Mother nature is a fickle tease

K

Kulharin

Member
In western Canada we were on our way to potentially the best opening(s) for the season I can ever remember. Lots of snow has come in November and coverage is good... And now 3 days of record breaking warmth with freezing levels at 2900m and heavy rains at 2400m... throughout the entire southern half of BC and Alberta; coast through the mountains. Going to make for some rough avalanche conditions.
 
I feel ya dude. Just had a crazy good opening weekend over here in Oregon, but now the rain's gone torrential too...
 
worried for COP that opened a couple weeks ago, supposed to be +11ºC Wednesday and Thursday, and then 5ºC for the next few days.. gonna be rough for them especially since they just started building the main park up
 
13858671:LukasSchroeder said:
worried for COP that opened a couple weeks ago, supposed to be +11ºC Wednesday and Thursday, and then 5ºC for the next few days.. gonna be rough
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I feel ya man. Sucks. just rode last Sunday for the first time and now all the hills are gonna melt away in Alberta.
 
This time of year I feel this has been the typical trend for the last 4 years at least.

2014-2015; November was bone dry; first half of Dec saw high freezing levels and alpine rain (worst season ever)

2015-2016; November was epic, start of Dec saw a crazy Alpine inversion bringing spring skiing to the upper mountains for 4 days. But cooled off with consistent snow after that.

2016-2017; the first 10 days of November saw record warmth and rain in the alpine that melted any snow below 2000m, then cold and dry until third week of Dec.

2017; the first half of November was great for everyone; but the last week and into next week we are seeing well above average temps and a very high snow-line. We need a standard W dominate, or NW flow.

November is just all around tickle I've noticed; December is usually pretty reliable... Currently all the BC interior mountains and raincrust and most of the coastal range aside from Whistler had their snow pack obliterated over 3 days of record breaking warmth and heavy rain.
 
Same down here in tahoe. Supposed to have lows around 20 and mid 20s this week. Highs are mostly 45+ though. Hoping we get some big enough windows to put some snow down. We just need like 5 days of cold temps and low humidity.
 
Here in southern Wisconsin a few of our resorts had opened the 2nd week of November and now it’s bern straight rain and high temps and next week it doesn’t look any different for the forecast
 
I really hope this massive ice crust that just formed from tree line to summit (southern interior anyway) is somehow absorbed into the snowpack. You are not the first person to compare this to 2014/15.... The deep persistent slab is the scourge of the interior, and there is potential for one to form at this layer.... really hope things go the other way, in my experience the deep persistent slab is one of the most challenging risks to adequately manage.
 
Concern is growing as I have flashbacks to the awful season of 2014-2015... No hint of La Nina is present in any long-range forecasts. We are currently sitting on ice up to 2500m throughout all of southern BC and Alberta; while the low elevation snow pack below 1500m has been decimated to due unseasonably warm temps and high elevation rain... Conditions were looking epic until the turn in the weather last Tuesday that gave us 3-4 days of alpine rain... Now things are cooling off, but any snow they've forecast this week for the interior has been a total bust so far. Looking beyond this weekend it appears we are now trending to mild/dry conditions for at least 2 weeks... not good.
 
13858671:LukasSchroeder said:
worried for COP that opened a couple weeks ago, supposed to be +11ºC Wednesday and Thursday, and then 5ºC for the next few days.. gonna be rough for them especially since they just started building the main park up
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13858707:JWillySkeez said:
Patience its all about patience
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Fear not boys, if you look at the back of cop they have like a meter of snow at the top of the park. Not sweat cop will hold out. If not, Lake Louise and sunshine are getting dumped on consistently
 
November has always been a fickle month in BC with wild temperatures swings and very wet vs very dry... December though typically is our snowiest month and one of the best months for conditions and crowd... so seeing a 2-3 week forecast of little to no snow is a bit alarming as we get close to Christmas. Although the past few years January has been pretty bad so maybe that'll switch... a couple weeks ago they were forecasting Dec to be colder and snowier than average and the opposite appears true.
 
At this point we are looking at 2-3 weeks at least of 0 accumulation of snow; much of that with intense alpine inversion temperatures bringing well above freezing temps / melt above the clouds. With nothing on the horizon looking forward.
https://www.whistler.com/weather/
https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/14-day-weather-trend/british-columbia/vancouver

This looks more like a July-Sept pattern; so much for the call of a below average temps and above average precip for Dec predicted.

As long as I've been skiing, this looks to be the driest Dec for the westcoast I can ever remember in what is typically one of the snowiest months... 2014/2015 was a bad year, though December turned out to be one of the strongest months of that season. This year conditions were looking epic until the later part of Novemeber, which as had well above average temperatures since, including a few days of alpine rain... The snow level has been high with pretty much no snow below 1400m and that doesn't look like that'll change anytime soon. If not we will be looking at some of the bleakest snow conditions going into the holidays with much terrain not open.
 
