Who broke the calendar?

Two weekends of perfect weather in a row. Temperatures in the 70s. Freezing levels above 10,000 feet. What happened to May and June? This feels like early July.<br><br>Oh well, enjoy it while you can. I skied along the North Cascade highway Friday and found wonderful corn snow. The forecast is calling for more "normal" weather next week. A good thing, I guess. Otherwise it's going to be an awfully short spring skiing season ...<br>

Here in Los Alamos there are flakes coming down and an inch of snow on the ground. Go figure.

I, too, have been reveling in the great weekend weather while lamenting its consequences on our summer snow pack... <br>You know, it's that "mixed emotion" thing -- kinda like watching your mother-in-law driving over a cliff in your new Corvette <br>Looks like it may have turned tho, maybe we'll get a bit more snow yet, to help out.

I have a question for those in the know. What melts the snopack more, hot sunny weather, or rain? On our volcano trip last June, Amar said something about hot weather melting 4 inches a day. I suppose if it rains it is cooler by nature and by this time the snowpack has channels for the water to flow through. Maybe rain has more of an effect on the early/mid season snowpack?

Alpentalcorey. <br><br>Those were my same thoughts when I read this thread.<br><br>The fastest I've ever seen snow melt was at my house.<br>The Christmas storm in '95. Sixteen inches on the ground. The wind changed to southerly. No rain. No sun. Breezy and warm. Like the snow evaporated. Almost visibly.<br><br>But I did remark to myself yesterday about how high the rivers were for being a no-rain melting event.

I have a question for those in the know.  What melts the snopack more, hot sunny weather, or rain?

<br><br>Didn't the native Americans call a Chinook wind a "snow eater" or something like that? (A bit of brain sludge from who-knows-where.) So Wickstad might be onto something, perhaps a warm wind with low humidity can melt snow fastest of all.<br><br>Between sun and rain, I'd vote for sun, but that's just a guess. Some years ago, in July, my brothers and I left our tents on the Challenger Glacier and went to climb Mt Fury. When we returned after a long sunny day, our tents were perched on pedestals about a foot high. That was the most dramatic snow melt/settlement event I've ever observed