Summer-like Trending Back Toward Winter-like

The transition from a great week of winter skiing last week to summer-like temperatures this week has been rough. Both the day time temperatures and the overnights have been too warm to create nice spring corn. Conditions have been slushy and sloppy, resulting in shorter ski days for most people. I get enough knee pain without trying to ski Sherwood Face when it’s the consistency of mashed potatoes. If you don’t believe how warm it was out there, here’s the remote data sensors I pulled for midday:

That’s 63° at the top of Roundhouse at almost 8000′ feet. We expect to see those sort of temperatures in May, not late March. Then again, it has been freakishly warm much of this season. Without a good slow freeze at night, the snow crystals don’t have time to grow large. It’s the large corny crystals that allow free water to drain lower into the snowpack. Good corn is far less sticky.

That’s not to say we did not find some great skiing before it got to be a hot sticky mess today. Sunspot has been incredible the last two days first thing in the morning. This morning there was an early lineup at Summit not because it was a powder day, it was a race to get those first tracks on Sunspot.

We did a couple of Summit laps before heading directly to Sherwood, before it got too soft. Robin Hood and the main Sherwood Run were both excellent at 9:30, which is about an hour earlier than normal. I did a run on Sherwood Face just before 10am and it was too late, already skiing like mashed potatoes. I felt bad about the huge ruts I left behind.

Where I have consistently found good snow over the last few days are the places on South Face where you can ski the left side of a gully, where the snowpack is tilted away from the morning sun. This includes Chute Zero, East Gully and West Gully. That said, skiing the manky runout to get back to a groomer was not delightful.

The good news is that the temperatures tomorrow should be 5-10 degrees cooler with some increasing winds and clouds. This should theoretically keep the snow more skiable for a longer day tomorrow. I’ll believe it when I ski it.

The Change Back Toward Winter

I told you about 10 days ago that there was another Pacific trough in the models as we end March and roll into April. I would not expect a “game changer” and more hoopla about a Miracle March. The models have already started a bit of scaling back over the last 24 hours.

First let’s look at the next 16 days as it pertains to the change from a ridge to a trough, then a stronger trough and a zonal flow. Here’s the GIF:

Also note the change back to a ridge around 13 days out. That just started appearing in the models yesterday. So the winter pattern will be a temporary thing.

The first storm moves in early Thursday and having low expectations is advisable. A good portion of the moisture here will be just moistening the atmosphere after this mini heat wave. I have seen models ranging from 2 inches to 6 inches. The sounding above showing 3 inches seems like a fair estimate 36 hours out.

There’s currently a second and slightly stronger wave on tap for Sunday. The models are still inconsistent but around 8-10 inches is the likely ball park.

The sounding below is the total snowfall by April 4th. There’s been model runs that included the potential for a strong AR event around April Fools day. Some of those runs showed either 8 inches of rain or 8 feet of snow depending on the position of the atmospheric river.

Today’s model runs are less optimistic. The sounding below showing 25 inches is a total of all three storms. The snow levels are not likely to be as low as last week. There’s other consideration is that we will see a day or two of sun between storms. That will rapidly cook the new snow at this time of year. Last week we had very little sun between storms and that created excellent ski conditions.

So let’s enjoy tomorrow as a hopefully more spring like day instead these summery sloppy days. See you out there tomorrow…

Wednesday Update: Noting that the models are again favoring the atmospheric river idea for mid next week. The ten day snowfall showed 40-60 inches in the last run…the hype train is starting up again.