Yosemite NP still closed.

[John Kasaian]

Because of snow.
Even more snow predicted for today, but the park is scheduled to open on 1 March.
We'll see.

[Michael R]

More snow than average where I am. We keep getting what they call a "Colorado low", so I'm blaming Colorado. I don't ski anymore so get off my lawn, snow.

Re Yosemite, take the opportunity to go somewhere different, less touristy, and more interesting.

[Drew Wiley]

Yeah, I had to change plans. Heck, people who couldn't get into the Sierra this past week ended up skiing on our local coastal hills! There are no tourists in Yosemite now. That's when you want to be stuck there, but are stuck. But the visibility won't be great in all that falling snow. You can check their official webcams for visual conditions.

You know about as much about Yosemite as you do about the back side of the moon, Michael. Summer-crowded Yosemite Valley itself is only 8% of the overall Park, which is turn is surrounded by a much greater area of relative solitude.

[Vaughn]

That is the drawback of winter...the Valley is basically the only part of the Park open -- along with the areas along the roads in. I have yet to have the good fortune to be 'stuck' in the Valley. Friends have been stuck due to fires, floods, snow, covid, and gov't shutdowns...lucky bastards.

[Sal Santamaura]

Nobody's stuck in the valley this time. It was evacuated after first being closed last Saturday. Only park personnel are present. My last visit, seeking some nice snow scenes, was in mid-December 2018. Snow? The high temperatures all four days were in the 60s F. Not a speck of the white stuff. Feast or famine.

[Drew Wiley]

The scheduled re-opening yesterday has been cancelled. The park is closed indefinitely until further notice, due to more incoming low elevation snowstorms. I have been stuck in the Valley once, and it was my most memorable time there. Had chains, parked right on the road (there were no plowed turnouts), and saw only one other car & person one whole day, a Ranger. Three whole days until a road out was open again. Fortunately, I had both snowshoes and an ice axe along, plus my Sinar 4X5 system in the pack, and plenty of cold-weather camping supplies. That was in early January, however. I wouldn't want to be fooling around on any ice that low an elevation in March.

The size of the waterfall runoff later in Spring will probably be tremendous and draw big crowds. But weekdays shouldn't be too bad. I never seek out stereotypical postcardy pictures anyway.

[Michael R]

The photography is better in Bakersfield.

[Drew Wiley]

I always suspected you of being a trucker, Michael. Yep, in Bakersfield you can pull up yer Semi n its trailer, get your monthly hot shower, and listen to some Merle Haggard music right there in the Truck Stop lounge. Who needs Leonard Cohen when you've got that?

Right now, I've got friends stuck in LA because they can't get over the Grapevine - the pass on the freeway between LA and Bakersfield - due to snow. There should be quite a wildflower display toward the end of this month due to the drought being broken; but some of those backroads beyond Bakersfield might be an especially muddy mess this time around. I was planning a wildflower loop trip into our Gold Country, then a day in Yos, then right across the Valley toward the big bloom area west of Bakersfield... but, weather isn't allowing anything like that quite yet. Happy to just have a break in the wind and rain today, and be out in our own soggy meadows here with a camera.

[John Kasaian]

Heavy warm rain predicted up there for the weekend, so flooding may be a problem.
With all the rain native grasses will be ripe for wildfires this summer.
It's going to be interesting.

[Vaughn]

Yeah -- they have the 1997 flood on their minds. A good friend was 'trapped' in the Valley during the '97 flood -- one of his images of the flooded Valley ended up on an interpretive sign on a footbridge over the Merced. Another good flood might take out that bridge -- and the sign.

We'll be in a similar situation -- snow still falling above 2000', so the Pineapple Express will bring all that down the rivers and creeks at once. But the high tides are relatively mellow which will help.

[Drew Wiley]

It's the wildflower effect I'm a bit worried about, since I'm eager to get out and see it, but don't want to deal with road closures, or hopelessly muddy goo on dirt roads. All this extra rain would be seem to be beneficial to abundant blooms. But the fact is, that on especially wet years, the grass itself grow for fast and high that it quickly crowds out flowers.
Some of my early season favorites, like redbud and the almond orchard blooms, are probably already past their prime. Locally, we have some splendid yellow mustard pastures at the moment; and it should be an especially good wildflower year out on Pt Reyes later on, in May and June.

I had to have a rather firm discussion this past weekend with some of my outdoorsy friends about scheduling high country backpacking trips. I'm sure there will be more drownings this year than usually due to people trying to ford snowmelt streams too early in the season. Enough died during the drought years when attempting to get in too early - six at just one spot in one month, due to a footbridge washing out the previous year.

The falls in Yosemite will be exceptionally big this year, but no doubt the crowds too, as summer nears. Still, it would take decades in a row of this kind of weather to jump-start the dying cirque glaciers in the Sierra anew. And they've pumped out hundreds of years worth of groundwater in the San Joaquin Valley, which will take a long time to replenish under the best of circumstances.

[John Kasaian]

I just read on MSN that the entire Sierra National Forest is closed to visitors.

[Drew Wiley]

No need to close it; it closed itself! But there is a tremendous area of Sierra NF which lies well below the likely remaining snowline. My own former place was an inholding within that. And of course, the "Sierra Non-Summit" ski resort will want to reopen as quickly as safely enough. I do remember one year when an individual was killed by an avalanche right there on an official ski slope itself. But all the Sierra backcountry would be
suicidal to enter right now, due to the extreme avalanche hazard. My nephew was on ski patrol on the popular long cross-country run between there and Red Peak when he was in high school - quite a chore sometimes getting out people with a broken leg or whatever.

But i remember winters with far more snowy than now, and greater flooding. The record snow depth was about double the present one - around 90 ft for a single season, setting a world record until remote sensing equipment was installed deep in the Alaska range in the 60's or 70's. The weather accountants tend to lop off anything prior to modern instrumentation, making the "official" Sierra record about 40% more snow than now. But all that is relative to mid-elevations, while maximum snowfall is more often around 9,000 ft or higher instead.