Thanks SB, been looking for that since the original cam in that area from the ski fields went missing...will add that to my ski page and also might tweet that this arvo. All of us want the ski fields to do well but it costs an arm and a torso to hit the ski fields these days...only fair that folks know what their hard earned dosh is going towards.

Some friends of ours have been so disappointed in recent years that they are not returning, just too little snow and too crowded on the man made areas at times.



PD gave a good description of that Rock Creek area too, for my link:

http://www.blackheathweather.com/ski.html

Thanks for posting that link SB, I was wondering where its got to. The mobile version one has not been updated since summer.

As for snow on the 22nd June, this is what I think........

That South P snow cam is one of the best. The cams controlled by the resort sometimes mysteriously change their scope, or a snowmaking whale is mysteriously made right in front of one. The one at Thredbo off the Lanterne Apartments is another good one, shows, mysteriously, rather more than the official one does.

The number of australians I meet on the snowfields of Utah speaks volumes about the skiiers and boarders our industry has driven away. Met two blokes from Canberra at snowbird (my american ski companion stopped them to ask how they'd got onto the run they'd just come off), who had clubbed together with some other Canberrans to buy a house in Sandy, and they'd come to Utah to ski each year. Like me, they hadn't skiied Australia in years. Too crowded, too expensive, too crummy. Bad combination. No pluses.

I've been to the ski fields for the past 3 seasons and I can't say I was disappointed with the cover on any of my trips.

Of course if your talking about June conditions then its a different matter. Personally I wouldn't waste my money going in June (unless I had more money than common sense).

Once you get into July though its a different story. Whilst we may not have had any 300cm plus seasons, we've only been below 100cm max snow depth once in the past 20 years. Skiing in July/August on a 150cm+ base will do me fine.

In terms of trends, most of the decline you see in the long term trend line is due to the past 7 seasons and the majority of the downward trend would be wiped by just a couple of big seasons. This represents far too short a period to start drawing conclusions when it comes to working out long term trends.

I'd say if we got another decade where the average snow dpeth was less than 180cm I'd be more convinced that we are seeing a more permanent reduction in snow depths.

GFS 00z weakens the next front significantly and warms things up going into next week compared to recent runs. Can't see much in terms of snow, moreso drier warmth.

Looks fine to me for now, via extended GFS, as a general indication of colder, snowier weather. The 27-6-12 would still bring snow to the upper Blue Mountains. By 21st century, sluggish standards, that is looking pretty good. Will have to keep an eye on the SAM too, to see if it stays healthy.

General indications are what I look for in extended charts and its looking 'okay'.

WHat about this weekend?

According to the forecast are predicting cold, windy and rain.

Just some marginal light snow this weekend, just a very weak cold change is all we will see.

Still so sad for me to see Rock Creek Valley with those beautiful forests ruined for the rest of my life, never again can I go for a walk up to the Porcupine through beautiful snow gums and shrubs the way I use to. Not only that most likely will never again see the sort of snows that I use to ski in through that area. I was there x-county skiing in 1981 on the day of the peak snow depth of the season. And the area was still wonderful and as good as late as 2000. Never would I have believed that all that would come to a grinding halt within a short 10 years, both snow and trees gone.

Extended charts are notoriously inaccurate, about the only thing they have going for them atm is that statistically when a stronger change hits Perth the LWT will slowly track east and allow another cold change to hit the SE in about 2 weeks or so.

However the change hitting Perth is not as strong as I would like, its getting squeezed quite strongly leaving the upper cold just on the south coast. That is why it producing such strong winds, more because its failing to penetrate as well.

The Perth cold change reminds me of the "big one" last year when we were talking of one of the biggest snowfalls in years at only 4 days prior to the event, only 96-120h. The end result was no snow at all and the strongest winds in many years that blew down half of Blackheath.

I have noticed that in recent years, not only do cold changes fail to be all that cold, but also struggle to extend north over and over and deliver stronger and stronger winds instead of snow. Years ago when a cold changes hit we got some wind and usually decent cold, but now it seems to take severe winds just to get only a slight amount of snow.

