Excellent snow quality today
Sunday, March 23, 2014
The Steamboat ski area reported 5” mid / 6” top this morning, though, as expected, all of that came during the day on Saturday. In fact, I measured 4” of snow on my deck that fell between 6 am and 10 am Saturday morning. The snow started slightly earlier on the hill and lasted longer, though the sun was out late in the day.
I had expected that snow quality would have been similar to last Tuesday or the Tuesday before that, but that was not the case. The temperature this time did not get colder than about 13 F up top during the snowfall while the previous two storms were in the mid single digits. The end result is the snow skied a fair bit heavier yesterday, even on the northern-tilted aspects.
I had lowered snow-quality expectations for the sunny day today, but was pleasantly surprised to find that the lower relative humidities and breezy conditions last night and today dried the snow a fair bit. The snow was far more workable, at least for the upper half of the upper mountain. Closet skied great, as did the Rolex trees, Kuus’ Cruise and Typhoon. The last run of my day was spent poking around in No Names, still uncovering batches of untracked turns in the deep powder.
The grazing wave expected for tomorrow looks to bring some cooling, but precipitation will stay almost completely to our east and north. Sunny weather is on tap later in the day, Tuesday and likely Wednesday morning before the next significant storm begins to affect our weather later Wednesday. Current forecasts show a couple of waves keeping snow going on the hill from late Wednesday to late Friday. There may be some rain in the valleys preceding each frontal passage before that turns to snow.
