Five straight days of snowfall thus far. This time we have some significant snow pretty much across the board. On Saturday I was out and about around lunchtime and photographed some light snow falling. While doing so we captured a very ominous bank of dark clouds coming towards Banner Elk. Sure enough within thirty minutes it was bombing snow. These were huge "Charlie Brown snowflakes" as my mother calls them…and they were plentiful enough to mount up some accumulation pretty quick. That lasted about twenty minutes and we had a light powdery snowfall for much of the rest of the day and evening.
Admittedly I was beginning to doubt Meteorologist Brad Panovich’s forecast for heavier snow late in the evening. See www.SkiSoutheast.com for more on that subject! However we’re seeing the most snowfall for the region right here in the great state of North Carolina.
IT’S EVERYWHERE! IT’S EVERYWHERE!
A quick look at CoCoRaHs reports from around the region shows these snowfall totals since Thursday:
7.2" AT Beech Mountain with 5.8" of it in the last 24 hours
7.5" reported at various locations of Avery County with 5.2" of it in the last 24 hours!
Cataloochee Ski Area is reporting 4" in the past 24 hours and 8" on the season!
Another couple of inches of snow is forecasted for portions of the North Carolina mountains for today into Monday.
POW! POW! BABY!
The snow reports could be easily summed up as POWDER skiing and snowboarding ops for today at Appalachian, Beech Mountain, Cataloochee, Sugar, and Wolf Mountain. If you want to ski or ride in the Southeast or Mid Atlantic right now, you’ll only find it in North Carolina! NC resorts are offering 33 trails to play on across the region. All of the other ski areas in the region are planning to open next week or weekend.
Here’s the summary:
Appalachian Ski Mountain – 20°- 6" new snow – 8 trails open, ice skating and $5 lift tickets for Sunday. App is open for night sessions as well!
Beech Mountain Resort – 14° – 5.8" of new snow and 13.5" on the season! – Beech has added another open trail to the mix and they now have 5 of 14 slopes open. They added Powder Bowl to the open slopes. Beech is operating day sessions only for Sunday.
Cataloochee Ski Area – 19° – 4" of new snow (8" on the season) – Tammy Brown told me this morning, "Mike our guys have worked so hard to get new terrain open." Cat has 10 of 16 open for today. They’ll operate day sessions only for Sunday. Tammy reminded me that they will operate on an early season schedule for the coming week and that means 1pm until 10pm Monday through Friday.
Sugar Mountain – 12° – 5.2" of new snow, 7.5" since Thursday and 10.7" on the season. Sugar is reporting 8" of new snow in the last 24 hours but we’re thinking that’s just posted to the wrong field on their website. Don’t drive to Sugar expecting to see 8" of snow on the ground – except on the slopes where they’ve blasted a base of 22-50" of manmade snow. The 5" of new snow will make for pristine conditions for day and night sessions on 9 slopes for today. Sugar is looking pretty sweet today. Can anyone say "POWDER".
Wolf ridge Resort – 20° – 1.7" of new snow in the last 24 hours, 3" since Thursday and 4" on the season. Wolf is day sessions only for Sunday. They will be closed Monday through Wednesday to throw down some huge snowmaking ops. They will operate with 3 of 20 trails for today. They’ve been reporting that they were going to try and get 5 trails open over the last few days but thus far they’ve stuck with the three.
To view the snow reports for ALL of the Southeast and Mid Atlantic ski resort communities, visit www.SkiSoutheast.com
Skiing and riding should be awesome for Sunday. We’d love it if you’re planning to ride on Sunday – to drop us some pics or video. We have some to share and invite you to check the site out later in the day for more posts.
We also urge you to visit:
www.HighCountryWebCams.com
www.HighCountryWeather.com
Send your comments, photos, videos and trip reports to: [email protected] or [email protected]