Western Weather 2016-17

[Admin]

The skiing has been truly spectacular up this way for the last 10 days, plenty of time shares available.

LOL

 

[Marc_C]

<snort!>

 

[Tony Crocker]

Spectacular here at Whistler too. I'm relieved that my personal snow jinx seems to be limited to Utah.

 

[Admin]

Spectacular here at Whistler too. I'm relieved that my personal snow jinx seems to be limited to Utah.

Those of us actually in Utah are not.

 

[Tony Crocker]

For about the 10th time - take up your objections about unverified claims with the local meteorologists who have been telling us what we've been telling you for 16 years.

I did e-mail the KSL weather guy MarcC suggested but never got a response.

However, the resident academic authority on Utah snow finally weighed in on the subject in his February 28 blog:
https://wasatchweatherweenies.blogspot. ... month.html

"There is one other myth worth discussing here and that is the alleged January snowfall minimum. Again, that does not show up in long-term records. It could be that January features more variability from year to year, meaning a more feast or famine snow climate, but in terms of average snowfall, it is in a near dead heat with the other months. I leave the issue of variability for others to investigate. I need to get back to my day job."

I and one other respondent asked for elaboration.

I knew I would have to eventually run the numbers. Indeed, March has the smallest standard deviation of monthly snowfall (about 30 inches) of Nov-Apr. The largest standard deviation is actually December (about 46 inches), not January (41 inches). So, "always delivers the snow" might be hyperbole, but March is more consistent on average. Of course, my main complaint is the conclusion that March "is Utah's snowiest month" as suggested by the article.

I responded that I had looked at standard deviations quite awhile ago and found February to have the lowest at both Alta Guard and Alta Collins. Like Jim, I found December to have the highest standard deviation.

In conclusion:

On the January drought, I think it is a classic case of confirmation bias based on anecdotal impressions. In other words, it doesn't really exist. You won't hear anyone talking about the "March Drought" over the next few days as they will all be riding their mountain bikes and not worrying about it.

I believe I've hypothesized this for many years.

Can we finally bury the :dead horse: ?

 

[Marc_C]

For about the 10th time - take up your objections about unverified claims with the local meteorologists who have been telling us what we've been telling you for 16 years.

I did e-mail the KSL weather guy MarcC suggested but never got a response.

However, the resident academic authority on Utah snow finally weighed in on the subject in his February 28 blog:
https://wasatchweatherweenies.blogspot. ... month.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"There is one other myth worth discussing here and that is the alleged January snowfall minimum. Again, that does not show up in long-term records. It could be that January features more variability from year to year, meaning a more feast or famine snow climate, but in terms of average snowfall, it is in a near dead heat with the other months. I leave the issue of variability for others to investigate. I need to get back to my day job."

I and one other respondent asked for elaboration.

I knew I would have to eventually run the numbers. Indeed, March has the smallest standard deviation of monthly snowfall (about 30 inches) of Nov-Apr. The largest standard deviation is actually December (about 46 inches), not January (41 inches). So, "always delivers the snow" might be hyperbole, but March is more consistent on average. Of course, my main complaint is the conclusion that March "is Utah's snowiest month" as suggested by the article.

I responded that I had looked at standard deviations quite awhile ago and found February to have the lowest at both Alta Guard and Alta Collins. Like Jim, I found December to have the highest standard deviation.

In conclusion:

On the January drought, I think it is a classic case of confirmation bias based on anecdotal impressions. In other words, it doesn't really exist. You won't hear anyone talking about the "March Drought" over the next few days as they will all be riding their mountain bikes and not worrying about it.

I believe I've hypothesized this for many years.

Can we finally bury the :dead horse: ?

Excellent work. I don't disagree with any of it.
None of those questions and answers are what Marc and I have been talking about all these years though.

 

[Tony Crocker]

Actually they are. The advice

And they usually tend to happen mid-January. Sometimes there's an outlier in December or February, but over the past 12 years of direct experience, if there's one time period I don't recommend to visitors, it's from about Jan 5 to Jan 25, or thereabouts. That may or may not be true next season, but it is this year, and last,...

has been debunked by the foremost academic authority on Utah snow and should not be taken seriously by any prospective ski vacationer to Utah.

Reminds me of some other famous statements that don't hold up too well in the long run, like (giving equal time here):

Mission Accomplished

or

ISIS is the Jayvee Team

 

[Marc_C]

Actually they are. The advice

And they usually tend to happen mid-January. Sometimes there's an outlier in December or February, but over the past 12 years of direct experience, if there's one time period I don't recommend to visitors, it's from about Jan 5 to Jan 25, or thereabouts. That may or may not be true next season, but it is this year, and last,...

has been debunked by the foremost academic authority on Utah snow and should not be taken seriously by any prospective ski vacationer to Utah.

