Warmer than usual weather won’t have major impact on Pebble Creek

As Thanksgiving nears, many are looking around wondering where the snow is. It’s a good question.

By this time of year, Southeastern Idaho has generally seen some snowfall, but the way things currently stand, you’d have trouble finding enough snow to even make a snowball.

This is the result of a few things: First, a warmer than usual year, all around. Temperatures in the region have been above average nearly all year long, highlighted by a monthlong stretch of 90+ degree temperatures over the summer.

But as the time for winter sports near, places like Pebble Creek, which currently only has about an inch of snow at its base, are having to deal with lower than usual snow bases.

“It’s always dependent on snow. It depends entirely on snow,” Dana Kmetz, Pebble Creek’s director of marketing and guest services explained. “It doesn’t seem to matter a whole lot what we do or what we don’t do, if it snows early in the season down in the valley we have a good skier visit year up here.”

But this year precipitation has been a little bit slower than normal. At pebble creek’s base…” well call that an inch, an inch or two,” Kmetz said.

It is the result of dryer and warmer conditions the region has been seeing this year. At the National Weather Service, El Nino is predicted to hit the region this winter.

“That does not mean that we will not get some really cold events and some really wet events but in general,” meteorologist Travis Wyatt said. “What we’re looking at in El Nino years is that well get a little bit dryer and warmer than normal across our area.”

At Pebble Creek, they know weather is unpredictable, so they never bank on it.

“Really we don’t plan on weather at all for the winter. It really is chance,” Kmetz said. “We just plan on making sure our lifts are safe and operable and making sure we have the staff available and the rest is just up to mother nature and we let it be.”

But there is still good news for skiers and snowboarders alike.

“One of the encouraging things I would say for ski season is that, not only did we have a really precip month in October, but temperatures, even though we’ve been above average for most of the summer, and majority of the fall, October did have some temperatures that were normal to below normal and if you look at the monthly average for November so far we’re a good three degrees below normal,” Wyatt said.

The mountain does currently have snow but is in need of more.

“Well we need probably a foot of snow, which we have on the top, but we need quite a bit more on the top. so if you get a solid 12 inches at the base, that’s enough to open down here,” Kmetz said.

Pebble Creek is expected to open for its 70th season in mid-December, weather permitting.