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Tioga Pass 2024 Opening Date Prediction
 I'm sure this has been done before, but I hadn't seen a 2024 version yet--I did a linear regression of the April 1st Tuolumne basin snowpack percentage vs. the Tioga pass opening date (using the data here). This year's snowpack was 106% of average, suggests an opening date of May 29th, just after Memorial Day weekend (figuring out how the proximity to the holiday factors into the prediction is left as an exercise for the reader). See you guys up there on or around the 29th! |
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The road usually opens to bicycles several days before cars . First time i did it there was still snow at Tioga Pass and Tuolumne Meadows and it was grand without traffic and noise ! |
Gerald Adams wrote: Nice! I’ve biked to glacier point when it was bike-only but never done it for Tuolumne, seems like it’d be rad |
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Where did you pull the 106% from? The page that the opening date data comes from was a little unclear but suggested it was the whole drainage. I didn’t see a source for there data, but I found a value of 117% on snotel. There are so many ways to configure the data that it was really just a guess. I did the same thing a few days ago and actually got the exact same result (5/29-5/31) but I was playing around with different curve fits and I think that was a polynomial fit. It would be cool to try to add in a correction for like average temperature for month of April or something, I wonder how much closer we could get. |
Frodeman wrote: I got it from the CDEC page here--I think it is an average of the snow courses in the drainage, and seemed to be consistent with the values they reported in previous years. And yeah, you could also factor in temperatures or things like the Glacier point opening date, which is also reported in the same NPS dataset (but the regression is pretty tight as it is and I figured I should probably get back to work ;) ) |
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Neat! Btw do you have the R-value for this regression? Curious as to how on point it ends up being this year. |
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sonora and ebbetts both opened in the last couple of days so itll be soon |
Ally L wrote: R^2 = 0.7 |
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Bet it opens before the new guidebook ships for the 2022 season…. |
John Clark wrote: I just can't stop laughing on this one!!! |
Bb Cc wrote: Sonora Pass opened this afternoon: |
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But Norm, there was a big storm on May 5th, how do you think that will impact your result? |
Norman Pelak wrote: Norm- just remember correlation doesn’t imply causation. Fingers crossed tho! |
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Norman, nice work. From a person on the road crew, memorial day weekend is indeed the target date |
Bb Cc wrote: ha ...fat fingers heard the road crews have made it to the east gate on tioga |
Maggie S wrote: You’re right, Maggie—further study is needed. Are your students busy? Maybe we can get one of them to look into it |
Patsy wrote: In my professional opinion, the May 5th storm had very little effect on the April 1st snowpack |
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Based on current weather conditions and the winter of 2023-2024 what do you think the rough odds are of the road being open on June 12th? I'm staying in Mammoth Lakes and planning to drive the Tioga Pass to reach Yosemite National Park |
Dean Driver wrote: 100%.
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I'm looking to go down into the valley early in the morning, we only have one day available to venture over in this direction, still undecided on what to see whilst down there as it'll be a first for me |
