Huge Christmas Snowfall Totals For California Should Finally Get Season Properly Started

The highly anticipated Christmas storm has delivered some big snowfall totals for Californian ski areas, hopefully meaning a big jump in skiable terrain after resorts there had only being able to open a very limited number of ski runs previously due to a warm, dry December.

The numbers are still coming in but The Palisades, which previously only had three of its nearly 300 trails open, has so far posted its had over four feet (127cm) of snowfall and Heavenly over 40” (102cm). 

Other big winners posting 24-26 December snowfall totals included Northstar reporting 60” (1.5m), Mt rose reporting 55” (1.37m) and Donner Ski Ranch posting 47” (1.32m), although most areas posted 4-6 feet (1-1.5m).   

So far ski areas have not been able to open much extra terrain as the storm conditions made operating unsafe and caused issues such as power outages (Boreal was particularly impacted by those) and high avalanche danger. Mammoth Mountain, which prior to the storm had the most skiing available on the US West Coast with about 40% of its runs open, was closed completely on Friday and has said it will remain closed on Saturday after two of its staff team were injured carrying out avalanche mitigation work.

Avalanche danger levels are expected to reduce a little through the weekend as conditions improve with sunshine forecast for much of the coming week.