Unofficial Rose

 

 The most intense storm since the storm cycle of 2017 is poised to hit the Sierra beginning tonight. Two warnings point to a biggee: 1) a Winter Storm Warning has been issued for the Northern Sacramento Valley including Chico, Red Bluff and Redding which is extremely rare, and: 2) A Blizzard Warning has been issued for the Sierras beginning tonight and running through Friday.  This will create extreme avalanche potential on all slopes. North and East slopes in particular have a dangerous temperature gradient snow layer on the ground level which increases the potential for large destructive avalanches as the slide may break all the way to the ground taking all the new snow with it. Secondly, the winds are forecast to be heinous which will load leeward slopes more than others in such a short time that they will not have much time to stabilize, particularly given the cold temps associated with this storm.  Extreme caution is advised to all backcountry users during the rest o...

The models have come into agreement and when Tahoe Weather Blog and Weather West both say we can expect multiple feet of snow, then you better wax up your skis and shovels. When looking at the liquid precip equivalent and the low temps of this forecast, combined with a subtropical moisture tap is very reminiscent of some of the storms we got in February of 2017. Yes, folks I am betting the house on a minimum of 48" of snow in the Carson Range, and perhaps more.  Batten down the hatches. You can expect blizzard conditions sometime Wed and Thursday which may interrupt transportation and lift operations Sierra wide. This is not a moderate storm but something to prepare for. With the snow levels low enough to bring flakes to parts of the Sacramento Valley and foothill communities like Redding, Placerville and Auburn AND Reno you can expect traffic snarls, road closures, power outages and other issues late this week.  Somebody out there did their snow dance and did a damn good job ...

Those of you who have a modicum of avalanche awareness know that the history of the snowpack is an important ingredient of any avalanche forecast and snowpack assessment. If you have been out much this year and have poked around in the existing snowpack you already know there is a persistent deep layer of unconsolidated temperature gradient or TG snow sitting at the bottom of the Northern Sierra snowpack on most Northern and Eastern exposures in many places due to our early thin snowpack and occasional cold snaps.  If we get repeated storms resulting in a heavy snowpack on top of this crushable and unstable layer the situation can result in deep and destructive large avalanches. This condition is common in Continental snowpacks but much less so in Maritime climates such as our own. That being said, conditions have set up so far in the Northern Sierra's for potential extreme avalanche conditions in the future should we receive heavy snow. As storms begin to move in it should give ev...

 As you can see the 14 day precip model is looking awfully rosy for us... Color are in inches of water so if true, this could be many feet of snow coming our way. Please navigate over to our friends at www.tahoeweatherblog.com for more detailed info on the optimistic forecast. Sven

 You KNOW its low tide in the West when Snowbrains puts out a Powder Alert with a multitude of photos of 1" of new snow in Utah.  THAT is a sad state of affairs. Looks like we may get some smaller storms coming our way starting next weekend although the models seem to be all over the place after the first 2" to 4" dump on Saturday. The prognosticators are doing what they do and are all over the map as well. I cautiously predict... we may get something and "something" is better than nothing at this point. We have now been skiing on about 1.5 feet of snow all season so far plus all the frozen water the snowmakers have added to the pistes for our pleasure.  Sven

 Pulled into the Slide Mountain parking lot Sunday morning at 8:35 with standard expectations of 300 cars ahead of me... the way its been most of the season but, to my surprise... the first row wasn't even filled. Less than a dozen cars and many of those were employees. My wife and I could'd believe it. By the time we got our gear on and were poling into the gates I looked up and still... no skiers. Were they open? Was there a wind hold? Nope, no signs as we pulled right through the entrance and onto the chair where I heard... "Public, Chair 48". Checked on the chair number over my head. Yep, that was us. Now a couple more peeps were coming through the gates as I looked back. 8:40 and we were the first chair... on a weekend? THAT hasn't happened in a long time. Given the fact that the off-piste was a frozen wasteland of frozen vegetables and the wind forecast was for single digits and strong East winds... yeah, OK, thats gunna scare some folks off... but all of th...