Heavy snowfall to hit mountains

It seems that skiers and drivers can never hope for the same thing.

A fresh round of storms is going to dump several inches of much-needed snow in the mountains this weekend, but may make for scary road conditions across area passes.

A mix of snow and rain was forecast to fall today in Spokane, with heavier snows in the mountains, said meteorologist Jeffrey Cote of the National Weather Service.

Snoqualmie Pass could see almost a foot of snow today as the holiday travel season winds up. Late Thursday, forecasters issued snow advisories for much of northeastern Washington.

There doesn’t appear to be any clear window of good travel time, Cote said. Drivers should simply keep it slow and stay buckled up.

Snows are expected to continue well into the weekend, with off and on showers past Monday.

That’s good news for ski hills, which saw an earlier-than-normal season opening followed by several weeks with little precipitation.

A cold snap for most of December ended abruptly, and rain fell in many areas.

“It kind of worried us,” said Ron Nova, general manager of Schweitzer Mountain Resort near Sandpoint. “It was a wet one, but we didn’t really lose a lot. We were right there on the verge.”

The past two weeks, traditionally the busiest part of the season for ski areas, have been a bit underwhelming, Nova said.

Most people who had made reservations at Schweitzer didn’t cancel, but fewer people came up for single-day skiing, Nova said. With a few more inches of snow and a couple more busy weekends, the resort could see crowded slopes again.

“The attitude is real good,” Nova said. “We could still come out of this with a real strong holiday.”

It’s not just skiers who are seeing a rough winter. Snowmobile riders in the traditionally busy Priest Lake area are also eagerly waiting for more snow, said Wayne Kopischke, a forest ranger with the Priest Lake Ranger District of the U.S. Forest Service.

“There’s a few people coming up snowmobiling, just not as much as usual,” Kopischke said. “They just have to have better snow conditions.”

Snow was only a few inches deep outside the ranger station in Priest River, and usually at this time of year snow depths range from 6 inches to 4 feet, he said.