Winter Storm Warning!
December 12th, 2009Posted in Skiing Everywhere
Winter storm warning. Such a pregnant with meaning phrase for skiers. Right in there with “I am pregnant” or “I love you”. So many possibilities and so much hope springs to mind when skiers hear or read these words in this order. More normal people may cringe and curse at the prospect of dangerous roads, miserable weather, added expenses, lost time and the unpleasant snow clearing tasks in the cold. But has a true skier ever met a snow storm he or she didn’t like?
I just drove across the U.S. from the East Coast to the Tetons, yes, right through the gut of the big storm that brought heavy snow and high winds and pretty dicey driving conditions to most of the Great Plains, the Mid-West and the Northeast. Lots of people had there lives and plans disrupted. Lots of cars and trucks were abandoned or stuck deep in drifts surprisingly far from the edges of the pavement on Interstate 80. However, none of those had ski racks on their roofs, if that means anything.
After living in a major storm for hundreds of miles, arriving home and seeing the Tetons only scantily clad in snow, I was disappointing, to say the least. Targhee, the snow capital of the Northern Rockies only offing up skiing on the lowly, oh so slowly, Shoshone lift? In December? Who offended Ullr?
Thank God for the National Weather Service and the Internet. The closely watched NWS Pocatello website’s intimations of a coming storm have reached full bloom now, but even before now, my disappointment at the region’s low snow levels was soothed by the NWS’s long range prediction of a storm’s arrival soon.
Now we have the full on Winter Storm Warning in effect and I’ll bet there are thousands of skiers and other snow lovers awaking this morning, peeking out there windows, checking the weather and snow report websites and wondering “Will it really happen? Are they really right this time? Will the storm miss us, or peter out?” How sweet the agony and the hopefulness of anticipation.
Here are the words we’re hanging our hopes on-
...WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 5 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO 5 PM MST SUNDAY... THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN POCATELLO HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM WARNING FOR SNOW AND BLOWING SNOW...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 5 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO 5 PM MST SUNDAY. THE WINTER STORM WATCH IS NO LONGER IN EFFECT. * TIMING: SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY * SNOW ACCUMULATIONS: THE VALLEYS WILL SEE 4 TO 8 INCHES WHILE THE MOUNTAINS WILL SEE AROUND 12 INCHES. The next few hours will tell if our season is finally going to start. It is not promised to be a big storm, but it will be enough. We hope.
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