Monster Snow Week

Two to four feet of new snow fell since Monday... and there will probably be another two to four feet before the week ends. This has been an incredible snow season... and all indications are that the weather pattern won't change significantly coming up. The storniness will ease a bit as we head into the weekend... but overall, the dominant long range pattern continues to look snowy.

Below is a chart of the base depth at Mt. Hood Skibowl (at mid-mountain) on January 29th each winter back to 2001.


You can see that this year is the biggest snow year at Skibowl this decade... and it's a bigger snow year than most years in the 1980s and 1990s as well. I can't remember a year when Skibowl's base depth and Timberline's base depth were so near in total. That's a testiment to the low snow level that has persisted most of the winter.

One of the trade-off's of all the deep and fresh snow: it's very difficult for patrol crews to keep up with avalanche control work. This winter's snow has been more slide-prone than most winters' snow... and with the frequent stormy days, it's often been impossible to visibly survey slopes to asses the real avalanche threat. Here in the Pacific Northwest, because the humidity is relatively high most of the winter, the visibility is often much worse than in other mountain areas across the USA. For example, when I was in Montana, even when it was snowing heavily, the cloud base was above the peaks and the visibility remained quite good. That's because the air is much drier there than it is here... even when it's snowing. On Mount Hood, when it's snowing heavily, it's rare that the visibility isn't poor... mainly due to low clouds and fog. This makes a huge difference for patrol crews. They must be able to see. When they can't; the terrain stays closed... and for good reason.