Will The Corn Harvest Lead Up To A March Miracle?

It was another great day of spring skiing at Alpine Meadows again. As long as it’s not going to be snowing, you just have to go out and enjoy the corn. There were plenty of people doing that today as it was relatively busy on the slopes today. All of the Squaw regulars were skiing Alpine today, which is a sign that conditions have deteriorated over the hill.

We spent the first half of the day finding corn between Summit Direct and Dead Tree off of Summit. We then spent a full afternoon finding many playful lines off of Yellow chair, which let us avoid the sticky and crowded runouts to Summit. Rocks are popping up with alarming frequency all over the mountain again, even on main runs. I did the splits several times avoiding rocks, and hit quite a few today. Amazingly, I have yet to get a core shot or lose an edge this season. I guess that’s a pretty good statement about the quality of the Slant skis.

We have about another three days of Februgust to get through before we see any significant change in the weather. Daytime temperatures will continue to run into the 50’s, with nighttime temperatures too warm for making any significant amount of snow. By Friday, we should expect a cool down to more “normal” early spring temps. In particular, overnight temps should drop to the mid-20’s. The last few model runs of the GFS also bring the potential for some snow next weekend. It’s not your typical inside slider. The low moves over the ridge almost all of the way to Colorado and then seems to retrograde back to the west, bringing a chance of snow. Snowfall amounts would be light given the continental trajectory. It’s just another bizarre event during a very strange “winter”.

In the longer term, everyone seems to pinning their hopes on a “Miracle March”. Frankly it’s a miracle that the term still exists as the original “Miracle March” happened in 1991 or 24 years ago. We have seen many months of March become a disappointment in those years too!

Is there a pattern change in our future? The 16 day GFS model does indeed extend into March, and storms have appeared in the Fantasyland range part of the model over the last week. The MJO remains neutral as we head into March. The only sign that points to a change is the PNA index. We mentioned it beginning to show a negative trend last week, and that negative trend has now become a negative dive as we enter March. Essentially that means that the ensemble members see the ridge being replaced by a trough as we enter March. That said, those troughs have not lasted more than 6-10 days this winter. There are no signs that things will be different this time.

One thing is clear. There’s a lot of exposed rock and bare earth around the mountain, and the angle of the sun gets higher every day. That means we would need a really big storm to get bare ground covered again and turn this season around again. We’ll keep hoping for that…but in the meantime, we suggest you get out there and go skiing & riding as much as you can, while you can.