Its not as good as last year but it is still skiing! Come on guys stop being butt hurt about the snow, go and enjoy it.

Ok I have been skiing for 30 years and I have seen it bone dry in early November like it is right now and then just before thanksgiving it started snowing and didn't stop til Xmas it's not to late but I hate it that I plan my ski trips in early December and I get out to the hill and half the mountain is closed and they are still making snow lets hope that's not the case this year

Great discussion. Although, from a get in the car and drive to go skiing perspective. It's all just that a discussion. It's winter. I ski when I can. Great season.

Graph sums it up. This season is shaping up to be a bad one. Good terrain is gonna take a long while to open unless a miracle happens.

Some data-based perspective on why some are concerned with this slow start to the snow season. I think there is enough collective skiing experience here to recognize a slow start has implications to the season, even if it may not be expressed quantatatively. So , here's some data & analysis to consider :

1) For starters, I would guess based on the posts here, the majority of readers are experienced skiers / boarders, not nearly as interested in green & blue groomers as they are in the steep & the deep.

2) At the resorts, most of the harder terrain won't open until the base gets to 35-40", so that hazards are buried & moguls can form without going to dirt in the troughs.

3) In general, longer term snow pack will compact to ~ 1/3 total snow for the season (assuming regular snowfalls, this number will be less if snow is less frequent).

4) Given items (2) & (3), you need to get somewhere around 100-120 inches, season total snowfall, before the terrain you really want to ski opens for the season.

5) Given the higher / colder settings at the resorts, an average snow to liquid ratio of ~ 15:1 isn't a bad assumption ( vs the 10:1 used in lower / warmer climates)

6) Given items 2-5, this means we need 6.5 - 8.0" snow water equivalent to fall to get the interesting terrain open. So, how long does this take? See this link for the Upper Colorado Basin (most of the I-70 corridor ski areas in this region) :

http://graphs.water-data.co...

Y axis is snow water equivalent & we generally get to 6.5 to 8.0" inches by around Christmas to New Years. I think this would jive with most peoples long term "average" experience that the good stuff generally starts to open up around that time.

7) Now if the last few days of runs of the GFS are right, we are going to be at less than 1" SWE around Nov/20. So let's assume at that point we switch to a "normal" pattern of snow accumulation. How how long will it take to get to that 6.5 to 8.0" number? The yellow line is the average & on average, this would take 2 months, which then puts us out to late January until we get steep terrain open. Any continuation of below normal only extends that timeline.

8) To get back on track by Christmas, we will need some serious storms to get there and a substantial change from the current pattern of mean ridge over the Rockies / west & mean trough in the east. This is where the rubber meets the road - who can accurately forecast if & when this will happen?

9) So this is why the early season is critical to a "great" ski season. If we build a good base early, we have a long season with steep terrain open and when storms come in, we have the quality terrain open to take advantage of the steep & deep. If the early season is poor (as it has been), the open season on steep terrain is shortened & your opportunities to ski the steep & deep are shortened.

I think the experienced skier probably recognizes all of this at some level but may not have expressed quite like this ..... thus all the comments today & the general concern. The seasonal outlook ultimately has a significant impact on how many steep & deep days one will get each season.

I know Joel's focus is shorter term, but I feel like a lot of people on this blog are interested in the longer outlook for snow & how it impacts their season as well. I would definitely be one of those folks.

Nice post. One other negative to a slow start is by the time the base builds up the sun angle has started to rise. I want those deep, dark, cold December pow days! Winter on all exposures day after day after day!!!! Ahhhh.....

Did you write all that because I said I love you? I love, a lot of people man.

Nope... but I appreciate the love :))

I love the snow & I love the weather & I love trying to figure out what will happen. This is a fun forum to discuss such things.

Great stuff.

Great Analysis.

I kinda knew by experience that about 100in of snowfall is required for the good terrain to open. If it is warm then more if it is consistently cold then a hair less but on average that is spot on. Now, Vail consistently trims and cleans up its terrain during the summer and fall so as to require a bit less snow to open it but generally the steep stuff needs 100+ in. of total snowfall.

Now, it is obvious that this year if you want to ski steep and deep during the dec-jan. Holiday period it is best to go elsewhere than Colorado. If I were a betting man I would go to Whistler. Right now that would be my call.

Now Joel, Pay the Man!

vail has steep stuff?