Still you never know, with the tendency of a lot of cold changes so far this year breaking off cold pools, that could be the savior and still deliver some snow although not quite as cold.

Yes I really hope winter delivers this year as I am itching for a good fall on the CT, will be heading down to Oberon for 2 weeks starting around the 2nd of july so I am praying for something good and I mean good. Yes I too remember last year about the "Big One" I was getting all excited ready to finally see some proper snow but then those huge winds decided to come along blow all of it away =(

SAM has dropped from pos 1.5 to neg 2 in 2 weeks !!
Now correlating that trend with historical records of snow fall and SAM we get excellent snow dump to come

CURRENT SAM index
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/ENSO/verf/new.aao.shtml
COMPARE SNOW DEPTH YEARS
http://www.snowyhydro.com.au/snowDepth.asp?pageID=46&parentID=6&mode=submitted

In 1995 the SAM took a similar path with a similar drop around June and spencer creek scored a snow dumping of great proportions with a strong negative dip of SAM
2000 l think was the same with a pos SAM until the start of winter and a dumping of snow when SAM took a dive into the negative territory by winter
( 2000 was also a climate shift year according to scafetta)
Except 2000 was an even stronger dip in SAM and a bit later in the winter months /in the season ,l believe

http://www.snowyhydro.com.au/snowDepth.asp?pageID=46&parentID=6&mode=submitted

Either way looking at the sub polar synoptic atm and coupled with those SAM / snow depth correlations l am planning my ski trip and looking forward to seeing a dumping like 1995 in 2012
One could argue for a repeat of 1995 in 2012 with snow depth peaking the first week of august at 215m ( above average snow this year)

1995, 1996 and 1997 were 3 such years, where the SAM was positive before the ski season and changed to neg in winter
The best falls were when the SAM dipped early winter or even better mid winter and somewhat much lower when SAM dipped as late as spring

2005 and 2006 were other years and was a similar SAM set up to 1995 but the drop from pos to neg SAM was a smaller amplitude and SAM didn't go to minus 2.
The result :poor snow depth year in 2006 when SAM went negative very late in the season
A strong drop from pos to neg SAM in winter suggests a good season
wax up your skis!!
Just thought l would try and cheer you up PDI

I look forward to see if that correlation holds for 2012
time series photos of JUNE snow on the ski fields
http://users.tpg.com.au/users/mpaine/snow.html

In an earlier post I mentioned descent from above, but it seems that no one was particularly keen to take up the topic with respect to snow precipitation. On a large scale there is an apparent poleward shift to the descending area of the Hadley Cell atmospheric circulation, which is believed to be as a result of increased heat energy in the atmosphere - global warming.

When I sat for my work (Air Traffic Control) Met exams set and taught by the BoM in 1989, we were discussing even then the changes in the Hadley Cell and how this was preventing polar lows from penetrating as far north as they had up until the mid to late 1970s.

Additionally there was discussion of a smaller scale Hadley Cell - a Cell within a Cell - where descending high level systems effected precipitation that the lower level systems otherwise did not indicate. (I was the only candidate to answer that question correctly on the exam-my moment!).

Therefore we deduced that high level systems should be considered when attempting to forecast precipitation, including around the descending part of a Hadley Cell and not just the rising area (think ITCZ).

So, do the current snow forecasting techniques (I am reluctant to use the hackneyed word "models") include analyses of high level systems?

Its no wonder this has been discussed since the 70's and even earlier when you see these SAM charts...



I think this is worth posting also here, the graph shows SAM data smoothed over 7 years for over 60 years and the trend is only one way up. In the annual data you can see that famous first bad year 1973, as well as many other near perfect correlations with our snowcover spanning over 60 years.

The link shows also shows the raw monthly SAM data that agrees with the NOA AAO except that here it goes to 1948. I loaded the data into a spreadsheet and ran a 10 year mean over it and this is what I got.
10 years smoothed SAM since 1948 shown purple

The results have blown me away and shocked me, I never expected to find such a consistent and long lasting trend upwards of SAM. For me this has been one of the greatest bombshells that completely dispels any arguments of cycles yet to be proven of what we are observing. This really puts the nails in the coffin of snow in Australia in the long term. May still get the odd good year but the good ones really will become increasingly odd.

