I can't believe it's July 30th already!!!  It's time to stop hibernating and to get this show on the road!

It has been been a couple of months since I have posted.  We have been working on a lot of exciting things here at opensnow.  I have also been working on some exciting things I will be able to share later.  We have also begun looking at the next Winter season.  We will start our posts on the upcoming Winter as we go into August.

Today I wanted to do a recap on the last Winter season that wrapped up in May.  It was a mild and stormy Winter.  We saw above average precip and above average temperatures.  We also saw above average snowfall on the mountains above 8000 feet. 

The Northern Sierra 8 station index currently shows 119% of average precip for the water year since last October.  The Lake Tahoe Basin was at 112% of average precip at the end of June.

We were expecting an average season and never bought into the strong El Nino hype.  There were too many other factors that we saw fighting against a pattern that would bring consistent big storms.  My forecast was for 95-110% of average snowfall for the mountains.  I usually have a 10% margin below low and high but I saw the possibility of marginal snow levels and wanted to have a little extra cushion for the lower levels.  

We will use Squaw Valley at the 8,000 ft. example since they stayed open until the end of May and measures all of the snow that fell this season.  They ended up at 495 inches at 8,000 ft. which is 110% of their reported annual snowfall average.  The rest of the mountains averaged together were at 106% of average snowfall up top at the end of April when most of them closed.  So when you add in the May snowfall the basin average was most likely close to the Squaw Valley number of 110% of average snowfall up top.

At the Central Sierra Snow Lab where the official and more scientific measurements are taken at 7,000 ft.  we saw 376 inches.  That is 92% of their annual average snowfall of 409 inches.  So the mountains saw around 92-110% of average snowfall between 7000-8000 feet, compared to a forecast of 95-110%.

Here is a graph of the seasonal snowfall at the snow lab since 1970.

 

and here is the graph by month the last 10 years...  We are still seeing January as a doughnut hole month until we start seeing some big storms in January.

With the mild temps and marginal snow levels this Winter we saw a drop off in snowfall near lake level as well, where we saw around 81% of average snowfall.  Even though it was below average it felt like a lot more than that as it was the biggest lake level snowfall season by far since 2011.

Here is the Truckee snowfall graph that goes back to the 1930's.  You can see the big drop-off similar to the one we saw back in the 1940's.

 The temperatures were mild this Winter with a lot of rain for lake level.  It was not quite as mild as the last couple of winters which have been warm as well.  

Below is a graph of the Truckee average annual temps since 1980.  The blue line is the long-term average temperature, and the red line is the average temperature during this time period.  Running about 1 degree above the long-term average.

16-17 Winter:

What you are most likely more interested in is the upcoming Winter season.  We are studying and working on the forecasts.  We plan to start putting them out in parts in August.  

This time last year I was hopeful for a strong La Nina and a cold PDO for the 16-17 season.  We have flipped into a weak La Nina state, and some of the forecast models this Spring showed the possible strong La Nina.  The problem is that the PDO is still very warm with a lot of warm water in the Pacific.  That may be stalling the La Nina from strengthening, and some of the forecast models now show a weak La Nina or La Nada for this Winter.

That will make the forecast very tricky, whether it is a weak La Nina or La Nada with lots of warm water still off the coast.  It's not a strong signal for the Winter either way, but for a sneak peak at the thinking it's that the storm track may stay into the Pacific NW and Northern Rockies this Winter.

We will be watching the ocean closely going into the Fall and I will be putting all of the possible variables into the Winter Forecast calculator.  More to come...

Stay tuned....BA