Now that the holidays are over there are a lot fewer distractions. No Christmas shopping, Black Friday's, holiday parties, or Bowl games (well almost except for the BCS Championship game Monday night!). But you get my point, we're back to the routine, the day to day activities that were disrupted during the holidays. All those activities were great and made the time to me feel special. They also helped take my mind off the weather, or lack of it. I still checked the forecast every day, looked at the long range weather charts, and read all the weather blogs in the area. It didn't help. Now I have even more time to do that but I've decided to take a different approach. Just as my mother said, "a watched pot never boils", I'm thinking that watched weather never snows. Who knows, it can't hurt!
I got an interesting perspective on the situation reading the news. The first article I read, First Tahoe/Truckee snow survey comes up nearly dry, talked about how the surveyors and their entourage of photographers and reporters had to walk through the grass and bushes just to find some snow to measure! Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Survey said “I think this pretty much tells the story of how bare and dry things are” as he waded through bushes to begin the measurement in Phillips, Calif., just southwest of Meyers. Gehrke did find a small patch of snow which contained the equivalent of 1/7 of an inch of water, the lowest January measurement for the Phillips site on record. The previous record for the site was .9 inches in 1987. "For this water season, the Northern Sierra stands at about 21 percent of normal and just 8 percent of the April 1 seasonal average when snow pack is expected to be at its peak before melting. Statewide, California has 19 percent of the Jan. 3 average water content and 7 percent of the average April 1 measurement." This comes as no surprise to anyone in the area.
That's the bad news. The good news came when I read another article about Olympic Heritage Week, Snow or no snow, Olympic Heritage Week will go on at Tahoe. It started out "In 1960, with the sports world poised to show up on their doorstep, organizers of the Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley grew increasingly nervous through an unusually dry January." Sound familiar? I didn't remember that even though I do remember the 1960 Olympics. Mark McLaughlin, a noted Tahoe historian said, "There was virtually no snow at Squaw Valley, and they brought in tribal snow-dancers and cloud-seeders,". The article went on to say "But the weather changed in early February, bathing the area in snow, and then brilliant sunshine, to reveal a stunningly beautiful winter landscape." There is hope!
Olympic Heritage Week is a series of skiing events that commemorate the games 52 years ago with events scheduled to run through Jan 15. With the lack of snow, the events will go on but snow shoes will be replaced by running shoes and skis will be replaced by bikes. That's the spirit! We can all take their lead and enjoy whatever Mother Nature is kind enough to give us. Here in Olympic Valley and Olympic Village Inn you can still hike and bike without the heat of summer. Just do it! (sorry Nike). With all the snow making taking place at Squaw Valley, you can even ski in the morning and bike in the afternoon. Maybe a swim and some sunbathing, too. How great is that?
Yes, I've decided that watching the weather intently looking for the next storm is the equivalent of watching a pot waiting for it to boil. My mother knew what she was talking about. I just know that as soon as I get my bike chain lubed and the tires pumped up looking forward to a long winter of biking it will start dumping snow. That's my plan and I'm sticking to it. Check our Olympic Village Inn Facebook page for all the latest Winter/Summer whatever season it is activities and have a great week!
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