Planning Powder Chase 3/5-3/10: Input welcome!

[caderader]

The fantasy land GFS really wants to show some considerable snow for the Sierra over the first few days of my trip (03/06-03/07.) But so far the Canadian and Euro have not been on board with the deep totals. That's unfortunate as it's usually the GFS that's out in left field.
Here's hoping!

GFS


Canadian


Euro

[garyfromterrace]

Fly into Zurich, then powchase.
You'll end up in Graubunden somewhere.
Or Murren.
Or Engleberg
Or Verbier
Or Zermatt

Fuck the big NAm resorts, too crowded and too expensive, especially when compared to the Alps.

If you're not going to bbi euro, and you ski tour you should consider Shames.
Or not.

[caderader]

If you're not going to bbi euro, and you ski tour you should consider Shames.
Or not.

Shames is definitely on my list but a no go for the same reason Europe is for this trip, one of the guys going doesn't have a passport. He's getting a passport before next year or he'll have to go on a different ski trip but I'm too nice to ditch him now!

[Crippity]

Thank you for this source. I wont start own thread but i am doing same thing but will prob fly out on the 29th. i have complete flexibility on where to go and will be using points. So if you could go anyhwere based on this forecast and current conditions leaving in a week where would it be (in north america). Have ikon and indy and dont mind paying for daily at mom and pop not on indy. Looking for nonstop flight from NY unless can be persuaded. IE have done ny seattle spokane and back again but nonstop is more preference as will be around 5 day trip max.

[garyfromterrace]

Shames is definitely on my list but a no go for the same reason Europe is for this trip, one of the guys going doesn't have a passport. He's getting a passport before next year or he'll have to go on a different ski trip but I'm too nice to ditch him now!

Ah, playing the nice guy card. What you think that gets anywhere with Canucks...?
Yeah, ok. Sorry.

[caderader]

Thank you for this source. I wont start own thread but i am doing same thing but will prob fly out on the 29th. i have complete flexibility on where to go and will be using points. So if you could go anyhwere based on this forecast and current conditions leaving in a week where would it be (in north america). Have ikon and indy and dont mind paying for daily at mom and pop not on indy. Looking for nonstop flight from NY unless can be persuaded. IE have done ny seattle spokane and back again but nonstop is more preference as will be around 5 day trip max.

I'm not a weather guru I just play one on TGR...

Depends on your points and how flexible they are. Sounds like you have a lot of flexibility so I would suggest booking something refundable (if you have that option with your points) now.

I would then keep an eye on weather for a few more days and finalize a little closer but points redemptions on some airlines get more expensive the closer you get so that may not work.

If you have to commit in the next day or two I would keep an eye on the forecast discussions on Open Snow. I read all of the Daily Snows...daily and read the tea leaves. Most of them are very lmited in their discussions more than a week out but you can start to get the trends by reading several. I also recommend Chris Tomer (https://youtu.be/YLP1I9R3SyA?si=qXeztU9epbx1jvSV) who @pfluffenmeister put in this thread earlier and I have found very useful although he doesn't (in my limited experience) speculate further ahead than 7-8 days and Powderchasers (https://powderchasers.com/)

Below are a few relevant excerpts from Open Snow Daily's today;

"The good news is that an active pattern with frequent storms looks to continue beyond this event with the next storm possible by Tuesday (Feb 27) or Wednesday (Feb 28). Additional frequent storms are then likely through early March, with snow levels expected to stay low for the most part with a colder airmass in place.

The pattern beginning with this weekend's storm and continuing into early March is the best-looking pattern I've seen for BC all season in terms of storm frequency and favorable temps/snow levels. Better late than never!"

"Extended Forecast
It still looks like we could see a break between storms for 2-3 days for the last two days of the month, and possibly into March 1st. The trough moves east with weak high pressure expected for the middle of next week.

Then the long-range models continue to show another cold trough digging south during the 1st week of March, but this time farther west over the West Coast and sticking around through the end of the week.



That would bring a colder pattern and would open the door to storms spinning up into the trough off the coast where they can pick up a lot more moisture before moving into the West Coast. So we are still watching the first week of March as a period when we could see several storms bring more snow to the Sierra. We'll continue to watch the trends.

The last time we had a cold trough pattern for a week was back during the 2nd week of January when we saw a -PNA pattern at the same time as the active phase of the MJO moved through phases 2-3 in the Indian Ocean. That lined up with the -PNA cold trough pattern in January, and it looks to line up with the forecast for the 1st week of March."

Other discussions are similar but I won't excerpt them all here since it is a paid service.

I would also keep a close eye on the Open Snow 10-day through the explore page (https://opensnow.com/explore/powder?...US&locations=2). Right now Baker and Alpental have the highest forecasts at the end of the range (2/29-3/1) but there's usually a lot of change in the forecasts from this far out.

If you want to play dress-up meteorologist like me and do your own analysis you can get model runs from all the relevant weather models over at Pivotal Weather. For instance here is the Euro for ~your dates, https://www.pivotalweather.com/model...4022112&fh=234
& the GFS https://www.pivotalweather.com/model...4022112&fh=234.

Again, I'm not a real weather nerd (yet) but I like to look at:

• the 500mb height anomaly
• 850mb temp anomaly
• QPFs at different time scales
• PWAT anomaly
• snowfall projections

If you're unfamiliar with all of that a few Google searches or a discussion with ChatGPT should suffice to get you up to speed in less than 30 minutes. I like the Euro model the best, although a lot of those analyses are not available for the euro on the free plan, the Canadian second best, and the GFS third. The Canadian and GFS are all free. Do remember that the times shown I.E. 03/02 06z are in Zulu and you should subtract 7 hours for MST and 8 hours for PST. So for PNW ski areas 06Z is not 6 am on the 2nd but rather 10 PM on the 1st.

TL;DR - For your dates, right now, it looks like the Chase is in the PNW but there's still quite a bit of time and I reserve the right to be completely wrong on that! What do I know anyway, I'm just a jong from Alabama...

[thefortrees]

This thread is dumb.

[TBS]

^^^ yup

[caderader]

This thread is dumb.

I'm glad someone said what we were all thinking!

[whipski]

If you hit Montrose there's $62.50 tickets to Monarch for a day. I'll likely be around.

[puma]

I'd not ever listened to Chris Tomer before. Thank you for the link. I look forward to adding him to the menu of sources for info.

I guess Foretrees and TBS already knew all this, apologies for boring you guys with this stupidity! (or maybe your stupid references were to how far out the window was from when this was started, if that is the case, I agree. Stupid!)