It’s cloudy and as the forecast above states — we have a chance for some snow this afternoon and tonight.
The photo of the day was taken just as some sun broke through…before this last re-clouding and is indicative of the ice we received!
I couldn’t even WALK to my office on my first attempt at 7am this morning, but on my second attempt at 9:30am…and after a treacherous hike to my office…I can now tell you that it is a mixed bag of tricks out and about.
The main roads are perfectly fine…no ice…no snow…not nothing. Secondary roads are fine in some areas…slick as owl caca in others. Some neighborhoods like mine on the upper level of Sleepy Hollow, near Seven Devils, is refrigerator ice that you couldn’t dream of moving your vehicle. Others are fine. In fact, the small drop in elevation from my home to my office made for amazingly different results. Here at my office there is almost no ice on the parking area…and as I said Hwy 105 is just fine. Traffic is flying at normal speeds.
Just be cautious if you are going out. Forecasters are saying that this will change over to light snow around mid-morning and that we could still see an inch or two of snow…but that remains to be seen.
You’ll notice that we have changed the road conditions page to reflect new links to each of the county DOT websites which have the resources to update you better than we can. We will be editing that page a little later today to provide you with some live images and we will add links for all of our SkiSoutheast.com coverage area today as well.
Speaking of live images…have you guys noticed that the cameras are NEVER down? The new updates software has really kept them going lately.
Frustration abounds – My INBOX and the messageboard is full of comments this morning and all of the remarks show that we are all bummed over the second straight "non-event" when it comes to snow in the mountains of North Carolina. 36 hours ago all of the forecasters were seeing this as a 6-8" snowstorm with decent chances at a foot of snow at higher elevations. The closer it got…the more things deteriorated to the point that we are now left with looking forward to this weekend for the forecasted partly cloudy skies and mild conditions. Lets celebrate what should make for some phenomenal skiing conditions for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Highs will be in the 40s and reaching to 50° this weekend, with mostly blue skies and overnight lows will dip into the 20s which should allow the resorts to make snow. The BEST thing about the milder temps, is that it will allow grooming crews at all of the resorts to work surfaces to a near-perfect corduroy. THAT should bring a smile to those frowny faces out there! Come on guys and gals…we can’t control what kind of weather we did or didn’t get today…but we CAN control how we deal with it! Remember, I told all of you who were emailing and posting to the messageboard to guard against getting too pumped about this storm…because the higher you get stoked…the farther you fall!
I can almost hear the sigh when I make this next statement, but forecasters are looking ahead now…to the 9th or 10th for the next shot of very cold air and perhaps that big snow is only a short time away. Keep the faith.
News from around the resorts
Hawksnest Resort – There’s good news up at Hawksnest. They repaired the Red Lift and have everything opened back up. Actually we were watching the Hawksnest camera last night and they had it opened last evening. That camera shot is probably the clearest camera view of any of the resorts and offers some really sweet shots of the hill – day and night.
Sugar Mountain – The next Edge of the World Snowboarding Comp is this weekend at Sugar. You can see team SkiNC) Patrick Kidda, Lindsea Lumpkin and all of your favorite tricksters out there this weekend. We will try to update you a little more on Friday.
Conditions are going to be GREAT ON THE SLOPES…if you can get there today. The mountain ops at each resort have, no doubt, worked the surfaces and skiing and riding should be great. Just be careful getting there!
A Glance at the Weather – We’ll wait and get the official word from meteorologist, Brad Panovich later this morning, (and you guys be nice, because he’s been about 85% perfect on forecasting of late), but from what we’re seeing it looks like a nice weekend, followed by some cloudy skies and slight chances of light showers going into next Tuesday/Wednesday and milder temps (highs near 50° and overnight lows mid week that won’t allow for snowmaking)…but there’s plenty of snow base at all of the resorts and things should be quite nice going into the next wave of cold air that should arrive around the 9th or 10th.
Get me see cool pics of the ice (and hopefully the snow!) Email me at: [email protected]
Don’t forget to visit: https://www.skisoutheast.com
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