Snow on Mauna Kea

[Chas]

I want to go up and see/touch the snow on Mauna Kea. Is it down as low as the visitor's center?

[Obie]

There is no snow at the VIS .

[Durian Fiend]

You're a couple weeks too late for that.

[Chas]

Yeah, I was afraid of that. I certainly didn't want to try and drive up there during the snow. I was always amazed at how long snow would hang around in PA after a huge snowstorm and thought there may be a few patches left over here and there. Oh, well, I guess there is always next year...

Second question. How far down has the snow ever come? Did it ever come down as far as the Saddle Rd?

[terracore]

It's certainly possible. In 2019 snow fell at 6,200 feet on Maui and Saddle road is higher than that.

A friend of mine was driving over Saddle Road early in the morning and took pictures of everything being all white. It looked a lot like snow in the photos but he said it was frost.

I briefly got hailed on here in OLE but of course that's a completely different type of weather, but it was still cool to see.

['elepaio]

If only there was a person who worked up there on PW who could update.
Hmm... MIA ?

Yea Chas, that type of frozen/thaw/frozen is the East Coast version of A'a...

[TomK]

If only there was a person who worked up there on PW who could update.
Hmm... MIA ?

Yea Chas, that type of frozen/thaw/frozen is the East Coast version of A'a...

And that person would be who? Note most observatories are now run remotely from sea level.

Incidentally, the current storm has already dropped a lot of snow at the summit and the forecast is that it may get as low as around a 10,500-ft level. That's still above the VIS but we'll see. The temperatures at the summit are not that low at the moment (~27 degrees F) and near the VIS they are around 35 degrees.

BTW, you can see if there's snow at the VIS during daylight hours via this link, which I've posted many times:

http://mkwc.ifa.hawaii.edu/current/cams/

['elepaio]

Why not do some great PR Tom instead of making it all about you ?

[TomK]

Why not do some great PR Tom instead of making it all about you ?

You're not thinking this through. I asked who this person was, especially as you said they were MIA.

['elepaio]

I guess you are volunteering to be that unammed MIA, person's spokesperson then ?