Mammoth Mountain
Let The Games Begin
OK, it’s October. For most of the USA folks expect a bit of cold in October. Historically, even the mountains of California can get a touch of snow. So this report is not so much an “Oh My God It’s SNOW!!!” as it is a “Well, this is basically normal. Cool side, but normal”. It will be interesting to watch the “Global Warmers” apply “Warmest in 115 years” spin to this… (The DID declare California and the western states to be having the warmest in 115 years a few quarters back, when nothing at all exceptional was happening ‘on the ground’…)
The usual benchmark for mountain snow in California is Ski Season on Thanksgiving. An ‘early snow’ year has skiing on Thanksgiving, a ‘late snow’ year does not. We’ve got about 50 days to go, and no snow at the resorts yet. But we have snow falling…
From:
http://www.weather.gov/alerts/ca.html
(This is a page that changes over time, so the exact contents will change as the storms change.)
There are several pages of reports with “SNOW” in them, mostly like this one:
Special Weather Statement
Surprise Valley California (California)
SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE RENO NV
320 AM PDT MON OCT 4 2010
CAZ070>073-NVZ001>005-050000-
SURPRISE VALLEY CALIFORNIA-LASSEN-EASTERN PLUMAS-
EASTERN SIERRA COUNTIES-GREATER LAKE TAHOE AREA-MONO-
MINERAL AND SOUTHERN LYON COUNTIES-GREATER RENO-CARSON CITY-
MINDEN AREA-WESTERN NEVADA BASIN AND RANGE INCLUDING PYRAMID LAKE-
NORTHERN WASHOE COUNTY-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF…CEDARVILLE…EAGLEVILLE…
FORT BIDWELL…PORTOLA…SUSANVILLE…WESTWOOD…SIERRAVILLE…
LOYALTON…SOUTH LAKE TAHOE…TAHOE CITY…TRUCKEE…
MARKLEEVILLE…BRIDGEPORT…COLEVILLE…LEE VINING…
MAMMOTH LAKES…HAWTHORNE…YERINGTON…SMITH VALLEY…MINA…
SCHURZ…GLENBROOK…INCLINE VILLAGE…SPARKS…VERDI…
GARDNERVILLE…FERNLEY…FALLON…LOVELOCK…SILVER SPRINGS…
NIXON…IMLAY…EMPIRE…GERLACH
320 AM PDT MON OCT 4 2010
…RAIN AND HIGH ELEVATION SNOW THROUGH WEDNESDAY…
SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS WILL CONTINUE OVER THE SIERRA AND
WESTERN NEVADA TODAY AS LOW PRESSURE MOVES INTO CENTRAL
CALIFORNIA WITH ABUNDANT MOISTURE AND INSTABILITY. STRONGER
SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS WILL PRODUCE HEAVY RAIN AND SMALL HAIL.
RAINFALL AMOUNTS OF 0.50 INCHES OR MORE ARE POSSIBLE IN A SHORT
PERIOD OF TIME…WHICH COULD LEAD TO PONDING OF WATER ON
ROADS…POORLY DRAINED URBAN AREAS AND INCREASE FLOWS ON SMALL
CREEKS AND STREAMS.
LATER TONIGHT THE LOW WILL MOVE INTO THE CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN SIERRA
AND REMAIN NEARLY STATIONARY THROUGH WEDNESDAY. SNOW LEVELS WILL
FALL BELOW 9000 FEET LATER TONIGHT…AND MAY DROP AS LOW AS 7500
FEET AT TIMES OVER MONO COUNTY.
MODERATE TO HEAVY PRECIPITATION BANDS WRAPPING AROUND THE LOW ARE
LIKELY TO CONTINUE INTO WEDNESDAY. ADDITIONAL LIQUID AMOUNTS OF
ONE THIRD TO ONE INCH ARE POSSIBLE WITHIN THESE HEAVY BANDS PER
DAY.