Perfect analysis! The tough part with forecasting the snow conditions for the Christmas holiday is determining which scenario will happen between mid November and late December:

a) Continuation of what we've seen so far this season, ie. "Dry". A bit of snow every 7-10 days with dry periods in between.

b) Back to normal with decent storms every few days, ie. "OK".

c) A shift to more stormy weather, ie. "Snowy!". This could happen if either the ridge is replaced by a trough, or, like the second half of last season, the west coast ridge shifts and allows frequent and meaningful storms to hit Colorado from the northwest

d) some combination of the above

If I were to place bets on the above four scenarios, based on the science of longer-range forecasts that I understand, I might go with 40%, 20%, 20%, 20%. The 40% weight is simply because persistence (of the current pattern) is often not a terrible forecast in the absence of strong evidence to the contrary, and because the current pattern is pretty consistent with some analog years.

The tough part for me is how to communicate the above information (mine and yours) in a helpful way that people can take action on. For local expert skiers who love powder, probably the only action they could take right now is to think about where else they might want to ski during late December, though at this point I have no idea where the snow conditions are going to be good at that time, whether that's in Colorado, or Whistler, or ... ?, and this uncertainty makes it hard to offer any recommendations. So this analysis that you/we are talking about in the comments is intriguing and fun, yet I'm not sure how to make it actionable beyond "keep an eye on the weather pattern", which is pretty much what people are doing at this point in the season anyway.

Back in the day at Purdue, we had a forecast game & one of the the "players" was "Penny Persistence" - a fictional character who's forecast was based on "persistence". Penny used to beat a fair number of the real players (mostly met students ). The profs created Penny specifically to teach students the importance of the persistence of patterns .... so I am with you on your weighting.

Guys if you want Pow or at least good snow coverage head to Whistler/Blackcomb BC. It has been getting pounded by feet and feet of snow in the Alpine. The Alpine terrain is primed for the season.

Latest euro looking better. Potential for day 7?

Main energy & moisture still too far east & north. Shallow cold front , flurries & cold air east of the divide but this thing needs to track much further to the west to bring anything interesting to the mounatins.... but it is 7 days out, so perhaps it will

hi jeff, I go from Spain to colorado and I will be 15 January to 7 February, will spend enough money, just hope to have enough snow for skiing back bowls, Breckenridge, kesystone, beaver creek and Arapahoe terrible would be little snow thanks for your analysis, continues to report

regards

If you can Cancel, Cancel. And wait. Travel to a place with good snow and Colorado will probably not be it, at least Vail won't be it most likely. Keep your options open.

I already buy local and epic pass billtete Plane booked apartment and hopefully have a good winter years, I pray for this,,,,thanks

hi

I would like to know what your favorite ski resorts of Colorado

thanks

Silverton, A-basin, Aspen Highlands. I haven't been to Telluride in 25 years but suspect that would now make the list with good snow. Of course, Silverton and A-basin are not really "resorts" but that is a part of what makes them special in addition to the superior terrain.

The Aspen complex and it's not close

Wolf creek, a basin, Loveland....

thanks heisenberg

For the xmas - January holiday Skiing season? Steamboat. No question. The best snow by a mile that time of year.

Mid season? It was Vail but the cheap Epic Pass has made Vail a Zoo during the entire season.

Late season? Probably Breck and A-Basin.

Wolf is great if you want to have a shot at experiencing deep pow in bounds but the terrain is average at best.

thanks

Breck. Joking. Telluride. Just sketchy snow a lot of seasons. Wolf creek rocks but no vertical

thanks peter

Thanks

Yikes.
Ok. I have a plan. I'll give free. Yes free. Ice carving lessons. To anyone who needs to turn any conditions into Fun. That way everyone has a super winter. :-)
That's my last post for the day. I think I've hit my limit.

Joel,

Can you comment on why Vail gets it's own separate forecast? It wouldn't have anything to do with them sponsoring you and your site, would it?

It's called building a business.

Capitalism is a good thing. OpenSnow is also, apparently, engaged in a shameless ploy to get you to watch ABCNews7 out of Denver. On the up-side, when it does start snowing, it'll be easier for you to spot those black helicopters...

And also, many ski areas and brands that make gear pay us to advertise their product on our site. Vail is one of them, but there at least ~50 others. This is part of the way we make money, with the other way being through the subscriptions that we offer.

Happy to comment. Over the summer I contacted Vail, Copper, and Steamboat to offer them the opportunity get their own forecasts that they could use on their website and that I could post on OpenSnow as well. Vail and Copper said "yes", and I started forecasting for Vail on Nov 1st and will start for Copper on Nov 5th. Steamboat is still thinking about it. I reached out to these mountains because I know them well, I know their staff pretty well, and they've been supportive of OpenSnow in the past.

