Spring Ain’t Here Yet (So Stay Winter Ready—Trust Me).

A handy guide to staying ahead of the weather.

I live in Torrey, a tiny hamlet of <200 in the high deserts of southern Utah. Despite my front yard being 6,840 feet in elevation, it’s starting to feel like spring down here. Sunny afternoons have become deliciously warm. Suddenly it’s not dark until 7p.m. And tourists are starting to drive through neighboring Capitol Reef National Park. I mean, I like skiing and ice climbing and all, but I’m starting to yearn for those fat-season months when outdoor livin’ gets lazy, when all you need in your pack (locally anyway) is shorts, sunscreen and a ton of water.

But I’ve been here before, and it’ll be a while before I put away the fleece and down and big winter boots. Even with global warming, we’re going to see at least two more months of williwaw winds and fast-moving snow squalls. In fact, one of the traditional spring entertainments down here is watching the college students and ski town refugees pour into this desert for Easter, clad in shorts and flip flops…and then spend the week huddling in the cheapest motel they can find while sleet blasts against the windows. It’s wildly amusing, in a sadistic kinda way.

In the wilderness, weather is always a wild card, but it’s never wilder than during the shoulder seasons of spring and fall. Intellectually, I know this. But I’m no more immune than anyone to the magnetic pull of solar hope. And that can lead to carelessness. I can recall marching out of the Yosemite high country in tennis shoes, postholing through knee-deep snow after my tarp was flattened by a violent blizzard. One minute I was taking alpenglow photos in shorts; the next I was reenacting Amundsen’s South Pole epic. But the storm had been forecast for days. And then there was the time I guided a party of 12 through Capitol Reef. An hour after we reached trailhead, a sudden deluge flash-flooded every canyon in the Four Corners. We were lucky. Even if we’d reached trailhead, we would have been stranded three days. At least that storm was a genuine surprise.

Current weather information is critical to any trip planning, but never more so than in spring, when you want to go light but the weather can get heavy. And TV news forecasts are useless, tailored as they are to the urban commuter. Since everyone reading this blog is internet capable, here are a few key links to weather resources on the net. I think you’ll find they can save you a lot of trauma, and teach you a lot about your local weather patterns as well. I’ve got all these bookmarked in my web browser. I read ‘em every morning before I turn to the newspapers.

http://weather.noaa.gov/
This is the opening portal for all National Weather Service forecasts, warnings and weather radar. A good place to start.

www.weatherunderground.com
Weather Underground has, in my opinion, the best local forecasts, because you can also get an hourly forecast for upcoming days that can tell if you’ve still got time for that two-hour trail run before Armageddon hits. It’s also a simple, graphic way to see minutiae like highs, lows, predicted wind speeds, percentage of cloud cover, and precipitation probability. Locate your town by zip code, and then bookmark that specific page for faster loading in the future.

http://radar.weather.gov/
This is the home page for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s weather radar services. Click on the regional Doppler radar closest to your home or intended trip. You can also choose your radar page by using zip code. Once you’ve gotten it down to your local area, choose “Base > Loop”, and it’ll give you a 1-hour moving radar image of approaching clouds and storm. Once you learn to read these images for your local area, they give you a far more accurate idea of impending weather than any forecast -  But you’ve got to learn how to read the tea leaves. — Steve Howe