Road opens way late due to massive snow

Where? Hint – somewhere in the USA

details here:

http://weatherpictureoftheday.com/2011/06/07/guess-the-location/

h/t EthicallyCivil

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June 7, 2011 9:06 am

Way O/T
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/06/07/argentina.chile.volcano/
Are we seeing more reporting on volcanoes, or are we seeing actually increases or changes in the types and locations of volcanic activity?
I get the feel me may be seeing the start of an up-tic in activity that will exceed average and move us back toward the mean.
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?2003ESASP.535..393S&data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_paper=YES&type=PRINTER&filetype=.pdf

TanGeng
June 7, 2011 9:07 am

This is global warming!!! More snow? Less snow? Hotter? Colder? Who cares!!! It’s all global warming!!!

JEM
June 7, 2011 9:11 am

I was going to guess somewhere around the back side of Yosemite.

Gary Krause
June 7, 2011 9:14 am

Some Kahlua on your snow cone?

June 7, 2011 9:14 am

another OT
IPv6
On 8 June, 2011, Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Akamai and Limelight Networks will be amongst some of the major organisations that will offer their content over IPv6 for a 24-hour “test flight”. The goal of the Test Flight Day is to motivate organizations across the industry – Internet service providers, hardware makers, operating system vendors and web companies – to prepare their services for IPv6 to ensure a successful transition as IPv4 addresses run out.
http://www.worldipv6day.org/

June 7, 2011 9:14 am

Going to the Sun in Glacier National Park?

Sean
June 7, 2011 9:15 am

The most successful thing about the climate modeling predictions is that they have more noise than the actual climate data thereby allowing all things in the climate to be consistent with the models.

DonS
June 7, 2011 9:15 am

This must be one of them tropical parks. For a real Rocky Mountain Park, check this out: http://www.nps.gov/glac/parknews/news11-32.htm

Douglas DC
June 7, 2011 9:16 am

Going-to the-Sun Road in Glacier Nat’l Park….
Looks to me the reports of Glacier’s demise were greatly
exaggerated..

EdH
June 7, 2011 9:18 am

Tioga Pass?
Usually they try to open it for the Memorial Day weekend, but they are a lot more cautious after some deaths a few years pack.

Quis custoddiet ipos custodes
June 7, 2011 9:27 am

Tioga pass (Northen CA Mtn’s)

Steven Kopits
June 7, 2011 9:27 am

Donner Pass.

June 7, 2011 9:32 am

Beartooth Highway (where I have found the most tiny of a permanent glacier in July 2007) won’t open until Saturday at least.

SteveSadlov
June 7, 2011 9:34 am

That’s rather Western Slopish – generally the Rockies don’t get that type of mass.
Somewhat related. I was looking at melt curves for the Sierra. I had always assumed that the curve would have a downward “knee” – once a certain point was reached the melt would accelerate. But counter intuitively, the actual curves are exponential decay curves. Then it dawned on me, in the locations in question there is sufficient compaction in the lower parts of the pack for actual ice formation – pre glaciation. This year’s curves should be mighty interesting.

June 7, 2011 9:35 am

Oh my gosh! Maybe somewhere in the midwest? Minnesota?

PRD
June 7, 2011 9:43 am

It’s a great place to visit. My family and I went there two summers ago and got snowed on in the first week of August. The peaks above Estes Park were getting covered up with snow as we were leaving.

June 7, 2011 9:49 am

I second Tioga Pass.
Me and the mate want to hike the Mono Pass Trail on the spine of the Sierra Nevada’s, but we’re not sure if it will even be clear of snow this year.

crosspatch
June 7, 2011 9:49 am

Tioga Pass road is still closed in Yosemite, avalanche danger is too high at Olmsted Point. Road is plowed though but the parking lots are not cleared and damage needs to be repaired. SR 108 though Sonora Pass is still closed, too.

Colin in Mission BC
June 7, 2011 9:54 am

I witnessed similar road conditions on the roads on the east flank of Mt. Rainier in July 1999, on the way to an (aborted) hiking trip. I marvel at you Yanks, getting roads cleared for driving under such conditions.

