Remember 2005?

Awe, 2005 wasn't so bad. Bought two snowboards that year. By March they were practically giving them away.

just did look back. Ended up skiing 65 days that pathetic season. turns out I was so jazzed by the return of the snow (remember that? a 70" base at alpental in a couple weeks) that I skied hard for a good three more months. Had some really cool descents, actually.

My money is on the fact that the snow is waiting to decide when and in how much quantity it decides to fall until after the November election.........no need to get too scared yet!

I kind of don't think whether I hope it will snow or not is going to make that much of a difference but thanks for giving me credit for being able to affect the weather Scotsman and Mr. Oker.

I'm more going on this: www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictio.../seasonal.php?lead=1

It also shouldn't be that much of a surprise that this is the driest late summer we've perhaps ever had. It really hasn't rained since mid-July. There have been a number of winters recently that have hanged their hats on about a three week period of heavy snowfall and without that would have been failures. Up until 2005 all of the winters that were otherwise dry or poor were rescued by such periods. If I recall even in 2005 there was a wet period in the mid-fall before it turned dry.

As to 1977, if that was the year 20 was open until February or so, I did a January climb of S Early Winter Spire after wallowing through 30" of depth hoar which was all the snowpack amounted to at that point. I noticed the Coast of BC was getting good precip, Bella Coola had a forecast of 4" of rain one day last week. Banff seems to be getting rain too (they had about 3/4" a week ago Tuesday, but nothing south of Golden. The Bugs are bone dry.

The latest indicators are backing off, pointing towards a weak El Nino or even a neutral year.

www.nwcn.com/home/?fId=172752281&fPath=/.../local&fDomain=10222

They (the CPC) are using more than El Nino as a predictor. Although I don't understand a lot of this or would care to go through all the detail anyway, some of you may understand it and would care to understand it. www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictio...ong_range/tools.html

What is obvious is that the the monthly CPC outlooks are consistently dry until about May and are consistently in higher than the lowest level of confidence.