No, he substantiated *your* assertion. You've been saying that a Jan dry spell/drought is no more likely than one in Dec, Feb, or Mar. He agreed with that. So do I and Admin. However, that was never what we suggested. We are talking about the relative distribution of storms within the month of Jan, and we never, ever said this with any intent of repeatable statistical accuracy. That's simply because using average snowfall by day totally smooths out that distribution as one would expect and completely hides any potential patterns. Yes, the statistical analysis - first deciphering the individual storm blocks then doing the time series analysis - is a royal pain and time consuming. This is what you refuse to acknowledge.

And to repeat something from some time ago, look at the terms bolded in my quote above. In the full discussion there are even more qualifiers. You keep wanting us to say "there's an x% chance that your vacation will be dry between <absolute date> and <absolute date>" so that you can haul out your 30 yrs of average data to refute. That is never what we said.

 

[socal]

Take Marc_C seriously, not literally.

 

[Tony Crocker]

Whey should I take him seriously when he is proposing a theory with zero meteorological basis and supplying zero evidence to support that theory? The burden of proof is surely upon the person asserting such an unusual climate anomaly.

using average snowfall by day totally smooths out that distribution

I only mentioned in passing a couple of years ago a press release that Jan.13 was supposedly Utah's snowiest day of the year by long term average and found that amusing in the context of this topic. But I have repeatedly addressed the dry spell issue in other ways.

If two months have similar averages but one is more prone to big dumps and dry spells and the other to more consistent snowfall, that will show up in the standard deviation being higher in the former case. I looked at that several years ago when the "dry spell" subject first came up. And guess what, when Jim Steenburgh was asked to investigate further, that's exactly the approach he used. I took it a step further and enumerated the number and severity of dry spells in the Alta daily data since 2005. This again HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH AVERAGES.

MarcC told me to take this up with a local Utah resource. I did that and if MarcC doesn't like the answer he is welcome to comment on Steenburgh's blog or send him an e-mail for further inquiry.

 

[socal]

I was just making a Trump joke

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/09/peter-th ... graph.html

You're not going to pin Marc down he's just going to keep denying he's wrong , you proved your point, he's not going to agree,

 

[lono]

Whitefish Mountain closed 4/9 with 6" of new. One last powder morning to end this fine season. Over 400" fell on the Big Mt. summit this winter.December, February, and March recorded > 90"of snowfall .
Even though I missed 40 days to injury, it was a great time skiing with old and new friends.

Now its time for a ski bums holiday, I'm heading down to the Wasatch for Alta's closing weekend, then on to the Sierra's and Cascades. Hope to meet and ski the APP!!!!

 

[Admin]

Just give me a shout.

 

[Tony Crocker]

And me when you get to Mammoth. We have a long way to go this season.

 

[lono]

I'm thinking of skiing Snowbasin thursday, bought a ticket for Snowbird for Friday and I figured Alta's for the weekend
I'll be at Mammoth 4/18 through 4/20.
If any of you ski nuts want to meet up text me at four of six 250 1051.

 

[Tony Crocker]

Good timing for Mammoth's last week of full operation. It will still be worth an encore in May or beyond if you're still traveling.

We plan to be at Mammoth April 19-21, but we wait for the weather forecast before finalizing.

 

[EMSC]

Powerful storm hitting Colo. All the way down here into Denver... Possibility of huge storm totals exists. Legit pow day at the Basin... too bad I70 is shut down.

 

[EMSC]

They are up to 30+" in 6 days for Abasin at this point. Things should dry out and warm up for a couple days then more unsettled weather returns for a few days heading into the holiday weekend.

Abasin is extending the season to June 11 at this time and hinting they could go further into June.

Aspen is re-opening a single lift on the top of Aspen Mountain for memorial weekend (130 acres of skiing), but with the rather short and bizarre hours of 10am to 2pm. Access will be via up/down loading on the Gondola.

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/05/23/arapahoe-basin-bonus-weekend-spring-storm/

 

[EMSC]

Time for some final Analysis Paralysis of snow.

Below are the two Colorado basin's I primarily track since that's where I mostly ski. As you can see, not disaster seasons, and at times great snow (eg Dec & Jan), but pales in comparison to much of the western US this past year. Still a decent season in a lot of respects and glad that we did get some snowy periods in the second half of the year in spite of too many warm spells in between. We'll call it roughly average in the big picture.