April Fools, The Weather Predictors

'Sometimes you win, sometimes you get huge powder days.'

That's the latest, just in from the area's harshest ski conditions critics.

Back in late December, before we started getting continuous snow, I attended a weather conference at Squaw and was told by regional meteorologists that we were not going to have a winter at all. I wrote that week's column about the splinter of hope granted from a younger attendee who thought we might actually get a few inches. Turned out that his forecast was not only correct, but he underestimated the force of the impending months. Contrary to that rather timely and incredibly accurate column, last week I touted the imminent record sale of sunscreen and Deckburgers at Tahoe ski areas. Oops!

It's dumping again. We've come to the especially confusing time of Tahoe April. What do we expect from this spring anomaly? One or two really cold storms and about 25 bluebird days usually. It would appear that we've already gotten one of those storms earlier this week. Predicting the rest of the month's weather would not only be misleading but it would be dumb. Us weathermakers are left making sweeping generalizations about the month's trends in previous years.

Miracle March has become a thing of the past (literally). The last three seasons have had mediocre/average snowfall in March while every April has been awesome. No longer do we factor just the first three months of the year into our wood-buying calculations every October. We have to think about April, too.

The 1998-99 winter season has been scripted by a number of scenes which we've seen in previous runnings. We've been able to make sense of foreshadowing hints and tell what was usually right around the corner. Now, however, we can only wonder what will happen. We could be in winter for the rest of the month or we might not see another cloud until May.

And this kind of weather can influence ski buying behavior. Things have changed for the person looking for the ski that can rage in powder, hold steady on groomers and turn in the bumps. Ski buyers think about what snow they'll mostly be riding and purchase accordingly. Now they need to subtract a bunch of mogul days and add another set of powder days to the equation. What will most likely happen is that they'll end up with two pairs of boards - one fat, one skinny - and manufacturer's will rejoice. Last Sunday I found myself and my winter daze pulling up to a ski shop desperately looking for a pair of super fat skis for the powder days I knew were coming.

The funny thing about it is that either way we're all set. Living in a place like Burlington, Vermont or Bemidji, Minnesota, you can predict the changes pretty well (winter to mud season to semi-summer then possibly summer before autumn). But when those parts of the country have abnormal years, the result is usually a mess. For instance, if Vermont were having a long winter it would mean that temperatures were barely creeping above freezing and the wind would be howling forever. In our neck of the nape, when winter runs a little long, we get two foot dumps broken up by semi-cold days - some of which are bluebird and rank in the season's Top 20 powder days. We forget that we just started to remember the mountain bike trails and how we wished for a second that there was no more snow. That we could go up and hit our favorites - Elevator Shaft, the BMX course, the Talmont downhill and countless others.

We've all just seen our shadows and, similar to superstitious rats, crawled back into our Gore-tex holes. But that's OK and so is every time the weatherman calls for clear skis but we get dumped on. Because when you're wrong in Tahoe, the worst that can happen is that you're riding bottomless powder.

Alex West is a freelance paver, writer, event contractor and publicist who is never wrong but sometimes 'mistaken.' Reader-permitting, he's dedicating this week's column to Hopper who is temporarily out of the game from antics on a groomed run when he pulled his stomach muscles "like a window shade rolling up - flap, flap, flap" as he puts it. Al's goal is to become a resort vagabond chronicling a Tahoe ski season in this column.

send an email to Alex at Winter Daze

© 1998 alex west