looking pretty dire

My wife worked at Whiteface today in the rain and said things took a big hit from the rain.  Mt. Run and Wilderness she says has huge brown spots in them.


Are we going to be ok for making Easter based on the long range forecast?  Last year ended so suddenly I'm getting worried.

Actually things don't look so bad for the long range...We cool back down and as of now no major rain events. Looks like things freeze solid on Thursday..
Then again it's the crazy month of March..

Yep - all the models show cool temps so we should hold on to the snow pack, but will we get more?

The GFS Medium range forecast is showing a big storm forming off to the east of LI early  to mid next week.  They have it too far off the coast for a big one but the way the storms have been deepening and pulling moisture off the ocean, I would take another day like last Friday or two.  Haven't checked the Euro yet...

There's supposed to be a clipper coming through this friday/saturday.  Any chance we get a little snow from that?

There is lots of chatter about early next week.  Not getting my hopes up too much yet.

Coach, I was hopefull that with Aaron as the new Mtn Mgr that the snowmaking crew would be directed to put more snow on all the usual holes that open up in all the usual spots come spring. It seems like that has not happened, looks like same old same old, any idea why? I know Aaron certainly knows the hill well enough to be aware of the issue but all the usual spots are opening and growning. Maybe next year?

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^  amazing....  

snowmaking has a set budget.

we had two major meltdowns which required complete resufacing of the mtn.

we've had marginal help from Mother Nature.

I was pleasantly suprised on my drive by this morning to NOT see brown in the usual places.

No snow from the clipper..It dives to the DelMar then out to sea..
Should be sunny and cold for the ADK's..
Maybe a rain event tues  .

What is the WINTER (ie frozen/blizzard) version of a gully washer?

I see no support for a rain event on Tuesday, looks cold relative to average for the next two weeks.

 looks kind of showery to me..there will be some snow on the backside

 

GFS has been awful as of late, I wouldnt use it past day 2.

Yeah you're right...

endoftheline wrote

Coach, I was hopefull that with Aaron as the new Mtn Mgr that the snowmaking crew would be directed to put more snow on all the usual holes that open up in all the usual spots come spring. It seems like that has not happened, looks like same old same old, any idea why? I know Aaron certainly knows the hill well enough to be aware of the issue but all the usual spots are opening and growning. Maybe next year?

Hey I'm no snowmaking/grooming expert but... of course I have something to say.

I'd think that if you were trying to stockpile snow for a meltdown or rainstorm you wouldn't pile it the spots that routinely show up as brown spots. Those spots could be rivers in a rainstorm, or in some other way more vulnerable to damage. Wouldn't it make sense to put the snow in some "safer" spot and then move it with a groomer to cover the bare spots?

Open Snow is saying Monday will be 12"+ at Gore and 1-6" at Gore. Opinions?

40+ years ago we put men on the Moon.  We now sequence DNA and create medicines to cure things that have killed people forever.  When the heck will we be able to forecast weather 5 days out or even 2 days? Given the advances in science and technology you would think that this would be a done deal by now.

No offense to the weather guys but it seems weather is still in the blood letter stage compared to the rest of the science.  Is it a money issue?  I would think that if a enough money was put into it by a technology company they could accurately forecast weather and there would be a payoff there.  Think about it - if Google would spend a $50 billions or some other sum could they solve this and then own the weather forecasting market for as long as the patent for the weather model lasted?

I was just reading about this point.

Short answer is that models are very susceptible to minor variances in wind direction, temperature, etc. and the further out the forecast, the less accurate the models (because they can't predict which way these small changes will go). In other words, a couple of degrees makes a big difference on the day of the storm at ground level, but a huge difference in long range models 1 mile in the air...

I think the models are pretty awesome.

The east is a major pain to forecast. Out west - at 10,000 feet - if there is a storm coming, it will snow between November and maybe April (?) or whatever.

Everything is sooo borderline is the east you can be 90% right about what is happening and still be totally wrong about what will fall at 2000 feet.

Coach Z wrote

Open Snow is saying Monday will be 12"+ at Gore and 1-6" at Gore. Opinions?

My opinion = I choose 12"+  

Coach Z wrote

40+ years ago we put men on the Moon.  We now sequence DNA and create medicines to cure things that have killed people forever.  When the heck will we be able to forecast weather 5 days out or even 2 days? Given the advances in science and technology you would think that this would be a done deal by now.

Chaos theory. Those damn butterflies flapping their wings.

Predicting weather is like rolling dice, you know from past experience the answer will be somewhere between 1 and 6.

According to todays weather forecast it looks like the storm will pass south and get torn apart in the upper atmosphere. i think we will roll a 0.

Again I meant no offense to those you make forecasts -just trying to understand why its so difficult to forecast.  

For my trip to Snowmass I followed Joel's Open Snow forecasts for Colorado for weeks and it seems he is pretty darn good.  I guess the Northeast is just so much more complicated than Colorado.

For those educated in the weather do you think that if a big company like Microsoft of Google made a major investment that weather forecasting could get better?