Colorado Snow?!

Dry November is not uncommon. Last year was about the same and it ended up being a big snow year. About this time last year it started snowing and didn't stop for two months.

Not unusual at all to have little/no natural snow before mid-December. For now, I'm enjoying my bike.

Mike

Actually over a thirty year average November is one of the 3 snowiest months. The last couple years have been perturbations. In the 20+ plus years I have been skiing the Colorado front range I remember much more is usually open by Thanksgiving. We are only 30% to 55% normal snowpack for this time of year.

ftp://ftp-fc.sc.egov.usda.gov/CO/Sno...pdate_snow.pdf

That would be impossible to measure at the ski areas because they don't actually count snow totals until they open. At my house (9700') snow doesn't accumulate until around Nov 10th and before that it melts so fast that you can't even really accurately measure it.

Snowpack totals don't mean much right now. We could have a massive snow month for October most of which would melt. All it takes is a two-week dry spell (which happens all the time) in early November and snowpack would be low. It would be resolved with the first big big snow day.

Ok, but I've lived here for 50+ years, and as a kid, it was always 50-50 as to whether there would be enough snow for ski areas to open by Thanksgiving. No doubt we are drier than normal, but the variance in snowpack this early in the season is substantial. So, it isn't that unusual to have limited terrain open now.

Mike

Same here as a kid. If you think about it, snow doesn't really stick in a normal October because it's followed by warm temps and it melts even at 10,000 feet (blows away above 11.5k). So before TG there's only a 2-3 week window where storms can make a difference for TG. If that window is wet, great TG. Otherwise not. 50/50 just as you say. Further, that window has no predictive value as to how the snow will be for the rest of the season.

One thing I found very interesting is that I read 150 years of historical newspapers for Summit County for a project. One thing they always kept track of (starting about 1915) was the last car that went over Hoosier Pass (11k, 6 miles South of Breck) which they did not plow. Sometimes it was as late as Christmas.

I rode 136 last week and did Frisco to Montezuma and back yesterday. Not bad for late Nov. Was going to ride today but it's cloudy and a little too cold for me. I'm loving this dry spell...

Looks like North America (the Rockies at least) are a little lazy in snow...
and the Alps after some bad snow years, are getting tons of snow this season so far...

Hope it changes, I'm heading CO/UT for new years and january...

I'm talking about meterological data here for a larger area than just ski areas. Still, it is indicative of the overall snow coverage. Some areas like winter park and Loveland actually do compile data starting before they open (although maybe not measured like they do in season). Winter park used to have it on their website and Loveland's data starts at 10/5 this year on their website. However, this is just one piece of the puzzle correlating data with skiable terrain .


It's still an indicator over a long term for the geographical area that combines both snowfall and weather and probably has pretty good correlation with ski terrain open. This is still better than personal recollections about snow on one's front porch at different times of the year or recollections of when I first skied certain runs.

Testimonials aside, the statistics indicate that on average we should have more snow now than we do right now at the end of November and this is more atypical than typical if one assumes the data follows normal statistics. There are a number of records available listed on the link below. Please check them out.
http://www.co.nrcs.usda.gov/snow/snow/snow_all.html
In particular:
http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/reports...ki+West+Report
shows for copper/breckenridge they are at 50% normal in both snowfall and snow water equivalent. I'm sure there are more detailed local recods available somewhere also. Unfortunately the best statistic available would be #acres or % open for skiing by week by ski area by year but that is not readily available.
Let's hope it starts snowing in December like last year.

See you on the slopes.

ok, if its data you want:

http://webpages.charter.net/tcrocker818/colohist.htm

I think this shows what Breckview and I have been saying.

Mike

So what is your meterological source for the statement, "Actually over a thirty year average November is one of the 3 snowiest months". I'm not saying you're wrong since we only get signficant snow in six months anyway. But as I said the snowfall stats for November at the ski areas are not remotely accurate.

Again it doesn't mean much.

