Record-breaker at Baker?

The semi-monthly climatological snowdepth statement is due tomorrow here:<br>www.nwac.us/products/CLISNO

Minimum snowpack ever recorded at Baker on Jan 15th was 15 inches, in 1981. This year it was 58 inches. Currently the telemetry shows only 19 inches (or maybe 15? hard to tell). Going to break a record tomorrow?

The Jan15th minimum at Mission Ridge was 12inches. This year they had 20 on Jan 15, but right now there is only 10.

They're probably not going to break the record low for Feb 1, which is 17" from 1981. The ski area was still reporting 20" on Jan 31, and they got about 2" new today. I believe NWAC uses the manual measurement whenever possible versus telemetry in their reports. The minimum for Mission Ridge is only 8" in 1976, so they probably won't go under that either. I have a bunch of the archived NWAC snowdepth data on my website (back to 1997), and I've just gotten the full data archive courtesy of Garth, back to 1926. I may eventually write a quick custom-plotting script so that people can view/plot snowdepth curves for any year and any site in that data set.<br><br>I'll also be posting my much more complete Feb 1 snowdepth report for the entire Cascade Range, but probably a day or two late since I'm on jury duty this week. I've also just finished preparing brief summary plots of Cascade snowdepths for the past 25 years, see Cascade Snowfall and Snowdepth Summaries: 1980-2005 . I'm planning to extend this summary back to about 1970 once I have some more free time. <br><br>It's really surprising how similar the Feb 1 snowdepths are in 2005 and 1981 along the entire length of the Cascade Range, from BC to CA. The very poor 1980-81 season certainly is the most similar in terms of snowdepth to this year (as of Feb 1) of any season since at least 1950, it's eerily similar. However, 1981 was different climatologically, it was generally more of a drought winter except Nov-Dec which were very wet. Also, 1980 and 1981 were basically ENSO neutral, while this season is definitely in a weak-moderate El Nino. <br><br>Looking on the bright side, 1981 did finish quite well at upper elevations, with big snows in February and huge snows from mid-March to mid-April. Snowdepths peaked in mid-April at 70-80% of normal (roughly 100-150") at sites on Baker, Rainier, and Hood. However, the ski areas at Stevens, Snoqualmie, Crystal, and White Pass never really recovered, snowdepths never topped 30-40" and their ski season was essentially a complete disaster. <br>

Moral of the story....<br><br>You got to get high.

Right about Baker and Mission, but both Stampede pass and Hurricane Ridge are now at record lows for Feb 1.<br>