nineteen degrees and rain!

[Anonymous]

go figure- ninteen degrees and raining on top of bromley sunday afternoon.

they closed the detach as ice buildup was causing the chairs to slip on the cables.

the ski patrol, liftees (and myself) never saw anything like it. things can only get better!

 

[Tony Crocker]

My understanding is that this is caused by the clouds being above freezing while the air near the ground is colder. I will say that in 27 years of skiing I have NEVER seen this happen at a western ski area. I saw it once at college in New Jersey. The opposite happens very frequently in the Pacific States: snow falls into warmer air and is usually OK when it lands on more snow but will soak you to the bone if your clothing isn't very waterproof.

The other phenomenon I hear from all your eastern reports this year is storms starting out as snow and turning to rain. Out here most storms get colder as they persist or intensify. We do get these Pineapple Express deluges from time to time. The most infamous of these was at New Year's 1997. I arrived at Mammoth in the midst of a 3-day storm with snow level at 12,000 ft. But the snow level dropped to 7,500 for the last 6 hours and nearly everything was skiable the next day.

 

[Tony Crocker]

Well, that's what I get for opening my big mouth. The SoCal storm you have been hearing about started out with 1-2 feet of wet snow last Friday. Then it pulled in a huge amount of subtropical air and it poured rain in our local ski areas from sometime Saturday through Monday night. No one is open today, while they let the snowpack (2-5 feet before this) dry out and assess what's still skiable.

Fortunately the rain problem was limited to SoCal. Snow levels stayed below 6,000 ft. in the Sierra, and Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and western Colorado are getting huge dumps from this storm.

The New Year's 1997 event was so extreme that it rained in Alta, Jackson Hole and Sun Valley.