First, Breck just basically makes up a number on opening day that is a rough estimate (always on the low side) of how much snow they received before the open. I'm sure the others do the same. There's no way anybody hikes up to the stake in October to measure.

Secondly, if 100% of "normal" is currently 36" and we've rec'd 18", that can be made up in one day, maybe tomorrow. As opposed to say February, if the normal were 250" and we were 50% of that. 125" would be darn hard to make up and therefore far more meaningful information.

You seem to be mixing resort base reports with scientific snowfall and snowpack data taken by Gov't entities like NOAA and the National Weather Service. I don't know how you can say the real data dosen't mean much. The original point is that for this time of year we have an atypical shortage of snow based on this real data and as a result less terrain is open than normal. The link provided by Habacomike (Although not a scientific site it seems to have been compiled from a mixture of real data and resort data) shows by the end of Nov typically 40% or more terrain is open although it is a little hard to interpret. Have you checked the reports today? None of the runs I typically ski on Thanksgiving are open although like I said testimonials are not data. Again, In order to really answer the question "Is there typically (on average) more terrain open by the end of Nov?" we would need the %terrain open by week for the last 30 years or so. The link by Habacomike is an attempt to show this but the increments in open terrain are pretty coarse.

Check this for snowfall by month for colorado cities.
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/htmlfiles/co/co.sno.html

| OF RECORD | JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC YEAR

BRECKENRIDGE | 1948-2007 | 22.0 21.0 24.8 22.6 10.0 1.6 0.0 0.0 3.6 11.2 23.4 22.8 163.

I need to head up to the mountains now so have a good Thanksgiving and I hope you get some good turns in regardless of the conditions.

I'm not confused. I know exactly where the SnoTel site is on Hoosier Pass and it hasn't been there very long nor does it accurately reflect what happens at the Breck ski area. (Not even remotely close.)

Thanks for that link! If you haven't noticed, I'm a weather geek.

I know exactly where the numbers above are measured as well. It's in somebody's backyard in town. He gets paid like $22.35 per month to keep track of the data. It's not all that "scientific" but pretty accurate. It sorta reflects what happens at the ski area as town gets about half what the ski area gets over the totality of the season but not on a per snowfall basis. Many days the ski area gets a few inches but town gets nothing.

Same to you. I'll be heading for the SoCal beach for a couple weeks so no turns for me until the snow gets better.

Breckview,

I ended up not going up yesterday. I'll head up Friday. I'm kind of into weather data also (but I'd still rather ski). I'm the lead optical engineer for a space based Ozone sensor (OMPS) that is scheduled to fly on the pathfinder mission for the 8 billion dollar National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS), a next gen weather satellite for NOAA and the Air Force. NPOESS has a multitude of instruments and unfortunately also has a plethora of technical and cost issues although our instrument is ready to go. OMPS senses backscattered UV light to measure a 3D profile of Ozone in the earths atmosphere.

If your are interested check out the link to see what NOAA is up to:
http://npoess.noaa.gov/index.php?pg=omps

It is interesting to hear where some of the ground based snowfall data comes from. I agree that the Hoosier Pass and Town data dosen't reflect the mid-mountain snowfall as you mention. I am just suggesting that the NOAA or other Gov't data is useful for correlating open terrain from year to year at different times of the season. Over time the snowfall variation in a localized area should follow the larger scale composite weather data in a relative sense. The Snowpack Snotel data seems like it has pretty good correlation but I don't have the data to run statistical correlation coefficients. It tracked pretty well last year based on causually looking at the Snotel maps each week and the terrain reports.
By the way there is some indication weather data follows a more fractal statistical model than a gaussian statistical model (as does a lot of "rough" natural phenomena). Basically fractal based statistical distributions accomondate data outliers better due to slower tail offs of the wings in the distribution functions. Suprisingly the same applies to economic data (Mandelbrot and Hudson). I'm out of my area of expertise here but there are good books about fractal theory out there if you are interested.

