The NWS Wasn’t Wrong
December 13th, 2009Posted in Skiing in the Tetons
Yesterday the National Weather Service posted a Winter Storm Warning for the Tetons. Often, I think they do that to protect their butts, not wanting to get called out for missing a snowstorm that causes accidents, closures, and economic losses. They’d rather err on the side of caution since most people will be happy if wrong means less snow falls.
Checking Grand Targhee’s snowfall report this morning, it appears that 9″ has fallen so far from the predicted storm. Not a major dump, but needed snow- and more is still predicted.
One oddity in the Targhee snow report, especially for those of us who prefer our powder untracked was the discrepancy about whether any snow fell overnight, after the lifts closed yesterday. On the same snow report page in one place it says O” inches after the lifts closed, but further down in bold lettering it says 3″ fell after the lifts closed. Hmmm, both on the same page. Well, it is early in the season and they are probably pretty excited and maybe in a hurry. I guess I may have to go up and see which is the truth.
thaddeusmt commented:
Glad to see Powder Blog up and running again, and some actual powder up at the Ghee! (Sadly, Bridger missed this one.) Enjoy!
John Urdi commented:
Thanks Fred – hope you have been on the hill enjoying all the new snowfall. The oddity you refer to in yesterday’s post has been fixed. it was an error in our web code and is now updated to show “Mid-mountain since lifts closed yesterday” and there will also be a new line directly under that that reports “New snow since 5am” which we will update as needed in the morning.
As you know we tend to get a fair amount of our snowfall between 3am and 10am and this way we can keep people updated as closely as possible.
I agree that you should come up and see for yourself . . . often . . . and I should join you to do some quality control work :-)
Thanks – hope all si well
John
John Urdi commented:
Hey Fred – hope you have been up enjoying all the new snowfall, I plan on getting out today with the opening of Blackfoot to check things out.
I wanted to reply to the “oddity” that we had happening on the website regarding the new snow since lifts closed. It was a glitch in our web code that has since been fixed so now you will see the “Mid-Mopuntain snowfall since lifts closed yesterday” (today it is 5″) and there will also be a new line appearing shortly that shows “new snowfall at mid-mountain since 5am” which we will update throughout weather events.
In the coming weeks we will be adding a BTNF weather station to the hill as well which will report updates every 15 minutes for 24/7 info.
Hope to make some turns with you soon – Happy Holidays
john
snowman commented:
Thanks for your comments John, and thank you for letting me know they weren’t showing up on the blog. I’ve reprimanded Wordpress’s spam filter so this shouldn’t be a problem in the future. And it wasn’t just picking on comments coming from your IP address….
I do like Targhee’s re-designed snow conditions page. Good work!