Hike Mt. Shasta

Sunrise on Mount Shasta on Tuesday morning.

Thus far, the winter of 2020-2021 has been fairly moderate, with little precipitation. We had a good snow on Christmas day but since then we have had minimal precipitation. That has all been changing, however. A massive storm has been rolling into the western United States, being pushed inward by an even more massive storm developing over eastern Russia and the northwestern Pacific. The first phase of the storm passed through the Mount Shasta area on Sunday. It was forecasted to drop 1-3 inches of snow. It turned out that it doubled that, leaving over 6 inches in its wake by Monday morning (granted, I live up on a pass, so we always get a little more snow than in town).

I haven’t written extensively about a storm for 4 years, since the huge storm we got back in January of 2017. According to the forecast, this developing storm does not look like it would rival that last bit one but it would still be the largest snow storm we have had since and pretty big in its own right. It’s big enough that I reckon I will follow the storm on this site like I have done in the past.

First, a bit of a before and after. I got the first picture after just a little snow had already fallen:

The storm rolled through on Sunday and we woke up Monday morning to see a lot more snow on the ground than we had anticipated. I headed out to document conditions around Mount Shasta. It was extremely windy so a lot of the trees had less snow on them than I would have thought. In spite of the very cold and windy weather, it was really beautiful out. The evening was clear, so I decided to stop and capture the sunset on Mount Shasta while I was heading to the gas station to fill up on gasoline for the snow blower. With a bigger storm coming in, I had hoped there would be a lenticular but there was not.

The forecast showed the area would only be partly cloudy around sunrise on Tuesday. With a big storm barreling down on us, I thought, finally, there must be a lenticular on Mount Shasta. It turned out I was correct, but it was not a very large or impressive one. Nonetheless, the sunrise was a beautiful one.

Mount Shasta, just before the morning light began to hit it.

By the time I got back into town, the cloud had grown quite a bit, though it was never a really impressive specimen. Far more interesting formations had taken shape over Mount Eddy as the lenticular on Mount Shasta grew.

Now, as I write this, the storm has been intensifying for hours. It continues to be really windy and the snow is pretty dry. It is supposed to dump a foot or more tonight with another nearly 2 feet Wednesday and Wednesday night. That should be fun. In the mean time, we can all be grateful that a good snowpack is being built up by this storm. Hopefully it will only be added to over the next couple months. The Lord knows we need it.

I will post again on how this storm ends up in a few days. Until then, stay safe and stay warm!