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Comparing Latitude and Elevation at Western US Resorts

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New2

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How is this calculated?
I'm looking at Abasin and Loveland.
Abasin base is 10,780 ft base, latitude 39.6degN
Loveland base 10,800 latitude latitude 39.7 deg N
Yet, corrected it's
Abasin 10,688
Loveland 10,720

1/10th a degree latitude should be 25 feet, no?

When doing a table like this the starting values should be in it.

The full dataset's available at https://1drv.ms/x/s!Ag3jxxfR7xEGjJxJSdPmbCAZrEPnTQ

Feel free to view the starting values, formulas, download, copy, modify, whatever :)

In the case of this specific question, I used more specific latitude numbers from Google Maps, for about .045 degree difference. .045 * 250 rounds to an 11' difference.

With solar radiation, it's clear that shaded slopes will be less effected. South slopes getting the most sun. It makes sense in my brain, but i'm not sure if it's true that the further north you go, due to the tilt of the axis of the earth. South slopes line up more directly with the sun. Although the sun isn't as strong, the angle is more direct resulting in more solar radiation during times of sunlight. Think of a flashlight shining in the your face vs down on top of your head. Of course, this probably means that faces get even less radiation at higher latitudes.

I think you're off target on two points here. 1) shorter days (during the relevant winter) mean less sunlight the farther north you go. 2) the farther north, the closer the winter sun stays to the horizon (less ascension, maybe, is the technical term?). The sun is never directly "overhead" north of the Tropic of Cancer. And the farther north you go, the less "overhead" it seems. I get what you were thinking, and I think it might hold true at least some of the time for objects that lean southward (if the Leaning Tower of Pisa's top is south of its foot, then it seems like walls under the lean might behave like you describe), but ski slopes aren't getting under-lighting like that.

Might be nice to see that re-sorted by normalized bottom (or average). Because the acreage at the bottom is higher than the acreage at the peak.

Here it is re-sorted. And your comment has me wondering how widespread the "more acreage lower" phenomenon is. Mount Hood Meadows and Arizona Snowbowl both have more terrain near their summits than near their lowest points... way more if you include hiking terrain. Sunshine Village has way more high-elevation terrain than low, although I'm less sure there of the specific near-summit terrain. I think those resorts are outliers, but anyone have other good examples of mountains with more acreage up high than down low?

250skilatitudebottom.jpg
 

Sibhusky

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I was just thinking of your standard cone, probably because we generally ski from the peak in any direction down here, but admittedly there are odd mountains where you'd never descend to the base except at the end of the day. They sort of taper down to the parking lot. Still, it's clear that you've got more surface on the bottom half than the upper half for your standard mountain.

(Ignore this frustum thingy, it's had to find pictures of sliced cones.)
frustum.jpg


To have more area at the bottom, the ski area would likely be a confined section of the mountain, tapering down to the parking lot, because the mountain as a whole would not look like this.

cone-clipart-upside-down-6.png


;)
 
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With solar radiation, it's clear that shaded slopes will be less effected. South slopes getting the most sun. It makes sense in my brain, but i'm not sure if it's true that the further north you go, due to the tilt of the axis of the earth. South slopes line up more directly with the sun. Although the sun isn't as strong, the angle is more direct resulting in more solar radiation during times of sunlight. Think of a flashlight shining in the your face vs down on top of your head. Of course, this probably means that faces get even less radiation at higher latitudes.

This has been gnawing away at my brain, and I think I was too quick to dismiss your point... sorry! If I did the math right...

Whitefish, ~48° north
December 21, a south-facing black diamond 48° slope would get a maximum 66.5° sunlight angle at solar noon. A south-facing intermediate 34° slope would get a maximum 42.5° sunlight angle.
March 20, a south-facing black diamond 48° slope would get direct (90°) sunlight at solar noon. A south-facing intermediate 34° slope would get a maximum 76° sunlight angle.

SoCal, ~34° north
December 21, a south-facing black diamond 48° would get a maximum 80.5° sunlight angle at solar noon. A south-facing intermediate 34° slope would get a maximum 66.5° sunlight angle.
March 20, a south-facing black diamond 48° slope would get direct (90°) sunlight around 10:30 am and 1:30 pm, but only a 76° sunlight angle at noon. A south-facing intermediate 34° slope would get direct (90°) sunlight at solar noon.

So generally this still makes Whitefish look colder. The possible exception is that black diamond slope in the spring... does it get more solar radiation when it's getting direct light at noon or when the direct light comes and goes earlier and later? I'm not sure.

For even steeper south-facing terrain, and for later in the season, this might take away from the cold-weather benefit of northern latitude.

I was just thinking of your standard cone, probably because we generally ski from the peak in any direction down here, but admittedly there are odd mountains where you'd never descend to the base except at the end of the day. They sort of taper down to the parking lot. Still, it's clear that you've got more surface on the bottom half than the upper half for your standard mountain.

(Ignore this frustum thingy, it's had to find pictures of sliced cones.)
frustum.jpg


To have more area at the bottom, the ski area would likely be a confined section of the mountain, tapering down to the parking lot...

