One of my favorite legends, although not a prediction tool, is the Snow Tree, a large cottonwood tree located between the road and the bike path along the Truckee River, just north of the "Cal Gas" turn (now home to EZ Mail, and Big Bear Automotive). The legend, as I heard it at the Dam Cafe a few years back, says that it will start snowing for real only when the majority of the leaves on the Snow Tree have fallen to the ground. I've watched closely over the years, and for the most part, it holds true. Those readers that travel the Truckee River corridor from Tahoe City to Squaw or beyond, should keep watch. It's fairly hard to miss.

However, while the myths and legends still get tossed around, thanks to the web, these days armchair meteorologists have a huge array of actual forecasting tools at their disposal. With a few clicks, you can look at radar, dopplers, forecast maps, isobar charts, and much more. From this, with a moderate degree of accuracy, you can conjur up your own forecast, for better or worse, to share with friends and coworkers.

Recently, while making my morning rounds of clicks through the Tahoetopia.com webcams and weather forecasts, I had the urge to look at the future, and my mouse was driven to click on the Seasonal Forecast link on the National Weather Service website. This section is published by the Climate Prediction Center division of the NWS. There are a variety of graphs, images, long and longer-term predictions, tables and values. All the tools that the real meteorologists use! This, I thought, is the mother lode for those looking for more than just guesses - or, maybe not.

I took a look at the three-month outlook maps, which I figured, in October, might give a glimpse of the critical days that lie ahead for snow lovers - Dec - Jan of the coming season. To my dismay, the maps don't provide any real answers at all. In fact, all told, it appears that again this year (see map), we have a 50/50, or "equal chance" for any of the possible scenarios for both temperature and precipitation - above, below, or just normal. The only thing I could ascertain from the maps is that the forecasters, to the best of their knowledge, predict a warmer winter all across the west, below-normal precipitation in the Northwest, and above-normal precipitation for the south and southeast.

OK, I said to myself. This can't be all there is. I decided to investigate further. What are these guys going by? I clicked on the link to the long lead text discussion formats for more info. Wow! This click revealed all the technical jargon about weather forecasting you would every want, conveniently laid out in a "Summary... For Non-Technical Users". All of this is under the all caps heading 'PROGNOSTIC DISCUSSION FOR LONG-LEAD SEASONAL OUTLOOKS'. Wait a minute! Prognostic? That word rings a bell! Of course, the weatherman of all weathermen! In the spring, the entire world turns to "the prognosticator of all prognosticators", Punxatawny Phil, of Gobbler's Knob in Punxatawny, Pennsylvania, for a prediction of when winter will end!

Now I was on to something. If there's a groundhog that gets all that attention for a spring prediction, then there must be some animal that talks about winter. A click over to Wikipedia under a search for 'Groundhog Day', revealed that there are, in fact, more than just one groundhog. Phil is not the only one! In fact, there are a total of 17 listed on Wikipedia alone. However, none of them hail from anywhere west of the Mississippi. Strange. A little more reading revealed what I had missed. Groundhogs are also known as Marmots! A-HA! Now I was on the trail, literally.

Back in the early 1990's, when I ran the bungee tower at Palisades Tahoe, and made the Cable Car trip to High Camp on a daily basis, I heard the legend of Punxatahoe Pete, a reclusive Marmot that lives atop Palisades Tahoe, near High Camp, in a large community of Alpine Marmots. These Marmots, which can be seen on an early morning Cable Car ride to High Camp, are actually descendants of the "Marmota marmota", from the Swiss and Austrian Alps, that came to Palisades Tahoe over sixty years ago, along with many European ski instructors and ski lift builders to help open Palisades Tahoe. Today, as always, Punxatahoe Pete and his community lay low and stay out of sight, and just like most of their kind, live in burrows and hibernate throughout the winter.

It was all coming together. Truthfully, back then, I paid no mind to the legend. But today, it all came together! Of course, Pete makes the same prognostication as all the other groundhogs, but given his alpine genealogy, he looks ahead for winter!

Eager to wrap this all up (as surely you are now), I quickly made a call to an old friend (who wishes to remain anonymous) who has spent many days and nights atop Palisades Tahoe over the last 25 years. He was excited to hear of my reborn interest in Pete, and told me just what I didn't want to hear. Yes, Pete is still alive and living large at High Camp. Yes, every fall, during the first week of October, Pete comes out of his hole and takes a look around to determine what's ahead for the winter here in Tahoe. The reason we never pay any attention or hear about it is simply because the Cable Car is usually closed and almost nobody is there to see what Pete sees!

This year, on October 2nd, as the winds of a cold autumn storm whipped around High Camp, my old friend was there, and he did, in fact, see what happened. Strangely enough, my friend reports, Punxatahoe Pete poked his head out, looked around, shrugged his shoulders, and then gave a long sigh. It would seem, just as the National Weather Service says, that there is nothing to report. He just doesn't know. It's a 50/50 chance no matter how you look at it. Unless, he's decided to continue to keep it a secret.

Author's Note: The Palisades Tahoe Cable Car is scheduled to reopen on November 22nd. If it has snowed enough by then (and I hope it has), Punxatahoe Pete will continue to remain anonymous, as will my old friend, through the winter. Perhaps next fall we can all take a hike and see what Pete sees.

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