powderfreak

29F to 72F today at home in the valley… and already dropping back into the 40s. My diurnal swing fetish is satiated.

What a day. It’s warm, we’ve got 55F up here at 3,600ft. Snow crying for its mama.

Ahhh… way to add substance to a discussion by just throwing gasoline on a fire. I still don’t get the “alarmed” or “worried” aspect of the discussion. It’s something that’s happening and science shouldn’t have emotions attached to it.

Yes the hyperbole doesn’t help any discussion and there’s a lot of hyperbole in society on all sides of the coin. All I was saying is we are in a warming period on the long term curve. Not worried about it and not making any assumptions on 10,000 years from now or what caused it or what to do about it. Don't really care about that to be honest. Just it is what it is. Enjoy the awesome Sunday weather Wolfie.

No kidding, no one said it won’t snow. Where was that said? I’m watching snow melt as I type this . I don’t know why this topic gets people so tweaked. It’s just a casual discussion of something that’s happening… like the sun rising and setting. We literally believe the same thing, it’s warmed and cooled before in history and we are on the warm swing now. Isn’t that undeniable? This is the warm swing. Like I don’t know why it’s so combative? Just imagine we are discussing increasing precipitation amounts.

I just want to be clear, I wasn’t worried or even trying to imply worry when asking you if it “truly evens out over time.” Not sure why there’s always this assumption of worry or not. We are just talking about a climate trend that’s fairly undeniable. Nothing else is loaded into those statements.

27F at SLK to 55F at ORH. Large temp variation across the region this evening.

Wolfie, you think that temps will be below normal for a long enough period of time to cancel out all the warm departures over a longer duration? Like in the long run? Compared against “normals” that even rise every 10 years and cheat the temps from 50 years ago? Or do you say that just as, there will be periods of colder than normal weather still? I think we are going to continue to get short-duration higher-end cold season events (QPF rich storms into barely 0C thermals). The mean thermals though will also continue to average out on the warmer than normal side with plenty of unfavorable parameters.

That sounds like exactly where he’s supposed to be. Don't disturb his leaves and he won’t come out, ha ha.

28F to 64F so far. What a day.

Radiators mount up. IDJ at 38F and TAN at 37F… while ORH at 47F is a healthy elevational gradient.

This February sun angle and E/NE facing aspect of the Mansfield ski trails doesn't melt snow very fast these days, despite summit temps around 50F today.

What a day. Hit 64F at MVL and 61F at 1500ft here. That sun angle and NE facing aspect really limiting melting over there with snow cover still down near 1500ft in spots… while south facing is almost bare to 3,000ft.

Could also just use snow depth days to actually figure it out. Not saying your memory is wrong but anecdotal memories can be tough to judge climate trends. My guess is overall SDD are down but there are still some big spikes mixed in for big winters that memory latches onto.

Ahh I messed up, I was looking too much at mid-October snows. There are late October snows that go through. Like in Oct 1976 it snows on the 18th, then melts, then snows again later and carries it through.

Ahh, so 3 years but that’s a long dataset. Crazy that 78” can fall in October and still melt in November. Its hard to hold onto snow even at 6K feet.

I guess I should say mid-October. Maybe there is a some Halloween snow up there that lasted. I know it hasn’t happened on Mansfield.

I don’t think October snow has ever lasted, even on MWN.

October vibe in the neighborhood before sundown. Being along the river, walking the dog, it's fake cold prone. While the upper ski slopes face E/NE and are shadowed during the max diurnal heating time of day (excellent snow preservation on that eastern slope of Mansfield)... we see some decent afternoon sunshine in the valley. Once we lose that insolation, it drops fast. Local PWS and MVL are 30-32F this evening. Looks like SLK, HIE, BML ASOS are below freezing already. It's kind of crazy that ORH is at 50 degrees right now.

Some scenes from yesterday…

It was legit. We got 14-15” in two days. Settled to 12” on the ground.

I was just looking at the Mansfield Stake Coop data... the earliest 12" or greater depth was ironically this same date October 16th, back in 2010. From what I saw, it looks like official depth should be 12" on today's report. The mean says November 20th. The latest it's ever hit 12" or higher at any point was back in January 4, 2016 (that was the only year with 0" on Christmas Day). Records back to 1954. There are a lot of bigger storms grouped in the October 25 - 31st time frame. But the 16th is early. It is interesting how warm the ground is and how much that was eating into snowfall from underneath. The elevated snow boards and things like that deck and table that are elevated and not exposed to warm ground seemed to accumulate more like 14-16". But ground cover of 12" sounds right.

This is nuts. Gondola open for summer rides. Folks are like WTF. I’ve seen some big snows later in October, but for October 16th, this is impressive. Not seating outdoor at the Cliff House today.

Snowmobiles and snowcats are out to try and open the Gondola for “summer/fall ops” ha. From Lift Ops…

Good grief.