Nothing here we don't know by the seat-of-our-pants but it does have more impact when it is condensed like this:
Stienstra: Where’s the snow? Trips up Norcal highways reveal shocking images
The winter temperature tantrum is having a mind-boggling effect across California’s high country, that much is well known.
What is not so well known is what you can see – and the precip numbers you can discover — on trips into the mountains. The shock of the present realities can feel like somebody has grabbed you by the ears and lifted you off the ground.
In the past week, a series of excellent reports, photo galleries and videos in The Chronicle and other media have detailed how high-elevation snow levels this winter have confounded and undermined the snow sports industry.
If you take a drive and look at the numbers, this is what you find (sourced out by field scouts, several with Caltrans, with my own sightings as well):
I-80 to Truckee: To put this in perspective, Blue Canyon averages 252 inches of snow per year, Truckee averages 204 inches per year, and both have zilch right now. The weather station at Blue Canyon (5,240-foot elevation at the small airport) is used as a reporting point for meteorologists across America; it has bare dirt around it right now. Drought? Hardly. The station has already recorded an amazing 46.67 inches of rain this winter. If all that rain were snow, it could be 20, 30 feet high.
As you head into the Sierra, there is no snow at all when you cruise up the Whitemore Grade above Blue Canyon (5,022 feet), a sparse layer of snow at Kingvale and Soda Springs (6,128 feet), zilch with a few speckles on the terrain above Donner Lake (6,394 feet), and virtually nothing at Truckee (5,951 feet).
U.S. 50 to South Lake Tahoe: As you venture east, the mountain slopes are virtually bare from Placerville (1,867 feet) on up past Twin Bridges (6,161 feet), with solid patches of snow forming near the turnoff for Echo Lakes (6,909 feet) and sparse coverage near Echo Summit (7,382 feet). As you descend into South Lake Tahoe, it looks like pretty much zilch at Meyers and beyond at the 89 junction and at lake level. Yet it could get worse. The temperature is expected to climb into the high 50s over the weekend, with showers on Tuesday and Wednesday, snow levels above 7,000 feet.
State Route 120 west to Yosemite/Tioga Pass: From U.S. 395 on the east side of the Sierra, Highway 120 is routed up Lee Vining Creek Canyon and west to Tioga Pass at 9,943 feet (and beyond into Yosemite to Tuolumne Meadows, now closed for winter). Robert Pilewski, a Yosemite winter ranger, reported that there is no snow on this eastern approach until you reach Ellery Lake at 9,500 feet. At Tuolumne Meadows, 8,600 feet, there is only 8 inches of snow, and south-facing slopes are mostly bare.
I-5 to Mount Shasta: In many years in January, you can park along the Dunsmuir Grade and take videos of all the people trying to sneak up without putting chains on, where they can spin out and plow into snow banks. It’s not only bare dirt along the Dunsmuir Grade, but it has not snowed there even once this season. Zero. Yet just above the Dunsmuir Grade, at Girard Ridge, the rain gauge has recorded 46.88 inches of rain this winter. Last year at this time, it was about 4 inches. On Saturday, the freezing level was 10,600 feet at Mount Shasta, some 1,500 feet higher than 9,025-foot Mount Eddy to the west.
Redwood Empire: The weird teeter-totter weather pattern, where severe leads to severe, back and forth, is best profiled here; 47.52 inches of rain in Gasquet on the Smith River, 37.43 inches at Zenia on the Eel River, 53.76 inches at Yorkville on the Russian River, most of it in December. Yet January has been so dry that the rivers are low and clear, and for steelhead, “rain,” as all the guides now say, “is desperately needed.”
Tom Stienstra is The San Francisco Chronicle’s outdoors writer. E-mail: tstienstra@sfchronicle.com. Daily twitter at: @StienstraTom
Images here:
http://blog.sfgate.com/stienstra/2015/0 ... ng-images/
