One good thing about a very mild winter in the mountains?
It means an early start to spring.
And Olympic National Park is taking advantage of that by getting a jump-start on spring cleaning to open park facilities sooner.
By the end of last week, the Elwha campground and most other campgrounds in the park were open, and several park trails were clear of winter debris.
“It’s definitely ahead of schedule,” park spokeswoman Barb Maynes said Friday.
“The thing that brings the debris and the need for spring cleanup is the rain and wind of winter, and we just didn’t have very much of that.”
Signs of snow
But don’t discount winter just yet.
As local students head into spring break, Hurricane Ridge is finally starting to show signs of winter, with snow replacing the yellow grass that was visible for much of the colder months.
On Saturday morning, the Ridge reported 46 inches at the snow stake, including seven inches of new snow and the possibility of two more inches throughout the day.
Other parts of the state that have been dry enough to prompt a statewide drought are also starting to show a late winter. Two ski lifts were up and running Friday at The Summit at Snoqualmie in the Cascades.
“Normal weather has returned,” Cliff Mass, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, told The Seattle Times.
The weather is predicted to stay that way, even bringing the mountains 50 percent of normal snowpack, though experts say we’re not out of the woods when it comes to the drought.
“We are cautiously optimistic, but not in a position to declare anything’s over,” Curt Hart, spokesman for the state Department of Ecology, told the Times.
“We had quite a deficit. This will alleviate a lot of conditions, but it won’t get us out of a drought.
Limited sledding
With the recent snow, limited sledding is available at Hurricane Ridge, but the Hurricane Ridge Public Development Authority passed through the end of its typical ski season with zero days of rope tow and poma lift operation.
It needed at least four feet of snow to start up the lifts, which didn’t happen. This was the first winter since the downhill lifts move to the Ridge in 1958 that the area had no operating days.
