This Day Made Me 😁

The first storm of the series has come and gone and truth be told, we did get pretty close to the 6 to 10 inches that was predicted. The only problem was that it was slow to happen. With only three to five inches of new snow on Sunday, it was mostly a dust on crust day. I was possibly a bit grumpy, lamenting just how good the spring skiing was last week. But then another 3 to 5 inches fell over night and the sun came out for Monday. It was the least busy bluebird mini-powder day in recent memory, putting a 😁 on my face.

There was a lot of goodness to choose from today. For the most part it was just a matter of timing. Once we get into these spring months, that new snow gets cooked pretty quickly on any sunny aspects. In the morning hours, everything from Solar Flare over to the ABC chairline was skiing good. It was still scratchy, especially on steeper terrain. My friend Kyle reminded me “just point them downhill and make fewer turns and you won’t have the scratchiness”. Friends that went to Sun Bowl and SP Bowl over Upper Saddle reported good conditions until the sun cooked things.

The star of the show today was the north facing terrain with minimal sun exposure. We heard good reports from Lower Beaver South, High Yellow, Lower Saddle and a few other north facing pitches. North Peril was also great, except for that part about it being a short pitch.

Later in the day a cloud bank hung over Summit and at times the visibility was at about 20 feet or less. Once you dropped five turns down the mountain, visibility improved. The cloud cover did do a number on temperatures, refreezing some of the snow that had gotten a lot of sun. I chose to ski by braille down Tower 19 on my final Summit run of the day, as I probably could ski it blindfolded. The morning chunder had refrozen into very unpleasant bricks. Not ideal.

Lower on the mountain, where groomers, heavier traffic and sun had worked the snow, the surface had basically returned to the corny conditions that existed before this storm.

Tomorrow is going to be a bit more challenging. Anything that got much sun today will likely be a frozen veggies and chicken beaks tomorrow morning. That will make groomed slopes and select north facing slopes much more attractive. If the clouds cover sticks around, skiing fun will be a bit more limited until the next storm comes in Wednesday into Thursday.

Overall the second storm seems very similar to the first. The Winter Weather Advisory from the Sacramento NOAA office calls for 8 to 14 inches of snow possible. The Reno NOAA WWA calls for 6 to 12 inches above 7000′. Looking at the last several runs of the short range NAM model, the point sounding for Alpine Meadows shows 7″ of snow by Friday. So not a huge storm, but another refresh. Friday and Saturday look pretty sunny right now, and expect that again, all new snow will be cooked by that time. Don’t arrive for the weekend expecting powder.

The somewhat snowy pattern continues into next week. In my last report, I mentioned that things were coming together for a potentially snowier pattern the second week of March. I saw that BA was seeing the same thing in one of his latest reports. The GIF below shows the total snowfall over the next 10 days and it is mighty consistent over the last 13 runs. That orangey color indicates a widespread 3 feet of snowfall throughout the Sierra. So there’s a decent probability that could happen.

Checking In On “Season To Date” Totals

I got a peak at the season to date snowfall stats for Alpine Meadows for the month of February. These stats are the official stats taken from the official weather station at the base of the Roundhouse lift. They will not match what you have heard from a marketing report or other sources. Since these are based on the same location over more than 50 years, it’s a reliable indicator of where we stand.

• Snowfall: As of the end of February: 168.5 inches total or 67% of average. This is about the same as the end of January
• Total Water Content: 40.39 inches or 100% of average

So that’s an interesting thing, we have seen a lot of warmer storms, resulting in less snowfall at the base but pretty close to normal up top. The upper snow stake on the mountain was reporting around 150″ of snowpack late last week. If that bigger storm pans out next week we would be in better shape, but it won’t be anywhere near a Miracle March. we shall see.

See you out there tomorrow….