First off, apologies for a lack of updates. Frankly the weather has been so hot, it’s tough to think about skiing. We’ve been busy working on some other web projects for a bit.
BA over at TahoeWeatherDiscussion.com has been starting to throw out some forecasts. His forecast titled “Winter Analogs…” posted a week ago was too depressing to talk about. In a nutshell, it compared years with similar oceanic and atmospheric conditions to this year. In short, there were eight comparable years, with a weak El Niño and a slew of other factors. Six of those years were a below average year, causing BA to predict a winter forecast of roughly 75-85% of average. However, the other 2 years were monster years with record snowfalls, including 51-52 and 68-69.
This week, BA looked at some other forecasters analog predictions and most of them are more favorable toward a normal or above normal year for the Sierras this winter. As much as BA has been pretty much right on in long term forecasts, this will be a year where I hope someone else is more right.
In the short term, we should drop from the 80’s to the 60’s by the weekend. A cutoff low is setup for next week, which may not bring much precip, but will keep us cool. In the fantasy two week range, there is a bonafide snow storm in the forecast in the range of October 17th. BA has actually been pretty solid in pinpointing these farther out storms.
There is one factor that makes me think that storm may just pan out. I’ll be facilitating a group at the Project Discovery ropes course on the 20th. This group, a UNR sorority has batted 1000, having a snowy day for every course they have ever booked.
For those counting days, we’re at roughly 4 weeks from where we can at least get a WROD and mini park experience at Boreal. Winter is getting closer…hard to believe this week, but it is.