Snow scarcely stops at ski area

Feb. 19—Peter Johnson is not the sort who begrudges a blizzard.

But even as someone who depends on snow, Johnson concedes that it's possible for a little too much to fall a little too rapidly.

As much as four feet of powder in less than a week, for instance.

The positive part of this frozen onslaught is that it accumulated on the ski runs at Anthony Lakes Mountain Resort, where Johnson is the general manager.

In the midst of a rather lackluster winter, the series of potent Pacific storms that have plowed through Oregon the past several days were welcome.

But because skiers and snowboarders have to drive to the resort, and because they like to park when they get there, this wintry barrage, even as it created conditions that skiers dream about, was causing a nightmare for Anthony Lakes' maintenance crew.

They had nine miles of steep road to plow.

And a couple acres of parking lots.

"Our crew's been at it since 6 a.m. Wednesday (Feb. 17)," Johnson said on Thursday morning. "And they're still going."

The weather offered only a brief respite for the beleaguered plow drivers as they prepared the ski area for its opening Thursday morning. Snow tapered off late Wednesday, but the latest storm arrived Thursday and added another half a foot or so to the ski area's base.

Anthony Lakes is open Thursday through Sunday.

On Wednesday afternoon the ski area, via its website, asked visitors who were planning to drive up the mountain that day and stay overnight in their RVs to wait until Thursday morning to give workers time to push the snow out of parking areas.

Johnson said he's never seen so much snow fall in one week during his decade as general manager.

The weather pattern during that period illustrated the sometimes dramatic differences between what happens in the mountains and in the valleys.

Although several inches of snow also fell in Baker City on Monday, Feb. 15, the snow there all but stopped by late that day.

But snow continued to fall, heavily at times, at Anthony Lakes Tuesday and Wednesday.

This was the result of a persistent air flow from the west-northwest, according to the National Weather Service.

As that air, laden with moisture after crossing the Pacific Ocean, slammed into the Elkhorn Mountains it was forced to rise, which caused it to cool. And because cooler air can hold less moisture in suspension, the resulting clouds dropped much of their moisture, as snow, on the slopes at Anthony Lakes.

And on the road and parking lots, of course.

The same pattern pummeled other mountain areas, including the northern Blues around Tollgate, with prodigious amounts of snow over the same period.

Downwind valleys such as Baker, meanwhile, were in the rain shadow — or, rather, snow shadow, given the temperatures.

The official snow-measuring station nearest Anthony Lakes is an automated device in a meadow about half a mile east of the ski area itself.

That station, which reports snow depth at midnight each day, recorded 43 inches of snow at the start of Thursday, Feb. 11.

During the next seven days, concluding at the start of Feb. 18, the snow depth increased to 79 inches — a total of 36 inches.

Another station, in the northern Blues near Tollgate, recorded similar totals for the week. There the snow depth rose from 47 inches early on Feb. 11 to 90 inches the morning of Feb. 17 — 43 total inches in six days.

At Schneider Meadows, in the southern Wallowa Mountains north of Halfway, the snow depth increased from 68 to 88 inches.

The storm that started Thursday afternoon and continued overnight delivered another seven inches at Schneider Meadows.

Two sites at the southwest corner of the Wallowas both measured about 30 inches of new snow over the past week.

A station at Taylor Green recorded a snow depth increasing from 44 to 75 inches, and at nearby West Eagle Meadows, the snow depth increased from 61 to 91 inches.

Considerable amounts of snow fell even at lower-elevation sites, such as Tipton, along Highway 7 between Sumpter and Austin Junction.

The snow depth there rose this week from 32 to 52 inches.

Although the snow was mostly light and powdery — the stuff skiers and snowboarders covet — there was enough of it to significantly increase the water content in the snowpack.

That measurement, not depth, is the one irrigation district managers and farmers heed, because the water content more accurately reflects the amount of water that will trickle into streams and reservoirs this spring and summer.

The average water content from more than a dozen sites around Northeast Oregon was cumulatively 11% below the 30-year average on Feb. 2.

By Feb. 19 the water content from those sites was 17% above average.