Bob Chill

13-14 qualifies. Yea, we had a stupid warm spell mid Dec but start and finish were quite wintry and it never let up until April. November's cold made it feel like early winter. SNE is having a cold/snowy early winter but elsewhere east of the MS river has been avg or warm. We have had a couple legit chances so far so it's not "one of those winters". Nothing special overall but few if anybody thought Dec would be deep winter.

It's basically a shutout pattern. That's what bothers me. I embrace 60 in winter when I can see the way back. This upcoming regime is going to overwhelm for at least 5 days. Prob closer to 10 if not longer to get back to a more wintry continental pattern but just waggin there as it's impossible to know yet. We can dissect surface temps and such to try and hide the fact that the midlevels are totally f'd for almost all of north america leading into Christmas. Pac troughs digging to San Diego are rarely good. It won't last forever though. Just have to deal with a rough patch like we do every.single.winter.

I think we can all agree it's coming and there's little chance at stopping it at this point. The next important topic is how long is it going to last? Every pac trough that digs repeats the process. I hope we can shake loose from that regime by new years. My guess is it continues through the end of Dec.

If the only thing standing in the way at d4 is too much confluence/blocking then it gets really interesting. Right now the entire existence of the storm is in question so no sense overthinking the track of a storm that may or may not exist. It's an attention worthy setup so I'm not poo pooing anything. It's one of those random setups that could blow up in an otherwise naso good regime. How lucky we feelin?

Def better than 12z with initial slug of precip in both qpf and trajectory. Good run and room for improvement. Warm fronts often juice up in the short range.

Gotta talk about the good and bad. I don't like what I'm seeing and it didn't suddenly start today. One of my peeves in winter is when north america gets flooded coast to coast with martime air. It almost always takes longer than anticipated to get back to a more seasonal regime. I didn't see much talk about the latest weeklies this week. Prob because it shows the same general crappy pac pattern through the end of Jan. Lol.

Mathematically it is blocking as both the ao and nao indices will be negative. Problem is it doesn't appear to be stable and the pacific is about to overwhelm everything anyways. Nothing can save us with a pretty hideous upper level pattern in the east pacific. Dec 2012 had a sig -ao/nao through the whole month but it didn't matter with a giant vortex over AK pumping maritime air across the entire continent. Our winter wx is never as simple as a -AO forming and snowstorms start hitting. We've had a ton of good blocks produce nothing and also have had plenty of snowstorms with no blocking at all.

This is looking more and more like we're in some trouble coming up. The parade of storms tracking through the npac into the GoA is relentless on the gfs. 6 in a row over 2 weeks and just hosing the continent with maritime air. We're starting to see ens cave to the idea that this type of regime isn't going to be hit and run. I'm not nervous yet but some of the things I'm seeing are discouraging. Nobody wants to discuss bad stuff so I'll keep it to myself

If we get perfect track/blocked storms that are all rain i'm gonna be pissed. The Pac onslaught is real on this panel. Above freezing 850s all the way to the Yukon... wtf man

All comes down to the initial slug. Snow producing column will be short lived so as juicy as possible upfront is our path to more than 1". If precip comes in weak it will be ugly. Need heavier rates/evap cooling or warm nose will rush in

No warm nose at onset. Decent sounding. Need slug to be juicy and let chips fall.

Double edged sword with the mountains... remove them and CAD events are gone forever. I don't want to live in that world. Lol I'm not worried about qpf wobbles as much as not having a column that supports snow for more than 15 minutes. Nams are the same or slightly better at the surface and 850s compared to 12z. That's nice to see.

Mesos have been doing well with midlevel and surface temps this year. Still too far out in time to hug them but I'm pretty interested in the 18z meso temp trends. This time tomorrow we can probably hug the 3k nam's soundings as they should be more accurate than the globals

Yea, Solitude is bad ass. Excellent side country terrain and liberal gate policies. Honeycomb is more like A basin than Vail iirc but we specifically sought out the steepest stuff so my memory is biased. Only complaint with Solitude is it's really time consuming per run. The canyon runout back to the lifts is a thigh burner. Similar to keystone's north bowl runout. You spend far more time coasting and riding lifts than dropping vertical

Take a look at powder mtn and the canyons in utah. Expansive gladed terrain with 30 degree pitch (perfect for cruising deep powder). I road tripped to Alta one year but the road was closed so we hit the canyons on a whim. 60" storm and no crowds. It was the deepest untouched snow I've ever skied including back country. Resort was new back then. Now it's gigantic and connects to Park City iirc. Powder mtn was always on my list but never made it. Looks amazing for old guys. Haha

Yea, trimmed qpf when it counts but still locked in for a period of snowfall. I liked the temps on the 12z mesos. Warm fronts can juice up in the short range. Still universal consensus for the biggest event of the year. Lol

@RDM I used an Ortovox F1 transceiver and trekking adapters for downhill skiis with skins. I actually still have both in a closet. Lol. I have several avalanche shovels that I keep in my cars and truck in winter. We took some chances and did some stupid risky descents but overall proper avalanche precautions were taken. Nobody I knew died but about 9 people did die in avalanches in the county I lived in over the 7 seasons. We used to draw straws for first man down. Being first was typically terrifying but going after the test monkey was a blast.

Yea, this is cherry picked but check this sounding out... Globals have more of a warm nose between 800-750mb. This sounding is money. I'm huggin until something better pops up

All the mesos (nam, arw, nmm, rgem, hrdps) look half decent at 12z monday. Mid level and surface trends have been mostly good so far today. They all have this same general idea with mid level temps with juicy precip inbound:

There has been a tendency for the ao to go negative and also for 50/50 lows to keep forming but the general pattern hasn't locked in. Dec is notorious for variability and seasonal shifts in jet patterns wobble all over. All we can do is wait and see. Get a stable -ao going in Jan and we'll start to see long track opportunities show up. No idea of that happens or not but seems this year has better odds than the last 3

Phantom mid range threat to help offset the waiting game coming up. Don't care if it's real yet. Just keep it around so we don't focus solely on bad stuff.

Progressive flow has been the theme for years now. Imho- much of the volatility has to do with a complete lack of stable blocking. Progressive unblocked flow compounds nwp errors very quickly. Wait until the next time we have a stable -AO. Models will suddenly look genious from 10 days out.

Global models cover the entire planet but we only focus on a tiny crumb of real estate. Accuracy is relative. Globals are no doubt more accurate than 5 years ago in general.

The biggest problem with aspen/Snowmass is accessibility. Unless you can spring for direct flights, the 5+ hour drive can be tiring. Great terrain tho. Especially highlands. Snowmass is a great powder mountain but not very challenging overall. If you haven't been to Jackson Hole then consider that. They're having a fantastic year already. Mountain is stupid big. Choosing between the rockies or wasatch is easy... hang with the mormons and bring a snorkel just in case

Gfs ticking colder at the surface. Someone could get a decent ice event out of this on top of whatever snow falls.