Busting Through
Mammoth tops 600 inches

May 9, 2005

By Bump Diamond
Man About Town

    Remember about a month or so ago, when Rusty Gregory walked into a meeting of the Mono County Collaborative Planning team? Making small talk before things got going, the affable CEO of the Mammoth Mountain Ski Area said,
    “Wow, 500 inches of snow this year. Amazing!”
    Not as amazing as what's happening right now, though.
    With a 12-inch dump on May 5 and seven more yesterday, the total stood at 595 inches for the season going into today. With the storm still dumping at this hour (noon), it is almost certain that Mammoth Mountain will record 600 inches for the season—the most since 1992-93 (617 inches) and the second-most snow recorded on the hill since 1969.
    The big months were January, (144 inches, 12 feet), December (116 inches, 9.7 feet) and October, when the hill got hit with 82 inches (6.83 feet).
    The ski hill already says it’s going to stay open into July.
    By then, maybe, it will have stopped snowing so much.