Snow Conditions for X-mas Week

I was just up at Hyak and the conditions of the snow are pretty bad. I was very suprised to find it snowing when I arrived at noon, with a light mix of some rain. It then changed to some sort of sleet crud then light rain and/or nothing.... The snow itself is just a crusty ice sheet. My buddy that came up with me says "the snow is pretty good under all this ice".......<br><br>Doesn't look good for the Christmas weekend.

i'd been hoping for a repeat of x-mas 2 years ago, now that was sweet!

I was up at Blewett pass today harvesting a taunembaum with my eldest daughter. It was warm (low 30s), but there seems to be pretty decent coverage and this is all protected by a nice ice crust thanks to the freezing rain. The snowpack seems to be holding up fairly well. I skied at Mission yesterday and today and they don't seem to be losing to much snow down low. Not much in the way of precip. yesterday, but today there was plenty of rain, freezing rain at the base. They got a few inches of new snow this morning from midway up. When I left at 1500 it was just dumping snow from midmountain and above. Skiing both days was a pleasant surprise, loose granular and fresh, wet snow today. Pouring rain in the lot and partway back to town.

The mountain forecast is maybe not quite so gloomy if it holds. Yes there will be periods of warm air, but also periods of lowering freezing levels with probably the worst of the heat coming within the next few days. It sounds like after Monday the trends will be for cooling and stormy and maybe a good recovery of the snowpack.<br><br>Given the gloomy forecast over the last few days, I have been more than surprised at the fact that at Steven's the web cam has shown that snow has fallen on and off during this whole period, interspersed with cold rain or freezing rain. Such as this morning. The DOT camera this morning shows a very slushy drive with continuing snow, which means that at least some accumulating snow has occurred even though the ski area reports none.<br><br>That defies to some extent the NWS suggestions that all the cold air is coming from just the lowlands east of the passes. If that were so, the typical inversion at places like Stevens, which are very shallow could not support the snow. So the free air freezing levels of 10000ft. reported for areas west of the crest may be true, I think that there is a bit of a different story going on in the mountains.<br><br>There seems to be extremely slow progression of the major atmospheric gyres this year. It seems that we are on the backside of that huge high pressure system that gave us two weeks of dry and this transition eastward of the boundary will hopefully result in a more west east or NW to east flow soon. In fact this whole system seems less like a pineapple express, and not oriented so much SW to NE as would be typical.<br><br>Lets hope.<br><br>Alan

Just to underscore Alan's reading of the forecast, here's a key excerpt from this AM:<br><br>extended forecast models indicated a very stormy end to the year <br>as several increasingly strong weather disturbances track over <br>the region in a gradually strengthening and slowly cooler west to <br>southwest upper flow. The first disturbance should spread <br>increasing moderate rain or snow to the region mid-late Monday, <br>preceded by slightly rising freezing levels and followed by <br>cooler more showery weather late Monday night, with a much <br>stronger weather system poised to move over the area mid-late <br>Tuesday into early Wednesday and a final moderate though slightly <br>splitting disturbance expected mid-late Wednesday into early <br>Thursday. While a brief but significant rise in freezing levels <br>is likely ahead of the first strong disturbance mid-day Tuesday, <br>significant cooling is expected with and behind the disturbance <br>when moderate to heavy snow showers are likely, and only very <br>limited warming is likely with the second disturbance on <br>Wednesday when most precipitation should remain as snow.

vaguely positive!