Is winter over?

A high temperature of 69 Deg F at Paradise Today. Summer like temperatures for sure.

Telemetry from Paradise:

MM/DD Hour Temp RH Wind Wind Wind HourTotal 24HrTotalSolar
PST F % Avg Max Dir Prec Prec Snow Snow W/m2
5400'5400'5380'5380'5380'5400'5400'5400'5400'5400'

---

1 17 1000 56 11 0 0 303 0 0 74 95 260
1 17 1100 58 9 0 0 281 0 0 71 95 358
1 17 1200 58 10 0 0 346 0 0 72 94 408
1 17 1300 61 6 0 0 17 0 0 71 94 465
1 17 1400 67 6 0 0 76 0 0 72 93 419
1 17 1500 69 5 0 0 46 0 0 72 93 339
1 17 1600 62 8 0 0 133 0 0 68 93 215

In the PNW, low snow, terrible conditions for 1/2 the season doesn't exclude having some of the best powder days late Feb/March/early April.   

And, look on the bright side, the longer the dry spell, the better the ski deal this spring.

In the woeful, woeful PNW winter of 2005, I picked up two snowboards.

They were giving them away by March.

^^^^^This. sometimes the skiing is much better in low snow years than in stormy deep snow years. So far this year (Jan) skiing has been pretty good.

In the snowfall history at Snoqualmie Pass, the worst recorded decade of snow was the 1940's which was followed up in the 1950's with the snowiest decade. The only trend one finds is, it is very unpredictable. Snow storms follow the jet stream and this year it is going above us and hitting the mid-west/east. I'm still holding out hope we will go out strong.

hyak.net/snowfallhist.html

From what I hear this is definitely not the worst snow year on record!! 1981, the year I was born was clearly the worst snow year in the NW! No measurable amount of snow on any of the passes! So I guess we can count our blessings that we can at least ski this year, even if it is lousy. We also have to remember that there is still time for winter to catch up with February and March left to get snow, which normally we get most of our snow anyways. Lets just hope that is the case this year.