Absolutely, I agree. And you nailed the issue at Mt. Hood Meadows and Arizona Snowbowl... they're confined sections of giant volcanoes, tapering down

because the mountain as a whole would not look like this.

cone-clipart-upside-down-6.png


;)

To me, Sunshine Village really does look like this upside-down cone ;)

1253984399jpg_render.jpg
 

Jim McDonald

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Jackson Hole, also, and to an extent Snowbird. If memory serves, Squaw would qualify, as would both Whistler and Blackcomb, and A-Basin, Aspen (Ajax) and Taos.
 

jimmy

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I guess it's officially summer. :cool:

Hmmm...does this explain why the snow in the mid Atlantic or Southeast is...so bad?

I think you may be on to something here. Official Summer isn't even here yet but yes the snow is bad in the Mid-Atlantic. It was pretty bad in February but it really sucks now.
 

KingGrump

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Summer is more than the weather. It's also a state of mind.
 

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I was just thinking of your standard cone, probably because we generally ski from the peak in any direction down here, but admittedly there are odd mountains where you'd never descend to the base except at the end of the day.
A couple thoughts: a lot of ski areas are more on ridges than peaks, so the cone surface area doesn't apply as much.

Many also have upper ski lifts that allow you to avoid decending to the base. That's key in the spring and, I don't think it's so uncommon to be considered odd.

My home mountain Copper, for example, has a number of upper lifts. Off the top of my head I think there are seven lifts with base elevations above 11,000 feet. Five of those are worth lapping.
 
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Sibhusky

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Well, the back side here doesn't descend the full vertical, but most of the trails fan out from the top of the lifts, so the skiing still has "more terrain" lower than at the top. It would be tough to figure out acreages working each aspect and its vertical as sections, but given that trails generally fan out more than they funnel, I'm still thinking the cone thing is valid. But I guess an area skiing a ridge with lifts running up and down like a ladder laying down on its side would be possible. Are there areas with all trails converging into one suicide pile at the bottom? I guess.
 

David Chaus

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Whistler is a good example of lots of alpine terrain, lots of mid-mountain terrain, and everything tapers down to a narrow ski out zone at the base.
 

fmcl

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trails cut in the treelien can make a mountain feel lie the upside down cone effect...
 

tball

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*Most elevation data came from here: http://www.wherewevacation.com/ski-resorts-by-elevation.pdf, with a few areas added that I needed to spot-check. Latitude is from Google Maps, with my estimate of roughly the center of each resort.
I noticed some inconsistencies in the top elevation from that source around lift-served, hike-to, and snowcat served terrain. This is just for the areas I'm familiar with:
  • A-basin gets credit for hike-to top elevation, yet that's accessible only a small percentage of skier days (East Wall).
  • Aspen Highlands doesn't get credit for hike-to top elevation, while it's accessible most days. (Highland Peak)
  • Taos doesn't include the top elevation of Kachina Peak that is now lift served but used to be hike-to.
  • Loveland gets credit for the snowcat served top elevation.
  • Keystone gets credit for the snowcat served top elevation.
I think using lift-served top elevation would give the most useful results, as that's where 99% of skiers ski. At least be consistent.

I love hike-to and snowcat terrain and I'm one of the 1% that benefits from it. I wonder, though, how much it's driven by being a comparatively inexpensive way for ski areas to boost acreage and top elevation.
 

sjjohnston

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The original post makes sense if it's talking about temperature. Temperature, of course, affects snow (most obviously, whether there's snow at all), but it's far from the only variable.

All other things being equal, temperature declines with altitude at around 5-1/2 degrees for every 1000 feet (10 Kelvin per 1000 meters). At least in the range of altitudes we're talking about: if you get up into the troposphere, things are very different. But that's well higher than any mountain in the world. The predominant effect (in this range) is the density of the air, which declines as you go higher for reasons that make intuitive sense. There isn't any really meaningful relationship between atmospheric pressure and latitude. What variation there is is much more minor than the variations between oceans and land, etc. Of course, atmospheric pressure varies at a particular place from day to day (or hour to hour). And temperature varies even more (both over time in a particular place, or from place to place), as a result of prevailing winds, clouds, humidity, presence of large bodies of water etc. One day can be much colder in the same place than the next day. The typical winter temperature in Seattle or London is higher than in Minneapolis, even though Minneapolis is south of both of them (and not all that much higher, at c. 800 feet). For that matter, it's higher than in New York, which is even further south, and also on an ocean (though, significantly, on the other side).

The relationship between latitude and altitude - all other things being equal, which they never are - should be in the neighborhood of one degree of latitude equals 275 feet of altitude or so. Temperature declines (roughly) by 1-1/2 degrees (.85 Kelvin) for every degree of latitude.

I don't think topography makes a significant difference, except very locally - as pretty near everyone know, north-facing slopes and south facing slopes are different. The temperature of the air isn't affected by topography at all, except very locally on a day with minimal wind. Whatever radiant energy from the sun reaches the earth's surface all falls on it somewhere. Topography just makes what gets to the surface vary over the crest of ridge: it doesn't change it on a larger scale.
 
