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It’s s-l-o-w this morning. How slow? SLOW. For the first time since I can remember we only received three email questions this morning asking about things related to the need for ski pants and can they be rented; what kind of conditions might be expected this weekend and we had a request for "locations of ski areas and pricing…please".
That was it. Not one email debating or commenting on all of the base depth rant of yesterday. Not even a comment about how the weather sucks. Nada.
Thinking maybe something was screwy on the server, I hopped on and checked out the stats. We had 260,000 pageviews yesterday with what appeared to be 41,000 people (or visitor sessions). I say "appeared to be 41,000 people" because you never know precisely how many are search engine spiders, etc. Regardless, 41,000 peeps looking at the site yesterday was pretty low compared to busy, snow days.
I hopped over to the messageboard. It’s slow there as well. At 7:45am there were 85 people viewing/posting. Compare that to 178 people who were on it at 3:38pm on February 3rd. P-r-e-t-t-y slow. There were some sweet posts by MBlacky, EastCoaster, KnoxSkier, N_AlabamaSkier and KneeDeep – all of whom are playing at Alta, Snowbird and Steamboat (and others). Those and others are enjoying the SkiNC / Utah Summit and the rest of us are living vicariously through their reports. You can view those and post your own over on the messageboard. Click here to visit it.
As slow as it seems around SkiSoutheast.com-land this morning I jumped over to a few other messageboards from the east. Sugarloaf’s messageboard has 8 people on it. DCSki’s has ONE registered member and 12 guests. I’ll take our slow day!
I guess we should expect a slow day when the temperatures down off the mountains are in the 70s. I saw where Charlotte, NC is expecting another 70° day today. That’s pretty mild, but it isn’t a crazy figure over what we’re expecting here in the mountains of western North Carolina today. Beech Mountain is expecting a high near 62°! After running the heat during the morning hours at our office, we had to turn the air conditioning on at about 2pm as the temp rose to 76° here inside our offices. (We have a lot of hot air in here!)
Snowshoe’s looking at 53° today with a decent chance of some light rain today through Wednesday. At least it isn’t raining here in North Carolina. (There’s a slight chance of some light rain Wednesday evening here but that’s it.)
In case you guys just missed what just happened, I kind of decided "on the fly" that things are so slow this morning that I’m combining today’s update. What you’ll get here this morning, you’ll get on SkiSoutheast.com. It’s slow, okay (have I said that?)
In case you’re interested the colder air that we’re hoping will invade the North Carolina mountains to allow for some snowmaking looks a little iffy for yet another few days. We COULD see some cold enough temps to make snow Thursday night as temps are projected to drop to 29° or so up at Ski Beech. Depending on the "or so" part of that statement we may see some snowmaking happening up there and at Sugar, but it doesn’t look promising for other ski areas to make snow until maybe Saturday night. Those overnight temps are iffy as well. Sunday and Monday nights look the same – iffy.
According to our weather gurus, there IS a promising system setting up that might make it in here by Tuesday of next week. That one looks wintry.
The ski areas into West Virginia and Maryland look like they will be blessed with some colder temps and maybe even some snow Thursday and Thursday night. They will definately get into the snowmaking act as temps dip to 19° or so up that way. Lucky dogs! The way that the frontal boundary of this weekend’s systems are falling into place, it looks like Snowshoe, Timberline, Canaan and Wisp may see some colder temps and snow again on Saturday. That’s the way it’s been this season. The "freezing line" has simply wavered a bit further north than those of us in Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina would like. For example, the high temps expected in the central mountains of West Virginia this Saturday are going to around 31° with an overnight low Saturday night into the teens.
Here in the North Carolina mountains we’re looking at slightly milder than seasonable temps with a high around 44° and a Saturday night low of 29°. That will be another borderline snowmaking night.
LET’S TALK TODAY…
<Ski Beech’s base looks nicely groomed!
Today is gorgeous! Very Springlike. I took a peek at the live cam over at Appalachian and that hill looks SWEET! I looked at the live cam at Cataloochee – SWEET! Sugar looks SWEET! Wolf Ridge looks pretty good. Not exactly up to what we’re seeing at the first two, but darn nice. Ski Beech looks SWEET!
All of the ski areas above have obviously done some amazing grooming as and before the sun came up this morning! Things will be marvelous for today. I am starting to see some thinning coverage on the Ski Beech slopeside cam. They’ve done a great job of grooming over it this morning, but those will surface later in the day. They could use some snowmaking…but things are "nines and tens" at all of the resorts for today. Soft snow, wonderfully carvable and no thin areas to really speak of anywhere.
THE BASIC SUMMARY ON THIS S-L-O-W day is that conditions are darn nice EVERYWHERE in the Southeast and Mid Atlantic today. You may have to dodge some raindrops into WV and MD, so the weather will be a bit nicer into Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina today under sunny skies.
We’ll keep you posted as to who’s holding up the best as we move through the next few days of mild weather and some rain further north.
It’s pretty slow today (I know I overused the phrase) so we’re going to leave you guys on your own today to jump over to the SLOPE REPORT and see the details of trails, bases, etc.
Until next time…
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