Ron
June 7, 2011 9:59 am

Crater Lake National Park. South loop drive.

TDS
June 7, 2011 10:02 am

Hmm… Looks like the road to Crater Lake in Oregon.

Layne Blanchard
June 7, 2011 10:03 am

It looks like Colorado. I’ve driven thru similar scenes thru out CO and UT.
It is foolish to get out of your vehicle, whether measuring snow depth or not. Many of the deepest areas are that way because of slides. While working at a coal mine in the mountains of UT, some of the yard crew went to clear a slide like this, stood around talking about it, and another slide came thru and killed two of them.

Dave Springer
June 7, 2011 10:06 am

Trail Ridge Road, Rocky Mountains National Park
With image enhancement software (don’t ask, it’s classified) you can see both the state (Colorado) on the license plate of the truck and to the front left of it a sign reading “il Ridge Road”. I had to guess about the first three letters on the sign. You can also count the foot markers on the pole. The snow is 22 feet deep.

RockyRoad
June 7, 2011 10:13 am

My first thought was the top of Bear Tooth Pass in Yellowstone. With or without snow, that’s one spectacular drive.

DonS
June 7, 2011 10:13 am

Some park in Florida? For a real Rocky Mountain park see this: http://www.nps.gov/glac/parknews/news11-32.htm

Steve F
June 7, 2011 10:13 am

Snowy Range WY 130?

Steve F
June 7, 2011 10:16 am

Actually,
Still closed, nevermind, from their facebook page.
WYOMING DEPT. OF TRANSPORTATION
Plowing is continuing on WYO 130, by Centennial, and WYDOT will *possibly* have the roadway open soon. We will have an update this week

snowshoedude
June 7, 2011 10:28 am

Anthony,
Another road near you, HWY 89 over the top of Mt. Lassen, will be late in opening this summer. They were working on removing 14-20 feet of snow as they move their way closer to the top….they have a long way to go.
It will be a beautiful drive once they get it open.
A snowshoe outing on 6/5 revealed about 4 feet of snow on the road heading out of the Devastated Area parking lot. On 5/1 there was about 10 feet in the same area.

Theo Goodwin
June 7, 2011 10:31 am

vukcevic says:
June 7, 2011 at 9:14 am
Having intimate knowledge of training in the network and internet industry in the USA, I can say with 99% confidence that the introduction of IPv6 will be an unmitigated disaster. The addressing system is way more complicated that IPv4. For administrators who must maintain networks and the internet, it will be like (analogy coming) moving from automobile tune-ups involving “points, plugs, and carburetors” to tune-ups involving “electronic ignition and computer controlled fuel injection.”

John F. Hultquist
June 7, 2011 10:36 am

That’s along the Lincoln Highway (PA #30) east of Laurel Mountain (the town) heading toward Jenners.

Ray
June 7, 2011 10:43 am

That is surely in Al Gore’s driveway… the Gore Effect!

Too Cold
June 7, 2011 10:50 am

Purgatory Pass
AGW Mountains
U Luz, USA.

Matt
June 7, 2011 11:00 am

Colorado _ Rocky Mountain National park is in Colorado.

Peter Walsh
June 7, 2011 11:10 am

Was it Washington State highway??
Peter Walsh, Dublin, Ireland.
I remember a scene of a man in an orange jacket from about mid May 2011 on WUWT and maybe it has just been cleared up.

coaldust
June 7, 2011 11:10 am

I would say the Mirror Lake Highway in Utah — except the road is still closed because the snow there is still to deep to plow. It won’t be plowed until late June, which is crazy.

Mike Mangan
June 7, 2011 11:13 am

Does it bother you that it took readers an hour before they clicked on the link to your other site? Everyone that missed it, go to Weatherpictureofhteday.com and look around awhile. 🙂

Lance
June 7, 2011 11:13 am

Deerfoot Trail – Calgary after spring storm? 🙂

June 7, 2011 11:25 am

Mike Mangan: Does it bother you that it took readers an hour
You spoilsport, you!