IN THE HIGHER ELEVATIONS OF THE SIERRA…SEVERAL INCHES OF
SNOW WILL ACCUMULATE LATER TODAY AND TONIGHT…IMPACTING BACK
COUNTRY ACTIVITIES AND TRAVEL OVER THE HIGH MOUNTAIN PASSES
INCLUDING THE MT ROSE HIGHWAY. REFER TO THE LATEST WINTER WEATHER
ADVISORY FOR ADDITIONAL DETAILS.
$$
http://WEATHER.GOV/RENO
BRONG
If my “Lava Lamp World” thesis has merit, we would expect to see increasing precipitation, and more of it as snow, with earlier snow and late season snow, in those areas under a “cold blob” headed south. I think this is the first salvo in that behaviour.
On the flip side, as a ‘hot blob’ heads north to dump heat to the arctic (for moving on to space) we would expect to see warmth on that track, and with a load of rain along the way as THAT heat gets dumped to space and so the tropical water vapors can condense. Since the hot track has been over the Mid-west and East Coast of the USA, I suggest getting those hip waders out of the fishing kit…
So I suggest you put in a couple of cords of wood if you are West of the Rockies, put the popcorn on the kettle, make some cocoa, and “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow”…
“Oh the weather outside is frightful… “
Musings from the Chiefio 
EM
You might find this interesting then.
For almost the last two weeks here on the East Coast we have had almost everyday overcast with a chance of rain. First was a storm front that came through and rained for a couple of days, then the remnants of that 6 hour Tropical Storm spent three days dumping rain on us. We then got one clear day followed by the last 2 days of rain with more to come in the next 2.
Also you might want to take a look at these two posts I did:
http://boballab.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/west-coast-summer/
http://boballab.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/east-coast-summer/
In those posts using GISS summer numbers you see record below average summers on the west coast and record above average summers on the east coast.
@boballab: Very Nice! As you will notice from the excess rain on the east coast: It’s not about the temperatures, it’s all about the heat. And the heat that all that rain represents is very large…
So we have a LOT of heat leaving the planet (evidenced by the rain) but the temperatures have not caught up yet…
I lived in Surprise Valley for 40 years, saw snow in every month except August and that was the 1st of September. Cool place to live, some times very cool, 40F below zero.
I see that they had a nice little earthquake in Hayes canyon a couple of days ago.
A warning to people in north California, be prepaired for long winter. ” Wise Indian says it will be a hard winter if Whiteman has large wood pile.” I have very large wood pile. ;-)
This map shows a nice color (6-10 inches of snow) over the Sierras in the next coming days:
http://www.meteoexploration.com/snow/snowmapsUS.html
One of my Eagle Scouts is on the PCT. He is in the midst of the rolling party called a “through hike”. He is somewhere in Washington state right now headed for Canada. It appears that he may have chosen a chilly year to hike!
http://www.trailjournals.com/about.cfm?trailname=10477
@Patagon: Nice Map!
@P.G.Sharrow: I don’t think I could live in a place that only has August off from snow…
FWIW, the birds are leaving the area here. We usually have an “indian summer” with warmth and no rain right through Halloween. This year we had 2 hot days in September and it’s now got that cloudy overcast cold feeling of November… My squash and corn are dried off and even the beans are turning brown leaved. Things are just packing it in for winter already. Even the tree leaf drop is started (and not just the August dry water shortage drop, we’re talking autumn browned leaves starting)
I’m expecting a very cold winter.
@Larry Geiger: Hope he took a lot of warm clothes… Though the map posted by Patagon looks like he’s got it better up there than we do down here… At least for the next few days.
In the wine business. California grape harvest is greatly delayed. It’s too cold.
What is your “Lava Lamp World” thesis? I couldn’t find it on a search of you website.
I’ve commented on it in a variety of places, but not put up a posting about it.
It’s pretty simple. Just like in a lava lamp, blobs of heated fluid move up to cool and down after cooling. So the oceans store up a lot of heat during a ‘hot phase’, then when things turn cool, that heat is given up to the air… which promptly makes a hot blob and heads north (in the N. Hemisphere) to the pole to dump the heat (raining as it does the dumping to the upper air). At the poles, things get really cold, and the cold blob heads back toward the hot ocean to pick up the next load of heat.
