It’s the 100th day of the Alpine Meadows season and it was indeed a slushfest. There’s all sorts of disagreement about whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. I know i had a great time on the mountain today by knowing how to stay right in that window of greatness before things turned to slushy mashed potatoes. The actual key to happiness was to avoid the busiest lifts, Summit and Sherwood, at peak times and to avoid all of the groomed slopes to the best of your ability. None of this really matters, as today is the last day of the current temporary spring. At least two storms are in the forecast, the first one rolling in overnight. Things should be quite different tomorrow.
There is a Winter Weather Advisory scheduled to begin at 10pm tonight. Note that it’s not a winter storm watch, meaning less snow and less wind is expected. That said there are some changes since my last report on Thursday. The GIF below shows the track of the next two lows moving in over the next 7 days.
The track is a bit more northward than they were two days ago. The result of that is that we should be in a somewhat wetter flow that will also be a bit warmer. Two days ago this storm looked like 1-3 inches for Alpine Meadows. Now it’s looking like it could bring 6 to 10 inches by Monday morning. The GIF below shows the expected snowfall from the system over the last 6 model runs. The increasing level of purple means more snow.
The snow levels for tomorrow’s system start around 6500′ and eventually drop to about 4500′. The second system looks to pull in around Wednesday morning and currently looks comparable to the first system. The main difference is that the snow levels will start out around 4500′ and probably remain around that level.
One would think that if we get 8 to 10 inches in storm one and another 8 to 10 inches in storm two, that will really make a difference. You would be wrong. At this time of year, with the higher angle of the sun and increasing warmth between systems, it’s very hard to build snowpack. The snow from these smaller systems tends to melt and sublimate very quickly. To really make a difference at this time of year you need a whopper of a storm, the kind that drops 3 to 5 feet. Even then, there’s places on the mountain that are starting to show large amounts of rock, which holds heat and melts new snow. The snow sticks in places we don’t need it and melts quickly where we do need it.
The Tiniest Amount Of Hopium
All season I have mentioned that none of the teleconnections have supported any sort of idea for a major pattern change. I finally see just a hint of hopium. First let’s look at the current PNA Index forecast. It holds neutral for the next week then shows the potential for troughing in the Pacific two weeks out.
Again, I will believe it when I see it. Here’s the piece that is interesting, the Madden Julian Oscillation, better known as the MJO. Looking at the forecast below, it’s been almost completely inactive (near the center) over the last week. But the green and blue forecast lines show it to become somewhat active again. In week two, it could be active in Phase Three. During the month of March, a phase three MJO is a sign of a wetter pattern for the west coast.
I am not forecasting any sort of March Miracle here, it just looks like we may stay in more of a winter like pattern in mid March. The most important thing about that would be a slowing of the melt. It’s worth keeping an eye on that.
Ansel Adams Has Come To Alpine Meadows
Several of us have noted that the current Alpine Meadows base area webcam has been displaying black and white images for the last couple of days. We don’t why it is, but I do find it fascinating in the way it makes the mountain look so dramatic. Here is a stunning image from yesterday morning:
Here’s an image from this afternoon at 3:30. Look at the line of people waiting to go back to Palisades on the shiny boxes.
See you out there tomorrow for day 101…
I have refrained from posting much other than replies this season. I opened the season by marveling that a certain ski resort that opened in 1938 and sits at about the latitude of San Luis Obispo opened to skiing earlier in the season than lovely AM. Well, that high-elevation ski hill with less than 1/3 the skiable terrain of AM but 1.3x the vertical has received about 12 snowflakes since. OK, I’m exaggerating a bit, but the mountain’s marketers have had to work overtime to attract skiers from the nation’s fifth largest metropolis, which sits just over 2 hours away by car. Didn’t work on me. In mid-January I went to my home that is 35 min from the resort (from my winter home on a desert coastline just south of the Tropic of Cancer) hoping to make some turns in snow but because of the conditions didn’t even try to ski and ended up … mountain biking. With below-normal temps then (lows single digits, highs lower 30s, whereas normal in town is high teens overnight and mid-40s by afternoon), given that I’m new to MTB but on the older side chronologically, I chose not to MTB at elev. 7,000′ and instead took a 45-min drive and MTB’d at about 4,000′ in milder weather. But if one were not afraid of a little ice here and there, one could easily have MTB’d at elev. 7,000′ in mid-Jan, because there certainly was no snow at that elevation then. Talk about it’s not supposed to be that way. As always, I enjoy and appreciate Mark’s and Andy’s accounts, leavened by Ansel Adams photography (and AI corn harvesters on ski slopes – awesome!!!), and it doesn’t go unnoticed that this has been somewhat of a not-so-winterly winter. Fingers crossed that you guys get a good dump in the upcoming mid-March weather change. The sweet little Arizona ski resort to which I refer is expected to get a whole 6″ of snow in the coming week. Fingers crossed for those guys, too.
That b&w morning shot is really stunning!