The great winter that wasn't?

Amar - it looks like your letting facts get in the way of a good whine

Amar, the snow stats on your webpage are fascinating, especially the snowdepth comparisons. Where did you get stats on remote sites like Jasper Pass, Easy Pass, etc...? Who measures that, there aren't even snotel sites there.

Don't question the guy that has the maps!

Mmmm. Am I confusing my own, limited observations with "truth" again? You'd think I'd learn.<br><br>For whatever it's worth, there is less snow down low in the North Fork Nooksack valley than there has been most winters during the 8 years I've lived here. However, I should know better than to generalize based on that fact...particularly considering all the silent listeners, waiting to pounce. <br><br>Enjoy,<br><br>Mark

Actually I appreciate the hard data, but things did seem like they were tending to look a lot like spring yesterday on the West side and near the crest. Except for the cold temps which tended to refreeze the melted snow that had been exposed to the near 40 degree temps from the day before.<br><br>I think that this year seems unique and it may be reflected in the central to north cascades only. But in the twelve years that I have lived here I have yet to notice a year where the big avalanche cones along the west approach to Stevens have failed to develop. Noone even along the road! They were there even last year. Also, the amount of snow that has slid on all the chutes seems less.<br><br>This of course does not relate to the snow depths. Also, it seems that the weather pattern seems to be more variable, with multiple long periods (weeks) of relative snow drought. Usually the storm droughts occur once or twice a season with the norm of having fairly consistent wet systems arriving one after the other (each with a highly variable ability to dump snow). The usual low level pattern here is that the storms are slow to leave with the next one early to arrive, resulting in our normal pattern of weeks on end of cloudy drizzly and rainy weather. Typically any local forcaster's bright outlook for a "potential" for a nice day are dashed by that pattern.<br><br>Lately, the forecasters' routine reponse to such a pattern means that they are failing often this season. Today being the perfect example. Bright and sunny on a day with an expected storm. Looking at the satellite and wow the storm just evaporated! All this with a low pressure system that had a lower pressure than models predicted and was moving smack at us.<br><br>Except for the occurance of a few very rich storms early and mid season, this year seems to lack the more regular deposits of moderate snow falls with the occasional big dump and even the heavy warm rains that tend to settle (through active avalanche cycles) and melt. Seems the jet stream has been splitting more often and when present over the area, just doesn't seem to have the normal push that generates the significant orographic snowfalls.<br><br><br><br>

I think Mark was talking about low-elevation west-side sites - not places like Snoqualmie Pass that receive cold east side air.<br><br>But for example where I was yesterday at a west-side site,  there wasn't any snow until 2000ft elevation.  At 3000ft elevation, there was maybe a foot and a half in the open, and none in the woods. This was on a north-facing slope. South-facing slopes were obviously worse off.   Certainly that's way below normal?  I have a lot of ideas for tours that have low elevation starts, and I'm finding it hard to make it happen.<br><br>It's not quite as bad as it was last year *before* the storms picked up steam in late Feb.  But certainly worse than the "bad snow year" everyone was complaining about in 2000-2001.<br><br>Just my opinion....