Fickle Winter Weather
December 21st, 2008Posted in Skiing in the Tetons
Another snowstorm that wasn’t blew through the Tetons on Friday. It proved to be more wind than snow, closing Grand Targhee’s main chairlift for the day, as well as one of the main roads in and out of our valley (due to blowing and drifting snow). Both were open again the next day, when the wind subsided.
Instead of the predicted foot of snow, the storm left a scant five inches of windpacked dense snow. Skiing it during the storm I gave it a 4 (out of 10) on my very subjective powder fluffiness rating scale.
Why do local weather people so frequently over estimate the predicted snowfall and severity of storms around here? I think they just want to cover their butts. They’d rather cry wolf and have everyone on the lookout for a bad weather incident than have people mad at them if an unexpectedly severe storm snows in kids at school , snarls traffic, and generally ruins people’s plans because the weatherman said not to worry.
They also are dealing with a very complex geographic region with significant elevation changes tossing temperatures up and down and a chaotic array of large mountain ranges that can produce complex micro-climate effects with every change in the wind direction. As much as meteorologists would prefer to be accurate scientists, I’ve come to the conclusion that in this region, that weather prediction remains more of an art for those who are good at it, than a science,
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