It doesn't look that worrying to me.
.
.

In fact if you look at the AAO values for the June- Aug period for the past decade 17 out of 30 months recorded a negative value.

What trend line do you get if you chart the AAO for the past 30 years or only the past 20 years?

Locke, did you look at the long term trend....


or the 7 year trend in that link...
http://wdoww.lasg.ac.cn/staff/ljp/data-NAM-SAM-NAO/SAM(AAO).htm

Above is a 10 year moving trend line for 60 years, that covers your 20 and 30 years also.

Certainly interested PIAGGIO glad you re posted . Must have missed it
Is there some sort of index that measures the shift in the Hadley cell that shows its change in position and size so that it can be correlated to the SAM index?
so it is not just a theory ..but something that can be observed and measured?

A great graph there PD that shows a clear linear trend ( l believe you said you had smoothed the data )
could you post the un-smoothed as l would love to see the anomalous years as l would like to correlate the peaks and troughs with TSI and what ever else
Now why l said anthropogenic warming may not be the only contributor to an increasingly positive SAM and decreasing snow depth
is because of graphs like the one below that show a steady increase in solar input until about now . 2012
and this also correlates with an increasing positive SAM
One might say that as TSI increases over very long periods of time ( 100years) the SAM slowly moves into a progressively positive anomaly
so you see it is too early to know for sure
In fact if the SAM trend is following the 3 frequency solar oscillation ( scafetta 2012) then the SAM will tend negative from 2013 to about 2033
If that is the case those 20 years should be booming snow depth years ( minus the effect of anthropogenic warming)

We may know or start to see this trend as early as
2015 ?
according to scafettas max and min trend lines the SAM may return to pre 70's anomalies by around 2020
From a solar perspective at least
The period from 2013 to 2033 and even to 2055 is a general downward trend toward a grand minimum
Its not all cut and dried yet
Would like to see some stats in about 5 years
and re PIAGGIO's comments re changes to Hadley cell . This could also be linked to the positive trend is solar TSI since 1917

On the graph below . I have marked the upward solar power from 1917 to 2012 as a green line '
and marked the forecast solar power decline as an orange line . Drawn from from 2013 to 2033

It's terrific to see some robust discussion of all these variable and theories!

Looking back through the Snowy Hydro graphs there are some simply bumper years; just a shame I was too young to experience them! I've love to see a repeat of '56, '81 or '91 to name a few...

Crikey, at the bottom of the page is the raw monthly data, all I did was take that and run a 10 year moving mean over the data. What is amazing is that I did not even have to do a linear regression to get a fairly smooth upwards trend for the duration of the 60 years.

The link also shows a 7 year smoothed trend and graphs annual values that agree well with all the snow seasons.
http://www.lasg.ac.cn/staff/ljp/data-NAM-SAM-NAO/SAM(AAO).htm
(for some odd reason you need to cut and past the link for it to work rather than just link from the page)

I sure hope the solar cycle will be enough to turn this trend, but it will not be easy by any means.

I have not been able to access that link you gave PD. The link Sends me to BIG pond search engine on my browser
could you copy and post the relevant graphs especially the annual values corresponding with snow seasons
AND
O I am very, very excited !!

Have you seen the latest SAM value!!
Looks to have dipped to about minus 2.8!!! today ( after solar storm atm ,l might add.clutching at straws LOL. )

Shame the models forecsting an equally steep shift in to postive territory.. sigh ..However

NEGATIVE 2.8 is heading toward record territory from when SAM records commenced
: found some in 1950's with values with around minus 2.8 low anomaly

I will be surprised if there EVER has been a drop from positive 1.4 to minus 2.8 in 2 weeks!!
Just sensational drop in 2 weeks.. Somethings going to emerge from this dramatic change !!
Does anyone know if that SAM value today is close to a record anomaly?
Here is the roller coaster drop in SAM.. WOW
BIG BIG change in SAM means weather change l suspect?
I have always been intrigued that often when cycles change . There is always a big weather event on the top or bottom of the sine wave pattern?

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/ENSO/verf/new.aao.shtml