impressive. That point sounding is not exactly Alpine Meadows, but pretty close. Looking at the point forecast for mid mountain at Alpine Meadows, the range of predicted snowfall is from a low of 48 inches to a high of 66 inches for this storm. That would make it easily the biggest storm of the season. The winds at mid-mountain are forecast in the 55-70 mph range and over 100mph across the ridges. Yeah, it’s looking like a doozy.

What To Expect

Storms of this intensity are a big deal. I would not expect that either Thursday or Friday will be a great powder day. There are a lot of things that can get in the way of that happening. Let’s list them:

• It’s very likely that most if not all lifts will be closed due to wind on Thursday and Friday.
• It’s going to be a major dig out to rebuild roads, ramps, load pads etc as the storm progresses.
• Avalanche danger is probably going to be in the very serious category. We have a lot of very firm and smooth surfaces out there. This storm coming in relatively cold will result in a less secure bond. Mountain ops people should not have to risk their lives because you want to ski powder. Be patient.
• There’s definitely going to be issues on roads. With almost certainty, Highway 80 will close and remain closed for some time. Local roads will become problematic too.
• Power will likely be an issue too.

So get ready to be patient and wait for things to settle down. This storm could get us back to an “average season” where there is a hope we ski through May.

That’s it for now. I did not have “writing a UA report” on my to do list today.