 Poster: A snowHead
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...hardly.
Ok, so just before Christmas my son and I had to move 100 cubic metres of snow to get into our chalet (63 steps plus a very full passageway between the garages at the bottom of the steps) but 'snowmageddon'? No. For those of us who have skied and climbed in the Alps for 30 years, this season is just a weak return to seasons past. 2010-11 saw a lot more snow than this year. I had to clear our steps day after day after day. The municipality had to truck snow out of the village because there was no longer anywhere to put it. The lifts had to be suspended so that trees laden with snow could be felled. The early 2000s saw both lean years and huge dumps. In 2003 I drove right across France in much heavier snow than we have seen this year - 2m banks beside the roads in the Jura, snow from Besancon to Arras. 2006 saw minus 18 on the dashboard as we reached the hotel in St Quentin.
It's welcome. It's a break with the weak seasons of the last decade. But once it would be just a normal year.....
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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long way to go yet
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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@langball, absolutely right.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Looking back through the archives in Tignes there are some fantastic foties of canyons of snow with old charabancs in - makes you wonder how they ever dug it out with pre WW2 kit. One of the big problems now with a big dump is the lack of places to push the stuff. Case in point: The snow ploughs used to push all the snow from past the school and the Marie over the edge down onto the Lavachet Piste. Then they built the Taos which is great for a PSB but now all the snow has to be pushed down the road and lorried away.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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| Quote: |
| Who said ''snowmageddon' |
No one, as far as I know, regarding this season. The snow does look good - but as you say, not exceptional by the standards of not so long ago.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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The Tarentaise Valley road and traffic control system - Osiris - was designed for the 1992 Olympics based in Albertville. The design was to handle around 20,000 vehicles a day. A few new sections have been built since then and the software updated for the traffic flow but the system remains much the same, this weekend 56,000 vehicles were expected! Add in a bit of Saturday snow and you get chaos.
http://www.savoie-route.fr/fr/pcosiris
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@achilles, ....hmmm...actually they did...in the winter tyres ramblings I think ... somewhere in the 11 or so pages of wanderings....
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@chocksaway, ....that's exactly right...strange that Alpine communities have moved to trucking the stuff out rather than thinking 'we'll keep those gaps to shove it in...' but then many of those gaps have turned out to be lucrative real estate sites and have been built on.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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@valais2, fair enough. I mostly avoid tyre threads these days - year by year they add little that’s new ...... and I no longer drive to or in the Alps.
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@valais2, not in our part of the world thankfully.
I have a fair number of friends who dabble in property and when they visit here they simply can't believe how much has not been developed.
Someone renting just along from us is from a very old established Serre Che family that started the first ski shop in the valley.
I'd put her age and 30 something and was chatting with her and surprisingly she said she could not recall there ever being this much snow in the valley and that could be the difference as usually at around 1250 to 1450 a fair % of precipitation falls as rain (as is happening today) and snow at 1750 where all the mid stations were built in the early years and there was a sound reason for that.
Maybe as we are further South compared to the North it's the huge accumulations of snow that are making people say that this is the most ever etc etc
But same is true of Morzine ? And all it ever does there is rain 
Luckily we never had that incessant rain that many resorts up North did.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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@Weathercam, Morzine seems to be everyones favourite resort to look down on....but despite the fact that it's practically at sea level, I've shown before that it has just as good a snow record as Serre Chevalier according to Onthesnow.com.
For the year 2017, Jan-Dec, Morzine scored 136 inches, Serre Che 133.
Anyway, big picture as per this thread....I did some broad re-analysis of the last 3 decades here http://snowheads.com/ski-forum/viewtopic.php?t=132215&start=240 (4th post from bottom)
It showed that while there were undoubtedly great months / seasons in the 90's and 00's, the average pressure set up wasn't as good as the current decade. This stat is only going to be stronger when you add in the latest data for 2017 (last 3 months), and looking pretty good for Jan 18 as well, lots of excitement on netweather about synoptics for 2nd half of January.
