Bill Jennings: Skiers’ weather info needs just a click away
Storms battering the region last weekend came with a lot of high drama and anticipation. Dreams of powder turns were dashed however, as they often are this time of year, by a rainy warm front hosing down all that fine fresh snow.
The news isn’t all bad. The moisture turned several feet of fluff into a hardened carapace (otherwise known as the “base”) to protect your precious gear from rocks, stumps and various other obstacles from here on out.
An imminent storm is exciting entertainment for snow junkies. The Internet lets us monitor the progress of a front in real time. A storm of e-mails begins flying hither and yon among fellow addicts moments after the forecast is posted. It’s like rooting for your favorite team in the big game.
The fun begins for me when my inbox dings with Larry Schick’s Powder Alert from SkiWashington.com. Schick, the “Grand Pubah of Powder,” is a West Side meteorologist and ski bum who alerts subscribers when a promising storm shows up off the coast.
Schick’s accurate and amusing report includes the probable duration, reach and accumulation of the storm. Although his focus is primarily on the Cascades, the weather he writes about gets here eventually. It’s a great early warning system.
The Powder Alert prompts a check of weather.com. I click the Original Radar Map for access to Classic Local Maps. The West Coast satellite view shows storms barreling toward us as far out as Hawaii.
With the big picture confirmed, I visit noaa.gov to drill down. The official site of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gives you access to the National Weather Service and the highest resolution radar available on the Web. Plus, there are no ads.
From NOAA’s home page, clicking on the weather icon leads you to a U.S. map. Click on our region and zoom in. From here you can view radar and watch a storm as it overtakes your position. You can also get “pinpoint” forecasts. This is important for predicted snow totals relative to elevation.
I’ve learned to place my cursor on points of the map to get a forecast for the location I plan to ski. For example, I’ve found a point putting me 3 miles south of Wardner, Idaho, at 5,911 feet – right about where I drop into the Meadows off Wardner Traverse at Silver Mountain.
For indisputable results of a storm, information is available in incredible detail about the snowpack on www.wcc. nrcs.usda.gov/snow/, home of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Resources Conservation Service. The NRCS operates an extensive automated system to collect snowpack and climate data called SNOTEL – for SNOwpack TELemetry.
A map on the Web site accesses more than 700 SNOTEL installations located in remote high-mountain watersheds. Local SNOTEL sensors operate at Quartz Mountain just southeast of Mt. Spokane and in Idaho at Schweitzer and Lookout Pass.
SNOTEL uses “meteor burst” technology to collect and communicate data in near real time. The equipment sends radio signals that are reflected off an ever-present band of ionized meteorites screaming by 50 to 75 miles above the earth.
At the height of last week’s storm, Schweitzer gorged on nearly 60 inches in 48 hours. Lookout scored 50 inches. Mt. Spokane collected 44 inches. Silver Mountain and 49 Degrees North “only” bagged 30 inches in the same time period.
Rain had postponed anticipated openings at Mt. Spokane, Silver Mountain and Schweitzer. But all five local areas should be open this weekend.
Having done its damage and its base-building duty, I watched the warm front move on to the Midwest – just in time for snow to start falling again here. And now the game is on.