This creates a ‘loopy jet stream” in the process (as opposed to the more laminar one we had during the warm PDO).
And this is why it was hot on the East coast (as a hot blob from the Gulf of Mexico headed north and ran over them) but quite cold on the West coast (as a cold blob from the pole headed south…)
In the end, it’s just a heat driven mass pump in the same way a lava lamp is driven… thus the name.
Thanks
Your “Lava Lamp” comment is where my thinking on global temperature/heat transfer paterns is evolving. Historically, people have collected air temperature records because they were easy to obtain and understand. These records are the basis of the AGW arguments.
The energy content of the land/ocean mass makes the energy content of the atmospheric mass insignificant. Your “Lava Lamp” convection analogy makes sense in explaining weather patterns. These land/ocean elements should be the focus of temperature measurements. If one monitors trends of the significant factors (land/ocean), the “minor” thin film atmosphere should follow the trend.
@mddwave: Add in the fact that a giant heat flow happens as megatons of water vapor condense to rain then freeze to snow (and that transfer is to the upper air and on to space) and a phase change happens with NO change of temperature… And that is why I periodically make comments that it’s all about the heat flow and not about the temperature.
It’s surprising to me how many folks, even folks trained in science, forget (or never quite understood?) that HEAT is not TEMPERATURE. That a melting ice cube consumes 80 times as much heat with no temperature change as it would take to warm the liquid by 1 degree. So 15 lbs of snow on a square foot (about 2 gallons or a foot or two of depth depending on how fluffy it is) is 80 times more ‘energy dense’ as it melts than the same amount of water (which is itself about 6 times the heat content of the same mass of air IIRC the relative specific heats)
So you get somewhere around 480 times the heat tied up in that snow than is tied up in all the air over that square foot of dirt. (Assuming I’m remember stuff from high school correctly after a few decades ;-) and it all moves with zero change of temperature as the snow melts. So we measure the temperature…
A similar thing happens at the dew point and in clouds where rain forms, except the heat of vaporization is even higher… somewhere near 540 times the specific heat of water (and so about 3160 times the heat content of the same mass of air).
But hey, who cares about the hydrological cycle… just because a bit of water evaporating at the surface then condensing at altitude is moving thousands of times more heat than the same mass of air… and can mask thousands of times the heat flow as it can happen with little change of temperature.
So yeah, using temperature as a proxy for heat gain / loss is one of my main gripes…
And that isn’t even getting into the whole issue of ground temperature changes…
So a raging blizzard will be nasty cold on the ground and look warm to the overhead satellite while after the storm passes the ground will be the same temperature and the overhead satellite will see cold. Evaporating water from the surface to be turned into snow in the upper atmosphere transports more energy to the edges of space then any convection and radiation from the surface. Run away global warming is not possiable on a planet with large oceans and a relatively thin atmosphere.
Now if gravity were to increase about 7% then the earth could hold enough extra atmosphere to increase density altitude by about 1000 feet and then you and I could go out into the noonday sun without a shirt and hat and not get fried. Oh yes and our tomatoes would do better.:-)
So a raging blizzard will be nasty cold on the ground and look warm to the overhead satellite while after the storm passes the ground will be the same temperature and the overhead satellite will see cold. Evaporating water from the surface to be turned into snow in the upper atmosphere transports more energy to the edges of space then any convection and radiation from the surface. Run away global warming is not possiable on a planet with large oceans and a relatively thin atmosphere.
Now if gravity were to increase about 7% then the earth could hold enough extra atmosphere to increase density altitude by about 1000 feet and then you and I could go out into the noonday sun without a shirt and hat and not get fried. Oh yes and our tomatoes would do better.:-) pg
Somewhat related, in case you haven’t seen these”
https://tipggita32.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/new-zealand-backs-away-from-doctored-temperature-data/
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/216267-US-physics-professor-Global-warming-is-the-greatest-and-most-successful-pseudoscientific-fraud-I-have-seen-in-my-long-life-
(Not sure if these will present as hyperlinks, anyway cut and paste would do it).
Regards, Ken.