The great winter that wasn't?

Mark, I didn't mean to lurk and then "pounce" on you, sorry about that. I guess it all depends where you go and look, the North Cascades are indeed suffering for snow at low elevations (people are driving 18 miles up Cascade River Rd to 2000 ft in February???), while the normally much-warmer South Cascades are unusually flush with snow down low (there's solid snowcover at 1500 ft near St Helens). I think much of this low elevation disparity dates to the big snows that reached down to sea level in southern WA and northern OR during early January, while northern WA largely missed out. And it has definitely been unusually dry in the North Cascades the past 3 months, even most high-elevation sites in the interior like Rainy, Washington, and Harts Passes are way below-normal in snowpack, and only Mt Baker Ski Area seems close to normal depth.<br><br>Phil, regarding snowdepth data at sites like Jasper Pass: the NRCS has run a program of monthly manual snow course measurements since the 1930s, in addition to their more recent SNOTEL sites since the late 1970s. The archived data can be found on their website, NRCS Snow Courses . Unfortunately, regular data is still acquired for only a few of these snow courses, due to budget cutbacks and also being supplanted by nearby automated SNOTEL sites. It's kind of a shame that they would just stop taking data at the highest-snowdepth sites in North America. <br>

Great thread guys! Amar, I like what you have to say about the jet stream working its way north again, I wouldn't bet against it. <br><br>As for Cascade River Road, Jason and I were able to drive past mile 20 early last April (2003). I'd be curious to hear exactly how low impassable snowcover was in spring 2002. (Phil, did you make this observation at some point?) I'll commit to making it a personal mission to provide a few observations about winter and spring snow levels along Cascade River Road for the next few years, just for the sake of data.

In early February 2002, Cascade River Road was plowed to the 6.5 mile mark, where there was 2 feet of snow (elevation 1200ft)? I don't know how normal that is, or how long that lasted, but that was a "good snow year". Here we are complaining about the snowpack this year, but in mid-January, there was at least a foot and half of snow in Index (600ft). But that didn't last long.<br><br>I was up there (Cascade river) in Jan 2001 I think, and I could drive at least to the Eldo lot, but that was exceptionally low snow-cover then (there was only around a foot or two at the cascade pass TH @ 3600ft)<br><br>It would be interesting to have a record of how far it is drivable in each month... seems like the low elevation snowpack is so variable on the west side that it makes it hard to plan trips.<br><br>

regarding snowdepth data at sites like Jasper Pass: the NRCS has run a program of monthly manual snow course measurements since the 1930s,

<br><br>Thanks for the link. It doesn't give a lot of details, but it appears that these measurements were done in person... on helicopter, or on foot?? For some reason, I just have a hard time believing that it was someone's job to bushwhack up to Jasper Pass in mid-winter (I'd be willing to do it though, if good snowpack made upper Goodell Creek easy travel ). They must have choppered in, right? Looks like the data is pretty discontinuous, so the measurements must have been conditions dependent somehow.<br><br>

We walked to 4000 ft without any snow on Snowking last February (Feb 8th or so, 2003; there is a TR posted on this site). Remember last winter started very, very slow without any snow at all until mid-Dec, then the entire month of January was very warm, 5 degrees above normal. Most of our snow last winter came after mid-Feb. This winter had an extremely prolonged cold streak around Christmas and New Year's with very low snow levels. Remember our "historical" Seattle snow event? Some friends reported a foot or more snow on the Cascade River road at the Sibley Creek turnoff in late Dec.<br><br>There is a long history of manual "snow course" surveys to chart snowdepth. Skiers or snow shoers would walk along a designated course and take snowdepth measurements at designated spots, then average them. Most of the snow courses have stopped and been replaced with automated measurements. There is a researcher at UW, Philip Mote, who took this historical data and analyzed it, looking for long term trends.

Phil, many of the remote snow courses have names such as "Jasper Pass AM" or "Easy Pass AM", where AM stands for Aerial Marker. These courses were designed to be read from low-flying aircraft, supplemented by occasional manual ground measurements. There is some good info available about this on the NRCS website, but it's not always easy to find. This link is a good starting point, and this link has a nice description of manual and aerial surveys. Also check out the WA 2004 Snow Survey Schedule , which shows that Jasper Pass is supposed to read from the air on the 1st of Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, and May, supplemented with manual surveys on Feb 1 and Apr 1. But many of the courses listed on the schedule (including Jasper Pass) have not actually been measured for several years, so it appears that the schedule is overly optimistic and bears little connection to reality.<br>