Tom T
June 7, 2011 11:45 am

Don’t you know that late season snow is caused by global warming. It is winter snow that means it is getting colder.
Oh I’m sorry about that. It is just that it is so hard to keep up with the latest alarmist thing is proof of global warming.

Mike Mangan
June 7, 2011 11:48 am

Whachu talkin’ about, Maurizio? Dave Springer had it @ 10:06. I’m innocent, I tells ya!

June 7, 2011 12:08 pm

At what point do we get to call it the “North American Ice Sheet”? If it lasts one Summer? Two Summers? Thoughts?

June 7, 2011 12:23 pm

That place is in the Rockies. But I had to check the link to be sure. It looks like home to me. Here on the western slop of the Sierra Nevada it’s no different. I grew up here. And there is more snow in the high country than I have ever seen. If “Global” warming is a “Global” phenomena, then why isn’t it happening here?

Craig S
June 7, 2011 12:46 pm

It’s amazing. I was up that way just 6 weeks ago and was wondering exactly how bad the road was.

Mark Wagner
June 7, 2011 12:54 pm

(don’t ask, it’s classified)
crap. now he’s gonna have to kill us.

formerPE
June 7, 2011 12:57 pm

Hey Anthony:
Is the road through Lassen NP open yet? This shot reminds me of a bicycle tour I did through Lassen NP in I believe 1983 after the 1982-3 (El Nino?) winter. Similar 20-foot snow canyon walls in July. I guess that the elevation was high enough that most of the winter precip fell as snow in spite of the warmer SSTs that year. Burney Falls was spectacular that year, too. Thanks for the trip down memory lane, even though this is Trail Ridge in CO. (I’m headed that way in a week or so.)

Jack Simmons
June 7, 2011 1:02 pm
Jack Simmons
June 7, 2011 1:04 pm

Rocky Mountain National Park had more snow at the end of May than at the beginning.

Roy UK
June 7, 2011 1:07 pm

Sorry but your heading has a few typos: Road opens way late due to massive snow
Let me fix that for you:
Road opens way late due to Climate Change /sarc
My guess, somewhere in Alaska? Nowhere in the southern states could have that much snow this close to mid-summer could they?

Mark Hladik
June 7, 2011 1:24 pm

Highway 14 or 14A, Big Horn Mountains, Wyoming, between Buffalo and Tensleep?
Mark H.

F. Ross
June 7, 2011 1:37 pm

Death Valley?
Warming causes cooling remember.

Editor
June 7, 2011 1:45 pm

aaron says:
June 7, 2011 at 9:06 am
> Way O/T
Really belongs in Tips & Notes or that open thread. Please give new posts a change to have a couple dozen replies before taking things off in a different direction!
vukcevic says:
June 7, 2011 at 9:14 am
> another OT
You too!

Bruce
June 7, 2011 1:46 pm

Yeah, not Crater Lake guys, the vegetation is too thin on the hill behind. Its somewhere where the summers are hot and dry. (That is hotter and dryer than Crater Lake)

upcountrywater
June 7, 2011 1:50 pm

I’m going to go with the Dave Springer Post above..
On that very road, one can see very fresh new pavement.
I was just over trail ridge road last summer while the paving companies were doing a major repave on the Park.

EthicallyCivil
June 7, 2011 1:51 pm

What? No hat tip to the EthicallyCivil… I had this story on the tips page at least a week ago. This is the follow-up in the Camera.
Pax
[Fixed. Now you’re famous! ~dbs, mod.]

Steve F
June 7, 2011 1:51 pm

Mark Hladik
HWY16 between Buffalo and Tensleep is open, HWY 14 and 14A between Greybull and Sheridan is still closed and will be for a week or two. So much snow in the mountains of Wyoming this year. It is crazy. HWY 130 is always open memorial day weekend. For the first time in recent memory it was not, and is still not.

damron walton
June 7, 2011 2:21 pm

I know it near happen coming ice age? Maybe be not possible. I had see most record weather and sunspots climate shift

Editor
June 7, 2011 2:23 pm

Looks like Dave Springer has nailed it.
I plotted the opening dates for the Chinook Pass and for the Cascades Highway (Washington). There is a very marked difference (earlier opening) after 1977 that corresponds to the shift in the PDO to ‘Warm’. Now were in PDO ‘Cold’ again. Very late opening this year – I guess it could take a few years before a tendancy for later opening becomes noticable. http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2011/06/05/is-the-pdo-correlated-to-road-openings/