To update the analysis, here's how Nov and Dec 17 turned out....low pressure over europe and cold systems from the NW. My point is that, overall, massively wide brush, we are in the best decade of the last 30 years.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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@langball, but Morzine's pistes closed way earlier than here last year (we do have friends there and OH is in regular contact with C Tomlinson*, think he went home way before us) and our season doesn't stop when the pistes are closed.
*Was I ambivalent on this trip simply because the previous season had been a disaster? The Agents of Entropy had been rife and the snow had been rubbish. I’d managed some Girlfriend Skiing in Morzine, on the shrunken and subsequently crowded slopes, but the off piste had largely been brown and there hadn’t been a single powder day - I’d had all the hassle of skiing, yet none of the soaring-like-an-eagle emotion. taken from http://stylealtitude.com/skiing-with-powder-demons.html
And as for British Reg cars, seemed that one in three was GB - maybe they like the rain
Here you're lucky if you see a handful in any one week!
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Snowmaggedon is dangly bits.
Also I ought to defend Morzine. It may have closed early in 2017 but it is linked to Avoriaz, which closed after 23rd April in 2017 and friends were still touring in June, in fact they had a ski race (a fun one) in June, the first time in years. Morzine has average amounts of snow - it’s not a super powder resort and doesn’t market itself as such. If you want powder or late season skiing you have Avoriaz.
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You know it makes sense.
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@Nadenoodlee, didn't Avoriaz last season refuse to accept skiers who had their tickets issued from snow starved Morzine
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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No that is pure fiction @Weathercam,
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Poster: A snowHead
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I remember reading Avoriaz had the most kms of runs open in 74 over Christmas and New Year 2016.
You’re thinking of 2015 when SERMA would only issue lift passes to people staying in Morz, Les Gets and Avoriaz to stop everyone from further resorts coming to ski on reduced slopes.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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In 1990 we booked to stay in Les Gets, it was closed for skiing due to a lack of snow, so everyday we drove through a very green Morzine up to Avoriaz where the queues were like something from communist Russia.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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@boredsurfin, if it's story time, well in 1990 I remember watching David O'Leary put Ireland into the WC quarter finals.
Didn't look like a great season for anyone from this view:
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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28years ago what was I doing? Oh yes had a plum role in my Yr3 production of The Snowman probably more snow there by the sound of it @boredsurfin,
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Snowfall in the European Alps has declined 20-30% since the 1970s.
The Alps are not only melting. They are also drying.
Snowfall in the region has shrunk dramatically since the 1990s.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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I'm sure that knob has posted that before!
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Maybe I'm completely wrong but I always thought that Snowmageddon was mainly the carnage caused by heavy/moderately heavy snowfall in conjunction with busy transfer days.
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Keep believing it @Weathercam, please 
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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I'll just park my comments till April
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Langball -- Snowfall averages in the European Alps are def still sliding and trending down.
For example, Val d'Isere (one of the snowiest parts of the Alps) used to average 500-800cm per most seasons in the 1970s to 1990s. Today, it averages 300-700cm most seasons in the 1990s to 2010s. Last year, it got a tiny ~450cm. Val used to openly advertise annual snowfall totals on its website, but it stopped doing so because the charts were sliding relentlessly down every year.
It's not just the Alps that are suffering. East US also struggling. Killington, Vermont, used to promote like mad its Endless Winter from Oct to Jun... Now, it's lucky to get a Winter from Dec to Apr.
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^^^^^^there he is! Mr Bad Trip. You've been quiet of late, good to have your negative vibes back in full effect. 
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You know it makes sense.
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Actually, I also thought that the 'Snowmaggedon' term referred to those school holiday transfer days that combined heavy traffic to/from the resort with heavy snowfalls, producing exceptionally high levels of disruption. What would be interesting is to know the probability of this happening and historical occurrences.
It should have a tech-sounding name like a 'Combinatorial, Meteo-Transit Gridlock Event' (ComTraG Event?) and then someone could get a grant to analyse the statistical probability of it happening to those who are unfortunate enough to have to travel at COMTRAG periods.
Purely subjectively, I think the odds are about 1 in 5 to 1:8 of a Combinatorial Meteo-Transit Gridlock occurring to anyone who has to travel in the school holiday Weekends. Thus making the TO excuse that "It's a completely unpredictable and very rare situation." unconvincing.
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