California is in the midst of an epic storm cycle, with ample moisture being drawn up from southern latitudes. On Thursday, this was the forecast liquid precipitation over the next five days:
Typically, we would see snow ratios of 12 to 1, meaning that those 15 inches of liquid would translate to 15 feet of snow. However, because of the southern moisture tap, these storms that started Friday have been associated with warmer air and high snow levels. Snow started Friday morning with snow levels around 6000 feet, resulting in fairly heavy snow at Kirkwood (7800 feet), but not unusual for the Sierras. It snowed steadily throughout the day, resulting in a pretty fun powder day.
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| Friday, we randomly ran into our roommate Justin at lunch and skied the second half of the day together. |
Saturday and Sunday snow intensified and snow levels hovered around 7000 feet to 7500 feet. On Saturday the snow was the heaviest I've ever skied. Despite Kirkwood getting multiple feet of the stuff, you would only sink in a few inches. Make a turn a little wrong and it would grab your skis, resulting in a person size divot in the thick snow. Saturday only two chairs were open, but we had a lot of fun, especially after meeting up with a bunch of former cyclists, also randomly run-into.
By Sunday morning, Kirkwood had gotten about 4 feet of heavy, barely-snow, and the storm was intensifying. Around 930 they opened chair 5 for about thirty minutes befure shutting it back down due to wind. We weren't too disappointed in the wind hold: the snow was even heavier and harder to ski than Saturday.
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| Sunday morning. Buried car. |
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| Ski patrol pow-wow. "Should we just tell everyone to go home?" |
Kam, Aurora and Liz had driven up to South Lake Saturday night, then to Kirkwood Sunday morning. They did one run, then got stuck driving all the way around the lake to 80. Sorry guys!
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| 13+ hours in the car; 1 run. |
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