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La Niña could bring hearty snowpack, forecasters say Skiers and snowboarders delighted in a healthy snowpack this past March and may be in for a bountiful snow season this winter up on Mount Ashland. File photo by Andy Atkinson Tuesday Nov 1, 2016 at 11:04 AM Nov 2, 2016 at 12:18 PM By Mark Freeman For the Tidings Forecasters say there's a better-than-average chance that a cooler, wetter La Nina weather pattern will descend upon the Pacific Northwest this winter, and that could be just what the snowboarders ordered.  As much of the Siskiyou Mountain range closes out its wettest October on record, the National Weather Service is giving a 70 percent chance there'll be winter conditions not seen here in five years, and that should bode well for the Mt. Ashland Ski Area. History shows that La Ninas almost always bring good snowpack and plenty of open days for skiers and snowboarders atop Mt. Ashland. "La Ninas have been good to us and we hope it does it again," ski area Manager Hiram Towle says. "We can get all kinds of cold weather, but without precipitation, we're sunk." The ski area has targeted Dec. 10 to open, but it could open early if conditions allow. "I'll believe it when I ski it," Towle says. Simultaneously, however, the weather service's long-range forecast is calling for warmer-than-average temperatures for the next three months, with meteorologists sitting on the fence on whether that period will be wetter or drier than normal. The long-range forecast may sound contradictory to a La Nina pattern, but it actually tracks the last La Nina winter of 2011-12, according to Natural Resources Conservation Service statistics. That year was mild but wet heading into March 2012, when the Rogue River Basin snowpack entered the month at just 66 percent of average, according to the NRCS. By April, however, the overall basinwide snowpack was 106 percent of average, the NRCS says. The bases of Mt. Ashland's chairlifts are at about 6,300-foot elevation, which is more than 350 feet higher than NRCS' Sno-Tel sites. The ski area got 307 inches of snow that year, third highest in its nearly 40-year history and well above the 220-inch average. "If we get 300s, we're super-happy," Towle says. October was a microcosm of the 2011-12 season, seeing 13 total inches of snow on Mt. Ashland and record rainfall amounts at five NRCS gauges for the Rogue Basin, but no measurable snowpack Monday. "It's been really wet but not cold enough for our sites to pick up snow," says Julie Koerberle from the NRCS' snow survey program in Portland. For instance, the Bigelow Camp site along the California border southwest of Applegate Lake registered 23.3 inches of rain since Oct. 1, 240 percent above the previous record of 9.7 inches set in 1982. That year, the ensuing snowpack peaked at less than two-thirds of normal, according to the NRCS. The Rogue Basin's rainfall was listed Monday at 368 percent of average since the water year began Oct. 1, according to the NRCS. Medford headed into trick-or-treating time Monday with 5.49 inches of rain measured through October at the Medford airport, one of the drier places in town, according to the weather service. Just .29 inches of rain was measured there over the weekend, meteorologist Brad Schaaf says. Reach Mail Tribune reporter Mark Freeman at 541-776-4470 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MTwriterFreeman.