Sadly, there was no Steenburgh winter this year, that period from when Alta-Collins reaches a 100" snow depth to 10 February when day length and solar angles start to increase rapidly, with the sun having an increasingly caustic impact on the snow. Peak snow depth at Alta-Collins was 97 inches in early January, so we were close, but close is not close enough for the snow snobbery that we promote on this blog.
Thus, spring begins today. You're probably already noticing the sun rising earlier and setting later. Maybe you'r noticing the sun more on slopes that were often topographically shaded in December (Collins Gulch I'm thinking of you).
I continue to monitor the medium-range forecast. It's not changing a lot on the large scale. The ridge over the northeast Pacific continues to dominate, with out best hope being troughs that drop down into the western US from the northwest.
The next one is forecast to be affecting Utah on Tuesday. Incredulously, in the GFS forecast below, the system is too far west for us to get a direct hit.
The GFS is just one forecast. There are some members of our downscaled NAEFS that are more optimistic, although a majority of members are less than the coveted 10 inch deep-powder event.
I guess there's always hope.
The real action is now at the legislature, trying to decide how to allocate water in an emergency...
ReplyDeleteI don't even care about skiing at this point, I just want to be able to take a shower this summer and not have the forest burn down.
Good post, Jim! How did you settle on Feb 10?
ReplyDeleteA wise snow-safety expert once mentioned it to me and it works damn good!
DeleteVaries by latitude. I assume Jim picked Feb.10 based upon personal backcountry ski experience in the Wasatch. If that applies at latitude 40, the equivalent solar intensity at latitude 50 in Canada is March 6.
ReplyDeleteTony is correct. This is a Utah-centric "metric."
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