Up to 11 inches of Snow Falls in the Southeast! Great Conditions Await Your Visit! What are YOU waiting on!?!?

First Trax

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Story by Mike Doble – [email protected]  

Oh baby! Blue skies today will provide some Kodak moments for certain as nearly every ski mountain in the Southeast and Mid Atlantic got in the natural snowfall act on Friday and Saturday. Only Wintergreen Resort in Virginia reported no new natural snowfall. While the Virginia ski resorts only saw a TRACE of snow from this weekend’s mini-to-moderate storm, the North Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia and Maryland ski resorts got dumped on.

From 1" to 11" of snow fell in the last 48 hours and we’ll show you who got what below. Along with the great snowfall came high winds that at times caused white out conditions. We were up at the top of Sugar on Saturday afternoon and it was breathtakingly beautiful and tough to get around in – at the same time. I’m certain the same can be said for most all of the ski areas that received snow.

BABY IT’S COLD OUTSIDE…

The temperatures this morning are some TWENTY DEGREES colder than 24 hours ago. We’re seeing temps ranging from 0° at Snowshoe to 21° at Wintergreen this morning. It seems that this weekend’s system kind of got the region back to a more normal flow of arctic air. We’ve talked about it before but typically we’ll see the colder temps and deeper snows in West Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina and that’s the case from this system – unlike this entire winter thus far.

Let’s Talk Snow and How Much…

I’m going to HAVE to say that the reports we’ve received and gained from CoCoRahs and other reports are nearly perfect with what the ski areas themselves are reporting this morning. We don’t see that with every snowfall so it’s GREAT to see! The seasonal snowfall totals are also right on with what the ski areas are reporting as well, so maybe we’re making some headway with our "No Bull Reporting" concept.

For today we’ll note temp, 24hr snow, 48hrs and season total

Appalachian Ski Mountain- 6° | .7" | 1" | 13.7"
Beech Mountain – 1° | 4.8" | 6" | 36.2"
Cataloochee Ski Area – 3° | 1-2" | 2" | 12"
Sapphire Valley – 12.7° | Trace | Trace | 1"
Sugar Mountain – 0.7° | 3" | 5" | 28.7"
Wolf Ridge – 3.7° | 1.5" | 2.5" | 11.5"

Bryce Resort – 21° | .4" | 1" | 5"
Massanutten – 10° | Trace | Trace | 4"
The Homestead – 10.9° | .5" | 1" | 4"
Wintergreen – 6° | 0" | 0" | 2"

Canaan Valley – 3° | 8.5" | 10.5" | 92"
Snowshoe Mtn – 0° | 8" | 10" | 84"
Timberline – 3° | 8.5" | 10.5" | 92"
Winterplace – 10° | 4" | 6" | 38.5"

Wisp Resort – 12° | 10" | 11" | 71"
Ober Gatlinburg – 13° | 5" | 5" | 7"

Only three ski areas are operating at 100% open. Those would be Cataloochee, Sapphire and Bryce. Canaan Valley amped up their slope offerings in the last 24 hours and everyone looks great for today.

Today is going to be one of those days when some of the ski resorts set themselves apart from the rest in terms of managing and grooming the snow. Most everybody got snow and every ski area bombed their slopes with snowmaking over the last 24 hours. At some ski areas there will be a primo, perfect balance of slopes that were allowed to remain covered in powder and those that are perfectly groomed with pristine corduroy. At some ski areas there will be some nice slopes and some that are hard as a rock because they simply don’t do as nice a job at managing them post a high wind storm like we just experienced.

As far as trails open at each…

Appalachian – 8 of 12 trails open
Beech Mountain – 11 of 15 trails open
Cataloochee – 100% with 16 of 16 trails open
Sapphire – 100% with 2 of 2 trails open
Sugar Mtn – 17 of 20 trails open
Wolf Mtn – 10 of 22 trails open

Bryce Resort – 100% with 8 of 8 trails open
Massanutten – 10 of 14 trails open
The Homestead – 4 of 10 trails open
Wintergreen – 14 of 26 trails open

Canaan Valley – 20 of 39 trails open – their most this season!
Snowshoe Mtn – 53 of 60 trails open – leader in this dept all season
Timberline – 27 of 40 trails open
Winterplace – 24 of 27 trails open

Wisp Resort – 28 of 32 trails open
Ober Gatlinburg – 4 of 9 trails open

GOOD GRIEF WE’RE GOING TO NEED TO HIRE MORE GERBILS!

55,674 of you visited our network of ski, webcams, weather and tourism websites on SATURDAY! 

HighCountryWebCams.com saw 39,901 visitor sessions on Saturday and at times we were seeing 300 pageviews per minute! Somehow that worked out to 20,219 visitors with 8,299 first timers! We love seeing new people finding out about us!

Unlike many times in years past when we’d see these kinds of "snow spikes" in visitation, our ski websites only received about 10,000 visitors on Saturday. Usually great snow boosts the heck out of our ski traffic. However if the numbers are to be believed, our ski content "only" saw 9,606 visitors on Saturday. Of course that beats everybody else east of the Rockies, but strange nonetheless!

Again, 41.05% of our visitors on Saturday were new to the website so that is great.

The cams are showing off some sweet views this morning and as far as I can tell we’re delivering about 200 pages per minute to you guys around the Southeast! We’re going to have to gameplan how to keep our hamsters and gerbils peddling fast enough to keep up as we saw the video server kick you guys off as many as four or five times yesterday and this morning!

I wonder if we can find steroids for rodents?!

VIDEOS…

We posted a raw feed video to https://www.skisoutheast.com/videos/  and you guys may want to have a look at that to see how things looked on Saturday as we toured the area a bit. Part of that video shows the back-to-back lift lines at the bottom of Sugar. I have to tell you that it was great to see. I know that nobody likes to be in those kinds of lines because as slow as the lifts are at Sugar you can only get in maybe one run an hour on days like that…but yesterday’s traffic was great to see. We saw huge crowds at the bottom of Timberline, Cataloochee and App as well. I’m sure the same could be said at nearly all of the resorts yesterday. Again…great to see!

If you pop over to the video page, be sure to watch the POWDER forecast video that Ed Schneider put up PRIOR to the snow to excite the snow-loving masses! I was stoked watching it! Can’t wait to see what Ed creates AFTER the snow! We’ll get that one posted for you as well!

That’s it for today. Get us some photos and vids if you’re out and about today!

SkiMail me if you feel the need at [email protected]  or
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