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.
Amar,
I can sense your frustration with articles like the recent Times story and the general tenor of the conversation around the ski season so far this year. As a person who spends a lot of his time analyzing data (albeit in a very different domain) I understand the difficulty of trying to match perception with facts.
In the interest of advancing the dialogue let me posit that measures like total snowfall, snow pack depth, or snow water equivalent are poor measures of a typical Washingtonian's feelings about the ski season. Instead, there is some subjective quality measurement of the ski season that will vary from person to person.
For instance take the following two hypothetical winters. In both winters Snoqualmie Pass has its average snowfall of ~430 inches. In Winter A it snows approximately two inches per day every day from November to May at a temperature between 30-32 degrees. In Winter B it snows 11 inches every fourth day from December through March at temperatures of less than 25 degrees.
Speaking only for myself (and at the risk of betraying my snow snobbery) I'd describe Winter A as a bust and Winter B as epic despite the equal snow totals. In winter A I'm not sure I'd ever skip a day of work to hit the mountains while in winter B I'd be asking myself if I can get away with skipping two days a week.
If you forced me to put forth the criteria by which I judge a winter to be good it might look something like: # of days between Dec and March with a minimum snow base of at least 36 inches and an overnight snow fall of at least 8 inches falling at a temp of <25 degrees at any location with a lift. Me? Picky? I can't deny that.
At the risk of making myself look even snobbier I prefer winters with localized storms (eg. convergence zones). In essence it allows me to allocate the ~430 inches of snow in a more efficient manner. A foot at Baker today, a foot at Crystal tomorrow, a foot at Stevens the next day. That's awesome because maybe the Cascades have only gotten a foot overall but it's come in a way that I get triple the skiing benefit.
I'd be curious to know how others might define a good winter?
I'm not attempting to justify the errors or omissions in the Times story, nor am I disputing your data. I'm merely suggesting that the data you've presented doesn't do a particularly good job of characterizing the average Washingtonian's feelings about the quality of the ski season and that the Times story is a reaction to the skiers emotions.
If you can point me toward an easily accessible multi-year bundle of data from one of the ski area telemetry sites I'd be happy to hack away at an algorithm that might characterize the emotion of the ski season. I can even imagine creating a couple personas and developing an algorithm for each (eg. the lift served skiier, the backcountry skier, etc.)
