189.7 Inches a year at 7000 feet elevation on the windward side of the Sierra? Yeah that's a lie. Over 400 inches a year fall on the summit of Donner Pass only a few miles east and 200 feet higher up. Some of those people from upstate NY and the mid-west who always brag about snow should come spend a winter on Donner Pass and get an education in what REAL snow is like.
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That's what I get for trusting the information on what appeared to be a legitimate and official weather site! Now that you mention it, it does seem low.
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Craig, the CP and SP kept records for a while when they each ran the pass, and now the records are kept at the Central Sierra Snow Laboratory. They had seasonal snowfall data for Soda Springs which isn't too far from Norden. Between 1879-2015 snowfall at Soda Springs averages 405.9 inches with 13 different years seeing snowfall exceeding 600 inches. In my studies I've found that data for smaller places like Norden is usually lumped in with that of someplace where there is a consistently monitored weather station. Chances are, that 189 inch figure may have been taken at a location nowhere near the actual CP Norden, in fact that's not far off of what Truckee receives annually.
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For the record, here is a link to the site from which I gleaned this figure: https://snowfall.weatherdb.com/l/18588/Norden-California. Given the extensive snowsheds in place at Norden, this figure does seem drastically low.
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