STimes: Possible record-setting bad snow year

Surprised nobody has posted about this yet...

Interesting article in the Seattle Times today:

seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2025656599_nosnowxml.html

[size=12pt]It’s a bad snow year in the NW; possibly record-setting bad[/size]

Snowfall in the mountains is at record low levels, and forecasts for the rest of the season don’t offer much hope. Some skiers and resort operators are trying to remain optimistic, while others are looking ahead to better times next year.

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The gist of the article is that, if Snoqualmie Pass doesn't get almost 10 feet of snow before the end of May, it will break the 1976-77 record for the lowest seasonal snow total on record. The following graphic is most interesting:



Of course, if you read the article, you'll learn that in 1976-77, the snowfall total at this point in the year was even worse than this year. But apparently we got a lot of late snow that year, and there's no guarantee that will happen again.

Surprised nobody has posted about this yet...

Interesting article in the Seattle Times today:

I'm surprised that you're jumping on this bandwagon of despair too, Lowell. I think it's a terrible and overblown article, full of distortions and hyperbole -- see below.

But it seems like I may be the only one left soon trying to set the facts straight, and also holding out hope for this season. I am determined to have another great ski season (last year was really outstanding for me), and it is very likely that the Cascades will once again be able to provide me with adequate snowpack to do that, throughout the rest of winter, spring, and most of the summer too. Hopefully others will choose to join that bandwagon, not the one of despair, and will not give up all hope for this ski season.

Articles like this one that just feed people's already way-too-negative (mis)perceptions of this season do nothing good for anyone, especially for the ski industry and more importantly the SKI COMMUNITY of which we are all part. A fair and balanced approach would be much more helpful than all this extreme negativity and overblown hyperbole.

Of course, if you read the article, you'll learn that in 1976-77, the snowfall total at this point in the year was even worse than this year. But apparently we got a lot of late snow that year, and there's no guarantee that will happen again.

That crucial info (44" till now in 1976-77, 147" after now) is nowhere to be found in the text of article, not in the "Originally published February 8, 2015 at 7:27 PM" version, nor in the current "Page modified February 9, 2015 at 4:57 PM" version. It is in that graphic which you copied above, but I never even saw that graphic on my first 2 readings of the article this morning, since it is well-hidden as image #4 of 5 in the sidebar. I'm sure many other readers also did not click through all the sidebar graphics either.

I wrote an email to the author Erik Lacitis before noon today, it is copied below (in the email I included some personal background info about myself and my qualifications regarding snow climatology, which I've deleted from this otherwise exact quote):

Just writing to you about some major errors and distortions in your article seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2025656599_nosnowxml.html published yesterday.

Frankly, by the numbers, this season is nowhere near record lows for snowpack or snowfall as of now at almost any site in the Northwest -- and in order to end up at record lows, this year would actually have to get MUCH WORSE than it has been! This year is well below-normal, but other years (including 2005 and 1977) have been much worse up to this point. Your article quotes a number of percentages from the February 1 NWAC Climatological Snowdepth Report, but fails to mention that the current snowdepths are all far above the record lows shown in the same report. Why not state that fact, why intentionally hide it? This year could possibly end up at record lows, but it is statistically unlikely to do so given how far above record lows it is as of now.

Using your article's example of 1976-77 at Snoqualmie Pass, the snowdepth on 01Feb1977 was only 8" and decreased to 4" by 15Feb1977, while this year Snoqualmie had 27" on 01Feb2015 and still 26" as of today. Obviously far better this year. Your article states that snowfall has only been 74" so far this year, and 1976-77 had 191" for the season, but it fails to mention that 1976-77 had only 44" as of now. Why leave that critical fact out?? Your statement that "Snoqualmie would need a phenomenal 117 more inches of snow to stay out of the record book" is totally misleading and wrong, since the AVERAGE snowfall from now though the end of the season at Snoqualmie is about 150", and even in the record-low 1976-77 season, they got 147" after this point. So clearly, 117" more would NOT be "phenomenal" at all, but would actually be well below-normal snowfall for the rest of the year. How did you come up with the idea that 117" more after this point would be "phenomenal"? Just made it up?

And by the way, the real record-low annual snowfall for Snoqualmie Pass is 172" in 1941-42, although I realize that older data is not included on the WSDOT website. However, that data is available from the National Climatic Data Center and also the Western Regional Climate Center websites. So Snoqualmie only needs 98" more to "stay out of the record book", and statistically, it has better than an 80% chance of getting that much more the rest of the season. It might not, but it is very likely that it will.

The Jim Whittaker quotes ("I was born in Seattle, been here all my life. I can’t recall it being as bare as it is now ...") are just absurd, obviously he did not go to Snoqualmie Pass in February 1977, otherwise he would have seen it MUCH more bare than now. Clearly, 4-8" like February 1977 is much much less snow and much more bare ground than 26" like now. Did you ask him if he had been to Snoqualmie Pass during February 1977? Not that he would remember anyway . . . human memory is well known to be one of the most fallible and least reliable sources of evidence or testimony for any particular investigation.

Why not just stick to reporting the facts, instead of making up hyperbolic and erroneous statements like your "phenomenal" one? Yes, this season may be bad, even really bad, but don't distort things in order to make it seem even worse than it actually is. As it stands now, your article is full of distortions and even outright falsification regarding the 1976-77 numbers. Perhaps you should consider revising it and posting a correction?

In light of the text contained in the graphic, my words regarding "outright falsification" may be a bit too harsh, but they are quite reasonable based on what is actually in the text of the article, especially since the article omits any mention of the much lower 1977 snowdepths compared to this year. I have received no response yet from the reporter.

I'm surprised that you're jumping on this bandwagon of despair too, Lowell. I think it's a terrible and overblown article, full of distortions and hyperbole -- see below.

