Storm dumps six feet of snow on Mammoth Mountain

Town of Mammoth digs out of three feet of new snow

What a difference a week makes.

One week ago today, the Eastern Sierra was still clothed in gold aspens and green lawns.

Runners ran in shorts; dogs chased balls through grassy, gold meadows; a few hardy flowers went bravely for ward.

Today, Mammoth awakes to a world transformed by a winter storm that, by all accounts, ‘overperformed’ original expectations.

There is a new six-feet-plus blanket of snow on Mammoth Mountain (Hello, Thanksgiving visitors) and about three feet of snow in the Town of Mammoth. Streets and roadways are lined with snow; sidewalks and cafes are rimmed in ice and snow; the parking lots look like ice rinks and feel like them too.

The leaves are gone, the snowplows are out, the winter clothes and boots and scrapers and the woodpile have been hastily dug out, along with the skis and snowshoes.

Winter, it seems, has arrived, with one of the best, early season storms in decades, a welcome change from more than enough years that didn’t see any real snow until after the New Year, if then.

But will it last?

That, said forecasters, is still unclear. Although the Climate Prediction Center has pegged November as a wetter than normal month for the Sierra, the same agency allows the Sierra to dry out in December and January, with perhaps a return to wetter conditions after that.

Mammoth forecaster Howard Sheckter thinks it’s far too soon, however, to talk about the winter ahead, although he too has hinted that mid-winter might go dry, before going possibly (very) wet later in the winter.

He prefers to focus on the next few weeks. “There might be something that gets in here early next week that may bring some showers or

light snowfall but the trend now is for rising heights over the far Eastern Pacific,” he said. “The new pattern will eventually deliver a series of chilly short waves from Central Canada to the upper Midwest and eventually, the Great Lakes by next week. A Hudson Bay Low will try to establish itself toward Thanksgiving... there is some suggestion that the Madden Julian Oscillation, or other air-sea... waves will enhance tropical forcing in... the Western Pacific. So we may be off to the races again.” As for the next few days, the Reno office of the National Weather Service said this:

“A weak short wave ridge will move through the area on Friday just ahead of the next system. Currently not expecting much of a major warmup on Friday due to increasing cloud cover. But nonetheless, high temperatures will increase a few degrees, reaching the upper 30s to mid 40s for