You would be hard pressed to believe that today is the second day of winter by looking at the forecast, or by simply walking outside this morning. Temps were in the 50’s – low 70’s across the area for the first day of winter yesterday. Today will not be quite as warm, I don’t believe, but the rain is coming. The North Carolina High Country is currently under a flood watch, with Wolf Ridge, Cataloochee, Ober Gatlinburg, and much of the Virginia resorts under a Wind Advisory.
It is not exactly the start to winter that we were hoping for.
Beech Mountain Weather
Take a look at the ski reports this morning and you’ll see that many of the area resorts are reporting slightly less snow this morning than yesterday. The bright side is that both the natural snow and the good snowmaking conditions we saw last week enabled the resorts to pack on a little extra fat, so the bases really aren’t bad and no closings are being reported this morning.
Low clouds at Appalachian Ski Mountain this morning
Appalachian’s base is 22-36” this morning, down 3” from yesterday. Beech is reporting a 20-40” base, down 4” from yesterday. Sugar is reporting a base of 17-45” this morning, which is down 4-7” from yesterday. However, there is a bright spot here as Sugar has been able to reopen Tom Terrific. Looks like they were able to do a little redistribution.
Can see the snow on Tom this morning.
The base hits are not isolated to just North Carolina. Ober over in Tennessee and Wintergreen in Virginia are both reporting losing 4-6” of base – Ober has 10-12” on the ground and Wintergreen 20-30”. Wisp up in Maryland might be faring the worst and is reporting losing another 2-4” in the past 24 hours which brings their base down to 6-24”
Snowmaking conditions are still scheduled to return on Monday night with a possibility of snow on Tuesday for parts of West Virginia and Maryland.
The outlook for Wisp.
However, most of the resorts are calling for 100% chance of rain today.
Today at Snowshoe
And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.
Be sure to check out your favorite resort for their holiday happenings and hours. Appalachian is open for ice skating on Christmas day starting a noon, and Beech opens at 1:00. Beech is also having a Christmas Eve Service at the ice rink at 4:30 on Tuesday. Snowshoe has you all set if you are going to be lucky enough to spend the holiday on top of their mountain. Check out the full events here.
Take care out there and be sure to put on your wet weather gear as you head out to the slopes today.
Tim Bahlke
Drop me an email at [email protected] to let me know what you think or with suggestions on what we could be doing better.