Kan
June 7, 2011 2:32 pm

Highway 34,
Rocky Mountain National Park
Colorado

Bern Bray
June 7, 2011 2:40 pm

Yep, Trail Ridge Road. I spent a long weekend camping in Rocky Mountain National Park this last weekend, and couldn’t get to half the park.
I was interesting to walk to Bear Lake in shirtsleeves and on snow. The trail signs were ankle high because the snow was so deep.
On the other hand, we saw a bull moose in Sprague Lake, where we have never seen them before.

June 7, 2011 2:48 pm

Many passes are closed in winter, such as North Cascades (east of Burlington/Mt. Vernon WA) and Chinook (east of Mt. Rainier in WA).
(Of course there are other routes in the areas, such as BC Hwy 3, WA highway 2, I-90, and perhaps White Pass just south of Mt. Rainier.)

Steve in SC
June 7, 2011 3:05 pm

Gotta be Columbia, S.C.
Like the hinges on the door to hell./sarc

pk
June 7, 2011 3:12 pm

glacier park in montana.
park service used to go down in flames trying to get the going to the sun highway open by mamorial day and they usually did. they would have a “show me” day to prove it. park service used to have a web site showing rotatry snowplows plowing 15 feet of snow in one of the parking lots up there in the past.
C

pk
June 7, 2011 3:17 pm

Roy in UK:
there are several areas of montana and northern idaho where road acess is limited to only about 30 days per year even in “warmer years” because of the lack of run off.
an intereesting thing is that these areas tend to have gold mines in them and the old saying was that you brought the gold out with eagles.
C

pk
June 7, 2011 3:21 pm

after looking at mr. watts’ other site and eating a pound of crow i withdraw montana from the competition.
the thin vegitation in the picture would indicate that they area getting up close to the tree line.
C

Common Sense
June 7, 2011 3:31 pm

Trail Ridge Road, the Mt Evans highway, and Independence Pass all opened 1 week later than usual because of the snow. The mountains were getting at least a foot of new snow the week before Memorial Day, the day these roads usually open.
Dramatic, but I wouldn’t call 1 week late “way late”.
It’s well known here that if you want to enjoy the higher mountain roads, you wait until the end of July or August.

crosspatch
June 7, 2011 3:37 pm

“I can say with 99% confidence that the introduction of IPv6 will be an unmitigated disaster. The addressing system is way more complicated that IPv4. ”
You simply have to forget about addresses and use names, instead. http://www.foo.com will remain http://www.foo.com whether v4 or v6. If you want to know the address, look it up in the DNS. But it is really no more difficult that MAC addresses on interfaces. When was the last time anyone regularly used a MAC address for something (how many even know what one is?). It may well be an unmitigated disaster, but not because of addressing. There are plenty of other problems at the moment. The main problem at this point being issues attempting to “dual stack”. A network migrating to v6 is better off going v6 native with no v4 at all and using a technology such as DNS64/NAT64 to talk to ipv4 hosts. v6 can talk to v4 (the entire v4 Internet can be mapped into a tiny portion of the smallest v6 subnet) but v4 can not talk to v6. To get an idea of the scale of this, imagine that you could place 2 million instances of the current global internet on a single IPv6 local subnet.
That said, we will turn up our v6 for external services tomorrow (World IPv6 Day) at work.

crosspatch
June 7, 2011 3:40 pm

Oops, meant 2 *billion* instances of the current internet on one IPv6 subnet, not two million.

D. J. Hawkins
June 7, 2011 3:54 pm

Douglas DC says:
June 7, 2011 at 9:16 am
Going-to the-Sun Road in Glacier Nat’l Park….
Looks to me the reports of Glacier’s demise were greatly
exaggerated..

That would have been my guess too. If you check GNP’s website, Going-to-the-Sun Road is still closed between Avalanche and Jackson Glacier Overlook. Significant danger of avalanche in the park generally. My in-laws live about 90 minutes out from the park.

