Snow here to stay or warming up to melt away?

With the recent weather dipping cooler in the Southlands here in California, many of the higher altitude weather areas are fearing an increase in temperature again to melt away the snowfall that they have gotten. Although it snowed in Mammoth last week and even is snowing today, the extended weather forecast is predicting bright and sunny days til close to Thanksgiving. Of course, weather is highly unpredictable and anything can chance, but I fear, like many other years we may be opening the lifts too early in joy of an early snow and may end up closing down for a few weeks.

Picture from 11/9/15

With the recent purchase of Bear Mountain and Snow Valley by Mammoth, came along with it the addition of snow blowing machines and technology in Mammoth. For decades, Mammoth has primarily relied upon good winters to bring snow faring travelers to its destination, but as the years have grown warmer and winters have become drier, alternative snow making methods have been adopted. Most of California's resorts rely entirely if not mostly on this technology to create the snow we enjoy. Mammoth and Tahoe have been hesitant to implement this type of technology.  With the recent purchase of Bear's top snow resorts, they have begun to add this process to their trails.

Snow making at Big Bear

This has allowed us to create better coverage, throughout the season to battle our lack of rain. Will this be enough to bring us through the warm weather that's expected? Guess we will have to wait and see!! Bear Mountain has set opening day for Friday the 13th. Hope that's not an unlucky opening day!

El Nino is upon us... or is it? What does this mean for the snowbord season?

Good morning Californianites!

As the south lands of Cali have been pummeled with rain today, many people are speculating about the upcoming snow season ahead. Many believe this year could be the rainfall we need to help us recover a little from the drought we have been having, others believe it wont even make a dent in our needs. The truth is, until we see for sure if El Nino will be here to stay for the winter, we won't really know!

What does this mean for the upcoming 2015-2016 snow season? Well ideally, with El Nino coming in with a cold front, this could be a winter for the record books. Over the past few decades we see trends of seasons coming in with record breaking numbers just following years with record lows preceding. The last four years of drought have depleted our water reserves to such an extreme point that there may not be enough rain in the forecast this year to really make a difference in the deficit.

This image shows snowfall for Mammoth Mountain from 1969 -2010 years. In the past 5 years, we have had many depressing and record low seasons. Will 2015 be the year of redemption?

Pacific Ocean temperatures are predicted to be so warm that although we will get rain, we may not get the snow we desperately need. Why is snow so important? Well other than the obvious, my passion for snowboarding, we really need the cold snow pack in the mountains since our reservoirs are kept full by the trickled down after seasons of melt. Over the past few years we have gotten less and less snow in the mountains which has changed a lot for many snow towns in Cali.

Big Bear Mountain and Snow Summit were purchased last season by Mammoth Mountain after many record low years. The lake in Big Bear has also reached a record low which has a severely affected the community which has largely been driven by tourists both in the summer season and winter season. The snow blowing procedure which Big Bear heavily relies on due to their low snow fall annually, is costly, ridiculously hard to upkeep and drove the mountain to sell to the highest bidder.


Mammoth Mountain did win big time with this move by capitalizing on the largest season pass sale season of all time by marketing their new Cali4nia pass. Now California skiiers and riders can buy one season pass to hit both Bear mountains and both Mammoth mountains for one low cost. Who suffered in this purchase? The residents of Big Bear who lost many of their perks and discounts to the new owners revamped rules.

4 Mountains - One price!

The only way to truly know how this season will turn out is to wait and see if we get the long awaited snowfall we truly need to refill our reservoirs and restore the balance of our systems once more.What I do know is that it will surely take more than one year for us to bounce back from the dry and dismal drought we have been in over the last few years.