Dry start to the water year, has skiers hoping for snow

By Rod Hill on 2013-12-24

The dry start to our water year is most noticeable on Mt. Hood where Mt. Hood Meadows and Timberline have barely enough snow to operate the lifts.  The two resorts report 20-30 inches of mostly old, crunchy snow on the ground.  Mt. Hood Skibowl, which sits at a lower elevation has less than a foot of snow.  Skibowl has made some 30" of snow on the lower mountain and is operating rope tows for tubing and beginner ski and boarding terrain.  This will be the first Christmas since 2004 that the resorts main chair lifts will not be open due to lack of snow.  It is interesting to note that the snow year of 2004 - 2005  never saw more then 2 feet of snow on the slopes at Skibowl.  Timberline and Meadows that winter had snow bases mostly between 30 - 45 inches.  The snow pack on Mt. Hood finished the year 44% of normal. 

Here in the valley, rainfall totals at PDX are running 44% of normal since the start of the water year, back on October 1st.  The total as of midnight Dec. 23rd, was 5.53 inches, more than 7 inches below the normal pace to date. 

Forecast models shows little precipitation through the first 10 days of January.  Outlooks for the new month show little confidence to project wet or dry.  I do see some good news, in that a large Arctic outbreak next month is not expected to dominate the eastern U.S. like we saw earlier this December.  A lack of a large cold air trough across the east may open the doors for the Pacific Northwest to return to a more active westerly flow, which would get precipitation totals closer to normal. 

We still have plenty of time to catch up with valley rainfall and mountain snow.  Remember the last few years have shown an overall trend for very wet spring months, March - May.   Our current water year ends Sept. 30th, 2014.