Mkelley
June 7, 2011 3:55 pm

Our beautiful Beartooths look like the Himalayas this year. It may get very ugly when the snow starts melting soon.

Chance Noffsinger
June 7, 2011 5:34 pm

Ha, I actually guessed right. Doesn’t hurt that I’ve driven it 20 to 30 times. One of the best drives in Colorado if you can avoid the onslaught of RVs heading over to Never Summer wilderness.

Brian D
June 7, 2011 6:57 pm

The making of a glacier. Man that’s a lot of snow so late.
How about bets on if some snow makes it to next season. LOL
Or we could bet on the Hubbard glacier closing off the Russel Fjord this year in Alaska. It’s been advancing 10m a day and is within 100m or so of doing that.
http://glacierresearch.org/

Doug
June 7, 2011 6:58 pm

Not wanting to read through all the responses, I would say it’s on Hwy 88 eastbound toward Kirkwood Ski Resort.

Scipio
June 7, 2011 7:54 pm

Trail Ridge Road, Rock Mountain National Park Colorado!

SteveSadlov
June 7, 2011 8:15 pm
Craig Moore
June 7, 2011 8:48 pm

Beartooth Pass between Red Lodge and Cooke City.

R. Gates
June 7, 2011 10:20 pm

Must be somewhere near Miami. Only place warm enough to get that much snow.

John Marshall
June 8, 2011 3:04 am

I had a month in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming in May three years ago and Bear Lake still had some ice cover and the Rocky Mountain NP was closed due to snow drifts and snow storms. So little has changed.

Ed Dahlgren
June 8, 2011 7:01 am

I hope you’re not really trying to claim this is an unusual May view of Trail Ridge Road! 🙂 It takes six weeks to plow, and it often has to be shut down again after the spring opening so they can re-plow the late storms. More views at http://www.coloradoan.com/article/20110604/NEWS0101/106040361/.
— Ed

Kelvin Vaughan
June 8, 2011 7:02 am

It’s in the alarmists trash folder.

TC in the OC
June 8, 2011 8:42 am

I figured it wasn’t Going to the Sun as it isn’t open and wont be for awhile as you can see in the photos in the link below. I thought this quote under one of the picks was very interesting “The snow we are seeing at this time of year rivals or exceeds anything current staff have seen in their careers.”
When looking at some of those pictures remember that there is a road somewhere in the photo!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/glaciernps

harrywr2
June 8, 2011 9:47 am

I was going to guess Chinook pass near Mt Rainier…as it looked just like that when I rode thru last Friday.

Theo Barker
June 8, 2011 10:20 am

Trail Ridge Road: Just flew over it this morning and was quite surprised to read that it was open. There’s a lot of snow, for Colorado. I wouldn’t be surprised by the 1943 claim.

Hoser
June 8, 2011 1:34 pm

Sonora Pass (SR108) is open according to the CalTrans sign at SR120 junction. Today seems to be the first somewhat warm day in a long time. The network radio news outlets are trying to whip up the warming hysteria, only briefly mentioning at the end of their ‘news’ stories that the official start of summer is only 2 weeks away.

Brian R
June 9, 2011 2:06 am

WOW! I’ve lived in Colorado for over 30 years and only seen snow pack like that on the front range in old photos.
I’m late on the post because I’m doing my part to help out Japan by spending my hard earned dollars/yen in Tokyo and Osaka.

SteveSadlov
June 9, 2011 10:15 am

Thank goodness the sun is finally out (for real), it looks like the rainy season may finally be over in at least the southern parts of Norcal. It remains to be seen if or when temps will get back up to normal (they are still below).

randy
June 9, 2011 12:55 pm

Immediately thought Trail Ridge road when I saw the pic.There is also a 4×4 road up the backside. I wonder when that will open. The streams must be raging about now.
-from Orlando, FL

PaddikJ
June 9, 2011 4:34 pm

Trail Ridge Road. I’ve driven that stretch a hundred times; maybe a dozen right after the traditional Memorial Day opening, wh. is very late this year. The missus & I must drive it this weekend!