A mountain storm is moving in, and it is looking good. Four inches fell Tuesday night at Meadows, five inches at Timberline. It’s still rain at Skibowl but the freezing level is dropping and everyone should get snow Wednesday night.

The National Weather Service is predicting snow and plenty of it all week at 6,337 on Mount Hood. If you add up the snow accumulation totals for tonight through Thursday, you get 26 to 43 inches of possible snow. Wow.

Snow-forecast.com is also predicting snow at 5,912 feet at Mt. Hood Meadows, but their forecast is less exciting. If you add up the “snow in” total for the week you get eight and a half inches, with an unfortunate switch from snow to rain on Friday.

Temira’s Mt. Hood snow forecast is calling for 3-5 inches Tuesday, and another 3-6 inches Wednesday. But Temira does not like the system moving in for Friday, which looks “way too warm and wet” for her liking.

KGW Chief Meteorologist Matt Zaffino is predicting 6-12 inches of fresh snow to fall late Wednesday and Thursday. Zaffino is a little more upbeat about Saturday, predicting “the entire weekend will be good state-wide, especially when you consider the snowpack will be the deepest we’ve seen all season.”

Zaffino, a long-time telemark skier who has reported live from the summit of Mount Hood, has this to say about the 2013-14 snow year as a whole: “The slow start doesn’t necessarily mean the whole winter will be dry. Anyone remember the floods of February 1996? Let’s hope that’s not repeated, but that winter the Cascades were dry until mid-January. From then on it was game on, and the rest of the snow season was healthy.”

The Mount Hood resort that watches freezing levels most closely, Skibowl, is expecting rain/snow Tuesday, turning to pure snow Wednesday night. They’re expecting a solid 6-10 inches Wednesday night. That could be great news for Skibowl, and for those of us who love to shred the Upper Bowl and Outback after a good powder storm. But as always with Skibowl, there is always the risk that the snow could turn to rain before piling up.

With a snow base of just 4 inches below and 10 inches up top, Skibowl has been scraping by with just a rope tow terrain park and a tubing hill this season. This could be the make-or-break week for getting those Old School Skibowl chairlifts cranked up and running. Stay tuned.

Mount Hood’s snowpack is less than half of average for this time of year. Skier/snowboarder visits are down, races and freestyle competitions have been cancelled or postponed, and 10 key chairlifts on Mount Hood are closed and awaiting more snow to open.

The base at Timberline as of Monday morning, January 6 is 29 inches. At Meadows it is 24 inches. Summit and Cooper Spur are not even close to opening. And the lack of snow has allowed for very few opportunities to shred the steeps all season, between ice storms, rocks and bare patches.

So this could be a huge week for anyone who loves Mount Hood in winter.

Follow Shred Hood on Twitter for real-time weather and news updates, and hopefully we’ll all be waist-deep in powder soon.

Last modified: January 4, 2014