Where’s the snow? Area ski hill operators watching the weather as season approaches

Snow fell in the mountains in October, stoking a powder hound’s dreams of an early winter and a long ski season.

Then came the sun and the rain, melting away hopes of an early start to chairlift season.

Now, at the midpoint of November, officials at the five ski resorts within a couple hours of Spokane are watching the forecast as anxiously as anyone.

Schweitzer, near Sandpoint, had been advertising an opening date of next Friday. This week, though, the mountain announced it was pushing opening day back to Nov. 28 because of a lack of snow.

Taylor Prather, Schweitzer’s marketing manager, said it’s not just about the natural snow. Temperatures and humidity levels have been too high for the mountain to consider running its artificial snow machines, which are usually going by early November.

The mountain opened on Nov. 22 last year with more terrain available than usual for early season conditions. It’s clear this winter will be different.

“It might be a slow start to the season,” Prather said. “But hopefully Mother Nature just flips the switch.”

Snowmaking machines have also been sidelined so far at 49 Degrees North, outside of Chewelah. Rick Brown, the mountain’s director of skier and rider services, said Tuesday that he was hoping the weather would shift enough to allow the mountain to run the machines this week or early next week.

Brown said there’s still some snow on the upper half of the mountain, but that it’s nothing like the snow coverage they had in late October and early November.

“It’s come, it’s gone, it’s come again,” Brown said.

Weather forecasters are predicting a La Nina for this winter. Joey Clevenger, a forecaster with the National Weather Service’s Spokane office, said that means cooler water temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean, which leads to wetter conditions in the Pacific Northwest.

When that matches up with cold air pushing down from the north, the region gets blasted with snow.

So far, that cold air hasn’t pushed south. There’s some chance of snow at higher elevations over the weekend, Clevenger said, but not much after that.

“We’re kind of getting into a dryer period next week, so the opportunities for snow are going to be lower,” Clevenger said.

At this time a year ago, Lookout Pass Ski Area was able to open on weekends to kick off its 90th season in operation.

That’s not an option this year. The resort on the Montana-Idaho border relies entirely on natural snow, and while it boasts an average snowfall of more than 450 inches, the faucet has yet to turn on for good.

There have been a few storms, of course. Lookout’s snow report shows that it has received a few inches of snow on random days in the past month, but it just wouldn’t stay.

“Most of it has come and melted,” said Matt Sawyer, Lookout’s director of marketing.

On Friday, the snow depth at the summit was listed at 2 inches. At the base, there was nothing.

Jim van Loeben Sels, general manager at Mt. Spokane Ski and Snowboard Park, said last year’s early season snow regime was near perfect. The mountain was able to open at the end of November, a little more than two weeks earlier than it did the year before.

How this year ends up remains to be seen. Snow is hanging out in the shade at Mount Spokane Ski and Snowboard Park, said general manager Jim van Loeben Sels, but the sun has taken care of it everywhere else.

Tough years in the past taught him a lesson, though – the mountain has to be ready to operate with a less-than-optimal amount of snow. That prompted efforts to mow down vegetation and clear stumps from the core runs on the mountain so they’ll be ready to open sooner.

“We did a lot of work on low snow preparation,” van Loeben Sels said.

The hill’s website lists Dec. 6 as its targeted opening date.

Silver Mountain, in Kellogg, is targeting Nov. 28 for its opening day. Gus Colburn, director of marketing at Silver, said the mountain needs between 30 and 45 inches of snow to make it work.

When he was speaking on Tuesday, there wasn’t much snow on the mountain, but Colburn was still optimistic.

“All it takes is a few good storms and colder temperatures,” he said.