It's been a very weird season for skiing in California.Originally Posted by Jayjami
This year has been very poor. The snow levels have been really high. We’re often getting rain at the lake. The storms have moved through quickly due to a lot of wind. We haven’t had a “slow dumper” all year. So much for El Niño. In years like this, it’s not uncommon to get a “Miracle March”, but it will be warm wet stuff, not fluffy powder.
Typically as Los Angeles precipitation levels go, so does the snow in the California mountains. If it's wet in LA, there's a decent amount of snow in the San Bernadino Mountains (Big Bear, Wrightwood), and a TON of snow in Mammoth and Tahoe.
Not this year. Fairly prolific rain year for LA (though not as big as last year), but Mammoth sits with a 50-80 inch base (fairly lousy for mid-January), and Heavenly Tahoe sits at 35 inches (again, not good).
Mammoth was horrible in December, and not worth skiing at all.
Mt. Pinos in Ventura County tells a lot of the story. Plenty of rain in most of the county this winter, yet Pinos sits with a whooping 6-12 inches at 8300 feet.
The precipitation has mostly stuck to the coastal areas, and yeah, some of the storms have been too warm to bring snow to the lower elevations of Tahoe.
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