Rising Base Depth and Trail Counts at Southeastern Ski Areas

Thursday morning was the first morning of this 2017-2018 ski season that temperatures were so widely different from north to south. Temperatures were cold everywhere and snowmaking was happening at every resort, but this is the first morning that we’ve seen a 26° difference from coldest to “mildest”. Of course “mildest” is an odd word to use when the mildest temp we saw at 8am was the 22° registered at Cataloochee. Here are the temperatures at each ski area this morning:

-6° – Canaan Valley
-6° – Timberline Resort
-4° – Snowshoe Mountain
-4° – Wisp Resort
0° – Wintergreen Resort
3° – Omni Homestead
3° – Oglebay
7° – Massanutten Resort
10° – Bryce Resort
8° – Winterplace
15° – Appalachian Ski Mtn
17° – Beech Mountain Resort
17° – Sugar Mountain Resort
18° – Sapphire Valley
21° – Wolf Mountain Resort
21° – Ober Gatlinburg
22° – Cataloochee Ski

You can almost see the arctic cold line that pushed the coldest air into West Virginia and Maryland. Additionally, only the West Virginia and Maryland resorts saw natural snow as Canaan & Timberline reported 2.8″ of new snow; 12″ on the week and 34.3″ on the season. Wisp Resort saw 2″ of new snow and 22″ on the season.

Interestingly, the NWS station atop Snowshoe only reported a TRACE of snow, and one of the CoCoRaHS reporters recorded 1″ of new snow. Snowshoe themselves reported 0″ of new snow. I can tell you that it snowed ALL DAY and pretty moderately at times. I guessed 1-2″ of snow fell. So we’ll go with the CoCoRaHS guys.

With all that cold and snow came increased base depths across the region. Those increased base depths are also adding open trails across the region. Snowshoe is now up to 40 trails open and by the look of things, we’re thinking a number of others will open Friday or Saturday. There are some HUGE whales just waiting to pushed around by the groomers at numerous resorts.

Since we’re playing a “numbers game” right now, how about we share the open trail count at each resort:

40 of 60 @ Snowshoe Mountain
21 of 47 @ Canaan Valley
20 of 27 @ Winterplace
18 of 18 @ Cataloochee Ski (100% open)
17 of 34 @ Wisp Resort
14 of 40 @ Timberline Resort
13 of 24 @ Wintergreen Resort
13 of 21 @ Sugar Mountain Resort
10 of 17 @ Beech Mountain Resort
10 of 15 @ Wolf Mountain Resort
8 of 12 @ Appalachian Ski Mtn
8 of 14 @ Massanutten
7 of 8 @ Bryce Resort
6 of 10 @ Ober Gatlinburg
4 of 9 @ Omni Homestead
2 of 2 @ Sapphire Valley
1 of 1 @ Oglebay

The great news is that this cold weather pattern looks to be in place through at least January 10th so look for base depths to increase and trail counts to go up.
Those Awesome Conditions Are Creating Some Great Photo Moments.
I shot a ton of video on my new GoPro 6 this morning but I had the settings creating 4:3 vids and I play with those later. In the meantime, here are some of the nice photos shared:

Appalachian Ski Mountain…shows some awesome conditions and massive snowmaking

Bryce…looks nice…

In case you missed the video of the new trails at Canaan Valley, check out this video from Justin of Canaan Valley from yesterday.

If you have some to share, send them along to me at [email protected]