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I noticed some inconsistencies in the top elevation from that source around lift-served, hike-to, and snowcat served terrain. This is just for the areas I'm familiar with:
  • A-basin gets credit for hike-to top elevation, yet that's accessible only a small percentage of skier days (East Wall).
  • Aspen Highlands doesn't get credit for hike-to top elevation, while it's accessible most days. (Highland Peak)
  • Taos doesn't include the top elevation of Kachina Peak that is now lift served but used to be hike-to.
  • Loveland gets credit for the snowcat served top elevation.
  • Keystone gets credit for the snowcat served top elevation.
I think using lift-served top elevation would give the most useful results, as that's where 99% of skiers ski. At least be consistent....

Agreed. I went back to the spreadsheet and this time went through summit elevations as reported for the top 30 resorts in North America by zrankings.com. I corrected the five you noted, and also Breckenridge & Kirkwood (lowered the summit to match zrankings). I fixed Arizona Snowbowl's summit... can't remember where I got the inaccurate info, or maybe I just typed it wrong. Zrankings reported higher summit elevations for Winter Park and Grand Targhee, but looking at trail maps I'm not sure where Zrankings is getting those numbers... the listed summits from the original match the top of the chairlifts as reported by the resorts. Since I was in there, I added Whistler in, too. I only updated the 250'/degree tab, but I'm keeping the others there just to have an accurate record. There might be further elevation discrepancies, particularly since neither of my sources was 100% accurate :huh:

Here's the new sorted-by-normalized-summit partial list... 250skilatitude_updated.jpg
 
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David Chaus

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Interesting.

I’d like to see the BC and AB resorts included as well, where your have latitudes above 50 degrees. Also those in Alberta have higher elevations.
 

Jellybeans1000

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@Jellybeans1000 has been our official weather guru with a few great articles on weather prediction. I'll bet he's got some input on this topic.
It's a very confusing subject. You definitely cannot compare an altitude to latitude between regions in the world. For example, the Australian and Japanese (Honshu) Alps are at about the same latitudes (on different hemispheres), but Japan is much colder in winter, because of it's local climate with the Siberian winds coming off the continent, and Australia's coldfronts coming from the Southern Ocean.

A good formula for this would have to include distance to the ocean. Altitudes are obviously going to be different at Tahoe, compared to a mountain at the same latitude in the Rockies. And given there are so many local effects, that affect snowfall at mountains like the DGZ, cloud cover, moisture (as mentioned before with the Sierra Nevada vs Rockies example), etc.

And then there is of course the localised topographic effects. Orientation is one of them, but also where the resort is important. Let me explain with an example over here. My home resort is famous for getting rain below freezing. Why is this so? Because wind from the west rises too fast, from the valley at about 500m(1640ft) to 1800m(5906ft) in about 5-10km(3.1-6.2 miles). The air does not have enough time to cool properly, so the precipitation falls as rain or ice pellets. You also get rain shadows from large mountain ranges, that can affect local conditions, and valley "funnels", etc.

The problem with trying to match altitude to latitude is simply that the weather is always different in two locations and you are always going to get different altitudes, based on the local topographic and atmospheric factors, regardless of what the latitude is.

You could probably come up with a rule of thumb for a specific mountain range/region (like for the Rockies), but in my humble opinion it would have to be very rough. Conditions are so diverse.

This is kind of like the 10:1 vs Kuchera debate, and has the same answer (it depends on local and atomosperic factors).

As a fellow Aussie I’m always interested in Jellybean’s views on things but he’s more into weather as opposed to snow conditions.
Thanks. This links in with this post quite well. Change the general snow conditions banner to snowfall statistics (which this thread is trying to be about). It's nice and easy to put a generalistic rule of thumb in, and makes it easier for laymen. This is what statisticians do. Interpret large amounts of data (in this case, a huge amount of data), and make general or specific trends with this data.

In this case, it's very general trends, because weather and climate is not linear across the Western US, nor the Rockies, not even over a couple of miles. Statistics helps make trends (and I use it also, I did a recent several week long project involving snow data, I do recognise it's place in the snow world). But in an environment as complex as the weather, there is no rule or box that every mountain, even more than one mountain will fit into. There would be no rule I could accept without a caveat. And this is that caveat. And my 2 cents.
 
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sjjohnston

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As noted, various not readily quantifiable factors swamp the effects of latitude, at least in the temperate latitudes. Even holding altitude and proximity to oceans constant, consider these three cities, all on the ocean (and, of course, at sea level):

City @ Latitude: Average January high / low temperatures
Seattle @ 47 36": 47 / 37
New York @ 40 42": 39 / 26
Norfolk @ 36 35": 48 / 33

For that matter, New York and Norfolk are pretty much right on the open ocean, and Seattle is on an relatively narrow sound.
 
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Jim McDonald

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Sapporo @ 43'06" : 30/17
Sapporo is effectively on the Sea of Japan and about 65km from open Pacific.
 

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