Did I say anything about despair? I said the article was interesting.

We backcountry skiers may get plenty of skiing in this winter, spring and summer.  But for the audience for whom the article was written--lift skiers--despair is a reasonable emotion at this point.

If you had received the print version of the paper like I did, you'd have seen the key graphic right on the front page of The Times. The key fact about 1976-77 getting 44 inches of snow from October to January was right there on Page A1. Not misleading, in my view.

The article focuses on Snoqualmie Pass, the closest and most popular ski center for the readers of this newspaper. For those readers, a discussion of conditions at Snoqualmie is more relevant and meaningful than any statistics you might compile for other parts of the range. Snoqualmie is the reality that these readers experience. Is it misleading to focus on that?

The key question, of course, is what will happen during the rest of the winter? Let's hope we see a break in the current pattern. Cliff Mass, for one, is not optimistic. On Saturday, he wrote:

cliffmass.blogspot.com/2015/02/is-winter-over.html

[size=10pt]But let me be clear, I am not optimistic for the remainder of this year and virtually every tool at my disposal suggests that the preternatural warmth will continue. [/size]

I am determined to have another great ski season (last year was really outstanding for me), and it is very likely that the Cascades will once again be able to provide me with adequate snowpack to do that, throughout the rest of winter, spring, and most of the summer too.

Amar given some of some the unfavorable projections looking forward what makes you say this will ultimately be a great season? i ask as someone looking for any reason to stay positive on the rest on the ski year.

Just noticed something very fishy in the article right now:

Although the reporter has not yet taken my suggestion to consider revising it and posting a correction, some crucial edits have been made! Most notably, the very first word of the article has changed! It originally started with "Snowpack in the mountains is at record low levels," and that was still the version as of this morning, but obviously the current "Page modified February 9, 2015 at 4:57 PM" version has been changed to start with "Snowfall in the mountains is at record low levels"!! That's a big (and sneaky) change, because at least snowfall thus far at Snoqualmie Pass is somewhere in the same ballpark as the record low (although 74" is still almost 70% more than the 44" in 1976-77), while snowpack (i.e current snowdepth) is nowhere near the record lows at all, it's about 400% greater now than on the same date in 1977.

So that sneaky first-word change does bring the article closer to the actual facts, although much more revision and tone-modification would still be needed in order to bring it anywhere near the realm of balanced and objective journalism. So I'm curious, what is the first word of the printed version?

Did I say anything about despair? I said the article was interesting.

I was just referring to the fact that you posted about this very-negative article here on TAY -- didn't intend to make it sound like I was criticizing you or anything, sorry.

Amar given some of some the unfavorable projections looking forward what makes you say this will ultimately be a great season? i ask as someone looking for any reason to stay positive on the rest on the ski year.

I definitely didn't state that it would "be a great season" i.e. implying that it would somehow end up well above-normal for snowfall or snowpack by some later date. That is highly unlikely this year. But I do think that it will be a great-season-of-skiing for me and others who choose to make it so, in that I'll seek out and find really good, enjoyable, even spectacular at times, ski conditions on many dozens of days throughout the rest of winter, spring, and most of the summer. These conditions will most likely be found at mid to higher elevations on the volcanoes.

Overall, even in an absolute worst-case scenario of below-normal snowfall from here going forward (as most long-term projections indicate), it will snow heavily many more times above 5000-6000 ft throughout the next 3 months into mid-May, and probably even a few more times into June as it often does at those elevations. A few major storms are almost certain to dump several feet of snow down to 4000 ft and even 3000 ft. And that's the worst case based on all previous historical precedent, and the unfavorable 30-90 day projections (which by the way, show minimal forecast skill, meaning they have little predictive value better than climatology alone, a fact well-known to the NWS forecasters who put them out).

Best case? A major pattern shift will occur, and it will dump heavily at reasonable elevations for weeks on end! The currently stuck upper-level pattern has a ridge located just over or east of the West Coast, and a trough over the eastern US, dumping record and near-record amounts of snow in southern New England in recent weeks. My parents' yard at 100 ft elevation in Norwell, MA, just southeast of Boston has gotten 27" of new snow during the current storm (see forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=NW...edby=BOX&product=PNS ) following 13" on February 2-3 and 28" on January 26-28, and now has a sitting snowpack nearly 4 ft deep, greater than Mt Baker Ski Area (31"), Stevens Pass (38"), and even Mt Hood Timberline Lodge (44") -- just an unbelievable situation given that those sites have average annual snowfalls of about 650", 490", and 600" respectively while eastern MA averages barely 40" of snow per year.

However, strangely enough, a similar situation occurred briefly in late January 2005 as Northwest snowpacks plummeted after 4 big Pineapple Expresses and eastern MA got a big snowstorm, putting the snowdepth in my parents' yard slightly above Mt Baker Ski Area at that time too. Meanwhile, all Northwest ski areas except Whistler-Blackcomb, Timberline, and Mt Bachelor (as far as I recall) were forced to close completely by late January 2005, far worse than what has yet happened this year.

A major pattern shift eventually occurred in mid-March 2005, with very heavy snowfall at reasonable snow levels over the next month, and many sites above 4000 ft got over 200" of new snow during that one-month period. Most Northwest ski areas (except Snoqualmie) got enough snow to reopen from mid-March to mid-April too. And the spring skiing season at elevations above 5000 ft ended up being quite good. However, by the numbers 2004-5 still ended up being the worst snow year since 1976-77, and even since 1940-41, at most sites in the Washington and Oregon Cascades. A major pattern shift this season could produce as much snow as late 2005, or even much more if the favorable pattern lasted longer than one month. But there are no indications of that yet, and no certainty of it occurring at all.