Tahoe Snowfall & Kirkwood lies

ChrisC

ChrisC

Well-known member
I think Kirkwood lies about snow.

Yes, they get a lot, but they do not get as much as they report.

For example, Friday Kirkwood was reporting an Base Depth: 72 - 96".

Yet today Sunday Kirkwood reports a Base Depth 112-158". However, they reported a Last 48 hours snowfall of 32-52". The math does not work. Maybe its 'fuzzy' math?

What is more interesting is NOAA reports Fri 10am - Sun 10am Kirkwood received 19-28".

Meanwhile NOAA reports Sierra-at-Tahoe getting 16-24" in 48 hours. What does Sierra report?
New Snow in the last 48 hours (5am-5am) 11" 26"

Hmmmm.....
 
kirkwood does stretch it, but on this occasion it has more to do with the reporting period chosen. yesterday they reported a storm total of 62 at the high end of the range for 48 hrs.
 
Even with the huge amount of snowfall Kirkwood sucumbs to using the "rubber ruler". Some things with ski resorts remain constant everywhere.
 
Since the 6,200 base of Squaw got a big 5 inches from this storm, I think we can assume some low elevation rain at the Tahoe areas. An average of Kirkwood's upper and lower snowfall totals is generally consistent with Carson Pass snowfall data from the 1970's and 1980's. This is a similar situation to Jay Peak, trying to interpret current reporting consistently with historical records.

I think base depth measurements are often useless, and it's irritating to me that newspapers, websites, etc. will always mention base depths even if they omit other info that is far more important. There is no consistency among areas in base depth reporting. Some areas, like Vail and Mt. Bachelor, are actually conservative and report lower numbers than would be representative of the ski area as a whole. Needless to say, there are many areas that go the other way.
 
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