Europe 24/25

[Tony Crocker]

Europe and North America latitudes.

It's called the Gulf Stream. One of the doomsday climate scenarios is that melting continental ice shuts down the Gulf Stream, resulting in western Europe having the same climatology as the similar latitudes in Canada. This occurred regularly at the end of big ice ages when the North American continental ice released into the Atlantic via the St. Lawrence River. Skeptics point out that the volume of the North American continental ice was vastly greater than what's in Greenland.

Current climatology on that overlay only matches up with SoCal and coastal Morocco.

 

[jamesdeluxe]

I'm pretty sure James has an allergic reaction to even a single crowd to be avoided. Which is ironic given that he lives in Jersey right next to one of the largest cities in the world.

Not sure whether to address this ^^ increasingly exaggerated narrative, hah. Tony and Liz have skied with me at three different mega resorts in the Alps (Courchevel/3V, Serre Chevalier, and Val d'Isere/Tignes) and at no point did they witness my head exploding.

I'll look the other way for now.

 

[Tony Crocker]

at no point did they witness my head exploding

The end-of-day run down to La Daille was fairly close, mostly about the ice skating rink surface, but the number of bodies was a major contributor to that.

 

[jamesdeluxe]

The end-of-day run down to La Daille was fairly close, mostly about the ice skating rink surface, but the number of bodies was a major contributor to that.

Fair enough. As I recall, my consternation was because you insisted repeatedly that we go to the bottom instead of downloading, and against my better judgement I let myself be talked into it!

 

[jamesdeluxe]

Fraser from Weather to Ski is with his family at Les Crosets on the Swiss side of the Portes du Soleil. A few pix on Facebook if interested to see what the yin/yang snowpack looks like heading into April.

 

[Tony Crocker]

I wonder why Fraser went there when he's been posting all season about how threadbare the lower elevations are. Exposure is not great either. Did he forget his own snow quality equation?

 

[jamesdeluxe]

The end-of-day run down to La Daille was fairly close, mostly about the ice skating rink surface,

Now that I think about it, I had a similar moment the previous year at Serre Chevalier, also during a long drought. The upper 2/3 of the ski area was in surprisingly good shape, both on- and offpiste, however, the bottom 1,500 verts into the village were concrete, almost as bad as at Val d'Isere. I noted at the time that Tony and Liz were far more tolerant of that surface, even with wider skis, than me/the ECer.