At least the beach won't catch on fire but embers could ruin your cocktail.

It's Thanksgiving.

this week's dry spell and November's lackluster snowfall totals mean nothing today as God has dashed 6" of snow on my house, car, bike and favorite ski hill.

Colorado ski areas struggle to open for Thanksgiving every year but close mid April when the base depth is usually at it's deepest!
We should all just move one month back (on the skier calender) and ski from Dec to May!!... Like nature intended...

I am in wholehearted agreement with the above sentiment, which I can thankfully indulge personally at Mammoth.

Here's the 1988-2002 source data for that chart: http://people.montana.com/~jbraun/coloearly.htm

Month-by-month snowfall averages are fairly even in Colorado. So the best way to look at November being half normal snow is that we're 2 weeks behind schedule. Given immediate forecast of more of the same, you could argue it's 3 weeks. Therefore the expectation is that Christmas will look like early-to-mid-December of a normal year, mid-January like Christmas, and some of the marquee steep stuff might not be skiable until February. The 25th percentile in my chart is likely close to a best estimate for the next month or so.

We all know that a year ago the situation was similar, and starting Dec. 1 it started dumping like crazy. Nonetheless that is a very aberrent pattern in most of Colorado. The more typical situation is frequent storms of 3-9 inches. Combined with Colorado's very low water content, base depths (and open terrain) tend to rise very gradually.

Out here in the Pacific States it works differently. Conditions pretty much suck until that first big dump, which often opens the majority of terrain within a very short period of time. We had a decent size storm at the end of October, which is the reason Mammoth is 40% open now. Unfortunately for Tahoe, most of the time during that storm the snow level was around 9,500 feet. With a warm November almost no one is open at Tahoe yet.

there is no good excuse to not ski late season.

We weren't forecast to get much of anything but it's been snowing all day in Breck and it's currently dumping heavy. Hopefully it will keep snowing and November won't end up being all that dry after all.

I know it's very hard to predict,
but do you think we'll be able to ski Vail back bowls in the first week of Jan?

Excuse or not some people are ready for bking season by April and the weather can suck for that just like by Nov some are ready for skiing and the weather can suck for that. No excuses just reality for some people.....

Biking season is from July to december skiing is from janurary to june

If you're serious about skiing, you soon learn that Bushwacker is correct about timing, particularly in Colorado. At most Colorado areas April is way better than December. Steamboat and maybe Vail would be the exceptions.

It's very unusual (maybe 10%) for NONE of the Back Bowls to be open early January. With the slow start we might raise those odds to 20% this year. Likely scenario is that some but not all of that terrain will be open. Vail will make a strong effort to maintain a skiable path down there to access Blue Sky Basin, which faces north and probably is the snowiest part of the area.

Whatever floats your boat

I've lived and skied seriously in Colorado for 18 years and most Colorado ski areas are closed after ~April 15th. They don't close because they are out of snow they close because it's not profitable to remain open as most people aren't interested in skiing anymore. I've had great powder at the Basin in May but in general I'd rather ride my bike when it's warm and ski when's it cold.

That usually means Biking Apr/May through Oct and skiing Nov through Apr. Of course I did a very nice 60 mile ride last Saturday so. This year and last that mean very little of the mountain in open in Nov but it's open and it's still skiing just like a 25 mile ride at lunch is still bike ride

Precisely the problem. Thus I try to be a noisy advocate to correct it. The Euros seems to "get it" better than the Americans. Perhaps that is because November/December are even less reliable than here. My impression is that Easter Week is very big in the Alps.

Terrible early conditions; only 16 inches last night. Well, off to work. Somebody's gotta do it!

You were a couple of days off, but I think we got it.

Actually, if you have kids, there are a lot of reasons it's difficult to ski late season. Spring sports start in February anymore, and by March your weekends are booked up with soccer/baseball/lacrosse/whatever.

Not everyone has kids, but there is a large chunk of skiers who do.