13864429:KravtZ said:
Colorado is BAD right now. Enjoy the fact you have a decent amount of terrain open
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They just started pushing for the dew tour last night I believe. Only 6 days to have it all done. Def not good. They'll get it done but jesus that's a ton of snow to move.

We had a tiny bit on the ground here and there but had some fat rain storms and super warm weather. Lucikly got 2 small storms and now since sunday have had round the clock snowmaking temps. BArely could even make snow before this week. But we're fucking cranking.

Also as far as breck, they blasted 7.2 million gallons of water the other day getting ready for the dew tour.

I saw Utah was starting to look a bit better.
 
13864433:theabortionator said:
They just started pushing for the dew tour last night I believe. Only 6 days to have it all done. Def not good. They'll get it done but jesus that's a ton of snow to move.

We had a tiny bit on the ground here and there but had some fat rain storms and super warm weather. Lucikly got 2 small storms and now since sunday have had round the clock snowmaking temps. BArely could even make snow before this week. But we're fucking cranking.

Also as far as breck, they blasted 7.2 million gallons of water the other day getting ready for the dew tour.

I saw Utah was starting to look a bit better.
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Agree. Hopefully we see some form of reversion to the mean in terms of average snowfall and it turns on pretty quick for some good pow days. Hopefullly someone puts up some jumps also instead of these little crowded rail setups
 
13864448:KravtZ said:
Agree. Hopefully we see some form of reversion to the mean in terms of average snowfall and it turns on pretty quick for some good pow days. Hopefullly someone puts up some jumps also instead of these little crowded rail setups
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The snow will come, don't worry.
 
Expect little reprise from December for the PWN; looking at the longrange we appear to be in for a short blip of storms. Today, Sunday and Tuesday; after which a colder ridge moves in that looks like it will remain for the current 14 day forecast. That pretty much means we could see as little as 4 days of snow for the entire month of December and perhaps as little as 20% of our normal accumulation.,,, After crippling rains at the end of November and an 8 day inversion in the alpine melting high elevation snow the holidays coverage and open terrain will limited. Did anybody say La Nina? I can't recall a worse December for skiing even compared to the 2014/2015 season, which at least had a snowy second half of December.
 
We walked approximately 5.344-miles and Climbed exactly 1,158.86-feet in the dark wearing Ski Boots and carrying Skis for a total of 1:39:28—only to walk back down because there was (literally) no Snow.

886041.jpeg

**This post was edited on Dec 17th 2017 at 7:04:52pm
 
Well the next round of snow will help before it dries out again. Fortunately even though we'll be hitting another rex block high ridge, it will be a cold one at least for BC and Alberta. southern half of BC coast through interior looks to be getting a much needed dump of snow through until Wednesday which should improve conditions immensely going into the holidays even if the taps turn off for another week or two.
 
As per usual it seems Mother Nature delivered in time for the holidays in PNW over the past week. Trending into drier but much colder weather for at least the next week. But conditions have drastically improved and sunny, cold weather is expected to hold.
 
Yet again, mother nature shows she hates the East. It's been dumping all day dry pow pow and still going......only to be ruined tomorrow by freezing rain an hour before lifts open.
 
That sucks, though we pretty much had a very similar occurrence out west this year... granted a lot of places open in nov
 
How quickly things improved in the BC west since the official start of winter. Many ski resorts in the BC southern interior have seen close to 1 meter of snow since the 18th with below average temperatures. Revelstoke received around 130cm over the last two weeks of December... 60 of that falling top to bottom in the last 48 hours as kootenay cold smoke for our busiest weekend of the season.. Arctic outflow winds clashing with pacific moisture has seen us to the end of 2018.

**This post was edited on Dec 30th 2017 at 11:36:37am

**This post was edited on Dec 30th 2017 at 11:38:40am
 
Side note, wtf is going on with Utah? Is this typical for not getting tons of snow by now? Kinda nervous for when I'll be there in February
 
Well La Nina in the west seems to have had little impact so far... most areas saw below average snowfall for Dec with exception of the Okanagan... the bulk of all are snow came from like 5 days; aside from that it's been the same story "2 days of heavy snows, 9+ days of high ridge pressure" The ridiculous resilient ridge seems to be coming more and more common in PWN winters... high pressure either pushing the jet stream north or south as the storm track makes a brief appearances... this has pretty much the case out of the last 3 out of 4 season... the classic PNW winter storm cycle seems to be less and less common with warmer Novembers impacting the mid to low elevation snowpack...
 
These last two days of 50+ in New England have really screwed us over. Had over a foot on the ground in southern VT and it’s all gone... motherfucker
 
Just had an all time week in southern VT with over 2 feet of snow. Classic mother nature then decides to melt all that shit up with mid 40s and rain all next week. FUCK
 
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