Mt Bachelor March 26, 2015

[schubwa]

I haven’t been too prolific about describing conditions here at Mt Bachelor this season, obviously. It’s not that there was a lack of base, we have enjoyed one of the deepest snowpacks in the West this season. It’s the surface conditions that have bummed us out. There is certainly no need to elaborate. We did receive 14" new this week which recharged our souls and we have a 48" base and 90" mid as of this afternoon.

I subscribe to Weather Bell with Joe Bastardi and Joe D’Aleo who hit this winter’s forecast on the button. When they started to say it looked like 1976/77, I knew we were in trouble. They’re east coast guys and they LOVED what was in store for them, they’re snow fanatics too. A nearly permanent ridge over the west and all the storms going up and over, you know the drill!

I probably have as many days kiteboarding in La Ventana as I do riding at Bachelor this season. I figured it was going to be second-rate so I booked lengthy trips in Baja instead.

I still believe we are going to have a very wet spring here and we’ll celebrate these storms as the wise have seen that they are not the last of this season but rather the first of the next.

All pics taken this morning in absolutely stunning spring conditions with an iPhone6.

 

[Tony Crocker]

I subscribe to Weather Bell with Joe Bastardi and Joe D’Aleo who hit this winter’s forecast on the button. When they started to say it looked like 1976/77, I knew we were in trouble. They’re east coast guys and they LOVED what was in store for them, they’re snow fanatics too. A nearly permanent ridge over the west and all the storms going up and over, you know the drill!

Can you provide a link to that forecast or post a dated copy of the e-mail?

One could nitpick some differences. The PNW and Utah/Colorado had a good March in 1977 after a record severe dry early season. And as JSpin points out, the eastern ski areas are below average in snowfall even though it's been unusually cold. Nonetheless the "permanent ridge over the west" prediction is impressive, and maybe the extra snow in the East in 2015 was all along the Atlantic Seaboard while in 1977 more of it fell in the mountains. So overall it's an unusual, "stick-your-neck-out" prediction that was quite accurate and thus worth documenting.

 

[schubwa]

The quote "A nearly permanent ridge over the west and all the storms going up and over, you know the drill!" are my words and not those of Weather Bell. Every winter season is different and my experience with 1976-1977 is based on what happened at Mammoth Mountain that woeful year. It did start snowing in Mammoth that March as well, unlike this year.
The Weather Bell guys base their predictions on analog maps of what happened in prior years. The unusually warm eastern Pacific pool, a Modoki ENSO, an emerging negative AMO and other factors all kept pointing towards 1976-1977 as a top analog year. So they predicted a cold and snowy mid-west to east and a warm and dry west as far back as last July or earlier. Recently they did admit they had the eastern snows too far west over the Appalachians rather than the cities (Boston). I don't think even they thought it would be as warm as last winter was in the PNW, California and the Intermountain West.
Interestingly, our local overall precipitation here in the Central Oregon Cascades is near normal. But it was way warm, so our surrounding local ski areas got killed with their low base elevations. We had a few "lucky" storms that were all snow above 6000' (our base elevation) that set us up while the other areas out west never really got going. The coverage above 7000' on the Three Sisters looks very normal but the SWE in the Deschutes Basin no doubt is way below average.

 

[Skrad]

Best guess as to when the road to Sparks Lake opens and we can get to South Sister?

 

[schubwa]

Best guess as to when the road to Sparks Lake opens and we can get to South Sister?

Memorial Day weekend

Read this:
World's Snowiest Ski Area Is Closed
By Jim S
Mt. Baker, which averages nearly 650 inches of snow a year (thought to be the highest of any ski area in the in the world) and received a world record 1,140 inches of snow in the 1998/99 season, is temporarily closed for lack of snow.

A video discussing the decision is provided below.



SNOTEL data shows a pretty grim picture with regards to snowpack in the Pacific states and southern Arizona and New Mexico.



The causes of these low totals, however, vary geographically. In southern Oregon, California, and southern Arizona and New Mexico, it's been a combination of below average precipitation and warmth has led to the low snowpack. In contrast, in Washington, it's actually precipitation has actually been near or above average, but most storms have brought rain to elevations that typically receive snow.

Let's have a look at data from a couple of SNOTEL stations in the North Cascades. The first is Wells Creek, which is west of the Cascade crest and not far from Mt. Baker Ski Area. It's eleveation, 4200 feet, is also close to that of the base of the ski area.

The snowpack at Wells Creek currently contains less than 5 inches of snow water equivalent (i.e., the depth of water you would have if the snowpack melted). For this location, that is the lowest on record (red line is the minimum, but data goes back only to 1996). Average at this location is for mid March is something closer to 30 inches.


Source: Pacific Northwest River Forecast Center
The plot below shows a different perspective for the same site. The black line shows the accumulated precipitation since 1 October, the grey line the average accumulated precipitation, the red line the median snowpack snow water equivalent, and the blue line the observed snow water equivalent. Note that precipitation for the season is actually a bit above average. The snowpack is low primarily because a greater-than-average fraction of precipitation this winter fell as rain instead of snow. There are a couple of periods during which the snowpack declines, indicating that some melting contributed too, but it was the warmth of the storms that has largely been the problem.

Source: NRCS
One sees a different picture, however, if you go to high elevation, especially east of the Cascade Crest which has a somewhat colder wintertime climate. At Harts Pass, which is at 6500 ft, the snowpack is very close to average.



Depending on how the next few weeks play out, this could be a fairly interesting spring in the Cascades. Given the lack of snow in the low-to-mid elevations, access to some remote areas via logging roads might come much earlier than usual, while a decent snowpack lingers in the upper elevations. This might be advantageous for some early spring touring in the North Cascades and on volcanoes like Mt. Adams, that typically are hard to access until very late in the spring.

Full article at: wasatchweatherweenies.blogspot.com