LANDER -- After a sluggish start this winter, the Cowboy State will close out 2008 the same way it did last year -- with a December surge in snowfall.

Following two weeks of winter storms in the Wyoming high country, statewide snowpack is looking generally good, experts said on Tuesday.

And if the rest of the winter follows last year's pattern, the state could take another big step toward recovering from long-term drought.

"If you want to use a football metaphor, we're really in the late second quarter in terms of the snow season," said Don Day, meteorologist with DayWeather Inc. in Cheyenne. "There's still a lot of game left. What I find interesting in watching the weather patterns very closely, is there are some similarities showing up to last winter."

The 2007 season began with little snow in October and November, by historical standards, but then December "went crazy," Day said.

"A couple weeks ago in Yellowstone there was not enough snow for snowmobiling, and it's not dissimilar to what happened a year ago," he said. "And last year we ended up with one of best snow years in seven or eight years."

The mountains in Wyoming should continue to add to their snow totals at least into the first week of January, Day said, but there won't be much more than light flurries falling on the plains.

The conditions that generally create mountain snowfall also tend to create down-sloping winds, he said, which dry out the air in the lower country.

"It will be interesting to see what pans out," Day said. "One good snow year doesn't break a drought. Knock on wood, if this pattern ends up being anything like last year, it does bode very well."

Fred Cooney, an employee at the White Pine Ski Area in Pinedale, said the resort got about 48 inches of snow in 24 hours around Christmas, and business has been brisk there for the past few days.

Francois Corrand is the owner of Goosewing Ranch Snowmobile Safaris in Jackson, which offers guided snowmobile tours of Yellowstone National Park. He said the relative lack of snow in the park before Dec. 15 was disappointing, and it reduced, initially, the number of different trips he's been able to offer.

"Business is weak," he said. But that is likely due "more to the economy than the snow," he added.

Avalanches

Some of Wyoming's western mountains, especially the Tetons, have seen between seven and nine feet of snow dumped on their peaks in the last two weeks, Day said.

The entire region has seen similar mountain storms.

That's one of the reasons there have been avalanches of late, not only in the Cowboy State, but also in the mountains of Colorado, Idaho and Utah, he said.

A 15-year-old snowmobiler from Wyoming died in Utah this week, the fourth person to die in avalanches in that state this month. And a skier died in an avalanche on Saturday at the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, and another avalanche dumped snow into a lift-top restaurant there on Monday.

Lisa Watson, a spokeswoman for the resort, said as of Tuesday there was nearly an identical amount of snow on the slopes as the same date last year. The difference between this year and last, she said, is the mountains had freezing rain this season on both Nov. 15 and Nov. 29, which created crusts and weak layers of snow.

"The last two days they've been bombing the upper mountain to try to make these avalanche pockets go away," Watson said. "And we will not open the upper mountain until the risk for avalanche is greatly reduced."

Long drought

Jim Fahey, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Riverton, said the late December snows have helped most of the state catch up to its historical averages for snowpack on the mountains -- save for a couple of areas, including southwest Wyoming.

Even though last year was a huge water year, it'll take more of the same to lift the entire state out of what's called hydrologic drought -- where there is still a relative shortage of water stored in places such as reservoirs and aquifers.

"I wouldn't put up the checkered flag yet," Fahey said. "We've had a really good year keeping the reservoirs at levels we haven't seen in a while. But we need another good year. If you compare now to last year and two years ago, it's a big improvement, but we need to keep the momentum going and get that spring rain. It's been a long drought."

The long-term forecast for snowpack for the remainder of the winter calls for a probable normal year, by historical standards. Long-term forecasts, however, are less reliable than short-term predictions.

In order to get out of hydrologic drought, the best-case scenario would be above-average snowpack with below-average temperatures this spring, "just like we saw last spring," Fahey said.

Environment reporter Chris Merrill can be contacted at chris.merrill@trib.com or 307-267-6722.