FWIW, several well respected long range forecasters have been pounding the table that this winter looks like 1976-77 to them (and have been since last spring) , based on analog of sea surface temperatures, ENSO status & other big picture atmospheric drivers. It was the winter back east when everyone back east swore it was the start of the next ice age. It was also one of the driest winters ever in Colorado. See link :

https://stevengoddard.wordp...

Hope it doesn't play out this way but this start to the season has got me worried .

Interesting that 76-77 was a cold snowy year out East. Sounds like the same persistent long-wave pattern we had last year with the very sad exception that the downward path of the jet must have set up east of the Rockies. I'll take the same pattern (sorry California) but of course that jet needs to be swinging south over our northern mountains or...disaster.

Joel - I sincerely hope you can stay out of the long-range forecast game. But, in a bad year...you will have no choice if for no other reason than sheer boredom.

Also snow making didn't take off until 1974 and it was minimal at that. I'm a little more optimistic.
snowmaking_timeline-3.pdf

Read 1975,77,80 and 81.
Especially 1981.

Funny how Joel often has nothing to say about comments like this. All we here is "things look dry for the next few weeks...stay tuned."

He would make a great spin-artist for a PAC.

This seems unnecessarily sharp for a weather forecasting sight that specializes in 5-10 day outlooks.

What I like to do in my posts is present information to people that they can act on, and because I like the information to be actionable, I try to stay away from speculation and long-range forecasts. Also, long-range (seasonal) forecasts are usually not that accurate. Could the forecast that Jeff_LDEN shared above come true? Absolutely. Joe Bastardi (and others) talked about 1976-1977 as a year that could be similar to the upcoming year. They have also talked about other years that could be similar. All of this is fun for us to speculate on, and it also shifts the commodity markets when respected long-range forecasters put out a forecast. But it doesn't help us to identify powder days, or certain months and weeks that might have the best conditions. That's why I don't talk about.

Feel free to subscribe to Weatherbell.com to read about the long-range forecasts, or google for other sources for a 2014-2015 winter forecast. Also, I wrote two articles about El Nino and other aspects of making a seasonal forecast earlier this fall:

http://opensnow.com/news/po...
http://opensnow.com/news/po...

Now that we're getting into winter, I'd rather focus on a weather forecast that will likely come to fruition (ie. a forecast for the next 10 days) than speculate about 10 possibile weather scenarios for the next 4 months that may or may not come true.

ThePaintedTurtle you seem to think that there is a conspiracy theory behind my forecasts. It's just not true. I live a pretty normal life and work hard to present credible information that will help skiers and riders find good snow. That's it.

Thanks Joel. For one person that's unnecessarily sharp, there are many others that appreciate your work and understand what we can or cannot predict now. To keep running this website, you might need to go back to school and get a degree in psychology... Just kidding!

hello,,

There were few inches in the winter 76-77 in a season either colorado?thanks

See link above in my initial post & the graph associated with it. Crested Butte was at about ~65 inches for the entire winter. Gives you an idea of how dry the winter was

Thanks, a very dry winter

A little bit more detail behind the story : although Wxbell has been continuously referring to the 76-77 analog (since last spring) , their snow maps are not consistent with this analog (ie - they are showing above normal snow). I have a question into them to get their thoughts on this discrepancy - I will post what I can here if they reply.

But , if you take 76-77 in a vacuum, it is not a pretty picture... and given the dry start to the season and the continued crashing of storms into the eastern US & continued ridging over the west, you have to start to worry that this forecast does have some teeth to it (as that is how the entire winter of 76-77 looked).

Time will tell. I hope the WxBell snow maps are right & not the 76-77 analog, but if it does turn out to be a small snow season, I wouldn't be surprised.

Chaos theory.

In all fairness he doesn't talk long term forecasts for the dry or the wet, past a few weeks anyway. He never has so you should be just as distraught that he didn't see the crazy wet mid winter and spring last year either (No CO).

I guess it all depends on if you would rather hear someone spout that they think they can predict the weather months in advance (and believe them hook line and sinker) or just leave it be until it comes close enough to actually predict....A simple scan of anything on the internet shows that people get raked over the coals for being even a little bit off in their wording or predictions....it's the internet age of no consequences and everything documented.

Unfortunately, every time I have to chew down some freshies to enable myself to continue breathing, I'll be thinking of your post. Thanks