The unusually cold storm that froze the peaks of the west coast offers a hint of winter in August

Ski season is still at least a few months away, but the unusually cold storm that froze West Coast mountain peaks late last week brought a hint of winter into August.

The calendar briefly flipped before November as the system left the Gulf of Alaska, across the Pacific Northwest and into California.

Mount Rainier, southeast of Seattle, received a bump in elevation, as did the resort of Mt. Central Oregon Bachelor.

“We were excited to see the flakes fly!” Presley Quon, communications manager for Mt. Bachelor said Monday in an email to The Associated Press. “A nice reminder that ski season is just around the corner.”

Mount Shasta, the Cascade Range volcano that rises 14,163 feet above extreme northern California, wore a blanket of white after the storm clouds passed.

Mount Helen’s Lake, which is at 10,400 feet, received about half a foot of snow, and there were larger amounts at higher elevations, according to the U.S. Forest Service’s Shasta Ranger Station.

In the Sierra Nevada, the high country of Yosemite National Park received a quarter-inch to half-inch (0.63-1.27 centimeters) of snow Saturday, said Carlos Molina, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Hanford office. , California.

The last August snowfall in that area was in 2003.

The storm was essentially a “one-off” as such systems normally move through the Pacific Northwest along the Canadian border north of the Rockies and then into the Great Lakes region, Molina said.

“It had enough cold air associated with it that it was actually able to fight the warm air that we have here in California and it was able to push … that heat dome away from us,” he said.

In the Eastern Sierra, Mammoth Mountain Resort received a “good layer” of snow, but not enough to report an official accumulation, spokeswoman Emily van Greuning said.

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