#dash-snow

#dash-snow

"We're always glad to welcome winter back, and this latest round of snow has ensured there are still great turns to be had as our spring season continues. Late season powder days are a bonus, and with the spring events and deals we have planned, it's not too late to get up here for some great skiing and riding!" - Mike Pierce, Marketing Director, Mt. Rose Ski Tahoe

AvalancheClarity makes Météo-France's daily avalanche bulletins accessible to non-French speakers for the first time, translating them into English, German, Dutch, Italian, Swedish, Danish, and Polish. This is crucial for international visitors who ski the French Alps, as the bulletins contain essential safety information that was previously inaccessible due to language barriers.

Avalanches kill about 100 people in Europe each year, with vast masses of ice, snow and rock regularly crashing down on hikers and skiers who have been caught unawares. The structure of the snow, angle of the slope and variation of the weather can dictate whether a gentle disturbance like a gust of wind or the glide of a snowboard can trigger a deadly shift in the mountain.

Pushing limits drives snowboarding, but protection has to keep pace. Athlete safety has always been personal to me. At The Snow League, we're always looking for ways to better support athletes at the highest level. Piloting Crash Patch was one way we encouraged our athletes to make smart decisions in the moment.

Mt. Baker is the PNW's snow vacuum. It's close enough to the Pacific to get storm after storm, and the North Cascades do what they do best: force moist air straight up, wring it out, and bury everything in sight. Maritime storms roll in wet and heavy, then pile up fast when they hit terrain.

To get back to average snowpack, we essentially need to have the most snow that we've ever had for the last 30 years between now and mid-April. It would be extremely difficult for Colorado to get back to a normal/average snowpack. As an example, when looking at the Independence Pass SNOTEL site in central Colorado outside of Aspen, we typically have 13 inches of snow-water-equivalent at the end of February. This year, we only have 6.7 inches of SWE.

From late Saturday night through Sunday, guidance is converging on timing and warmer snow levels but diverging on intensity and ridge-top wind magnitude, with the most consistent signal for light snowfall in the northern and central ranges and limited coverage farther south. Most mountains should stay in the low single digits for accumulation during this first push, with favored terrain near the Continental Divide able to approach around 4 inches by Sunday evening.

Enter Snowiest.app, a free, donation-based weather aggregator website that is putting the raw data directly into the hands of skiers and riders. Snowiest isn't a forecaster-it's a model comparison tool. It helps you see agreement and uncertainty across multiple model outputs in one place . Designed for transparency, it puts the raw numbers front and center. Their data comes from globally recognized weather models such as:

This image, acquired with the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA's Terra satellite, provides a wide view of meager western snow cover on January 15. On that day, measurements derived from satellite observations showed that snow blanketed 142,700 square miles (369,700 square kilometers) of the west. That's the lowest coverage for that date in the MODIS record dating back to 2001 and less than one-third of the median. Coverage had increased slightly by January 26.

The midweek stretch looks like the most reliable window for fresh turns, with the steadiest snow lining up Wednesday night into Thursday and lighter add-ons into Friday. Snow levels run a little high early, then step down late week, so snow quality should improve as the storm cycle matures. Some areas could see the next wave begin as early as Sun night (02/15), but confidence drops quickly with lead time and placement.

Snowfall in France this week has been huge, with some resorts seeing more than 2 meters (6.6 feet) in the last five days. A massive winter storm hammered the French Alps from February 10-13, unleashing monster snowfall that has buried resorts and reshaped the mountain landscape just days before Valentine's Day weekend. Across the Northern Alps - including iconic resorts in Haute-Savoie, Savoie, and Isère - weather stations reported extraordinary snow totals.