WOW! You can tell that there’s a LOT of pent up "readiness" for the ski season to get here! Snowmaking began some 30 hours ago at several ski areas and natural snowfall began falling first in the North Carolina mountains and then up and into West Virginia on Tuesday and that’s all it took to set off a rampage of visitors! We saw 43,789 unique visitors on Tuesday alone! Those of you who hit the site on Tuesday looked at 556,444 pages of content. That’s the ski areas, live cams, weather content and more!
We’re certain that several television stations used our LIVE CAMS on Tuesday, but want to say a quick thanks to WYFF in Greenville, SC and WRAL in Raleigh, NC as we got word from those guys that they were showing off the snow to their audiences yesterday! I can only imagine the craziness this morning! When I came in around 7am, the ski and webcam servers were both laboring a little. We tweaked a few things to handle the increased load and should be off and ready for a great season…now that it looks like we’re in for consistent enough temps to get things started.
HOW MUCH SNOW FELL WHERE?
The MOST snowfall from the last 24 hours was at Sugar Mountain, where 3.6" of new snow fell. However here are some pretty consistent numbers around the area:
Sugar – 3.6"
Beech – 3.5"
Canaan and Timberline – 3.2"
Snowshoe – 3"
App – 2.7"
Wolf – 1.8"
Winterplace – 1.5"
SUGAR MOUNTAIN IS THE ONLY SKI AREA OPEN IN THE REGION
…others will open Friday and this weekend. Word is that Snowshoe’s people are looking at things RIGHT NOW and will update their fans pretty quickly. I can imagine Ed Galford snowmobiling around right now figuring out when to give that thumbs up!
Sugar Mountain is reporting 3-4" of snow and that could not be any more accurate. We received a CoCoRaHs report of 3.6" of new snow in the last 24 hours and that makes for 5.2" on the season.
Sugar is OPEN today with two trails and a 6-18" base to the 3/4th station. They plan on opening for night sessions this weekend.
Appalachian Ski Mountain is reporting 2.7" of new snow and that is the first measureable snowfall this season. There have been some dustings but that 2.7" is also the snowfall for the season thus far. App is making snow and planning to open FRIDAY!
Beech Mountain Resort is reporting 3.5" of new snow and they are making snow and have been for about 24 hours straight. They plan on opening Saturday morning. The talk is that they will open with Upper and Lower Shawneehaw, Crossover, Freestyle, and Playyard with lifts 1, 3, 5, and 8.
Cataloochee Ski Area is reporting 29° and only a dusting of natural snow. Currently making snow on….Upper Snowbird Trail, Alley Cat, Rock Island Run, Cat Cage Terrain Park, Lower Omigosh, Rabbit Hill, Over Easy, Easy Way, Beginner’s Luck and Wolf Creek Hollow….10 out of 16 trails! They are ready for reopening on Saturday, December 3 at 8:30am!
Wolf Ridge – There’s no update on these guys just yet and with the temps hovering around 35° we don’t know about snowmaking. However we did get an official snow report of 1.8" of new snow and that is the first measureable snowfall for the season over there. There have been some previous dustings.
As we suspected, this system hasn’t quite filtered into the Virginia resort areas as temps are in the upper 30s thus far. No snowmaking just yet.
Bryce Resort in Virginia is reporting 40° and no new snow from this system.
Massanutten Reporting 37° – not making snow just yet. They are aiming at opening for the middle of the month.
The Homestead is reflecting a 27° reading however we don’t know if they are making snow just yet. Mass Fussell and those guys are planning on having us implement a new camera system and reporting for the four season resort and we’ll update you as we have more information.
Wintergreen is showing 28° and no new snow. We are not certain about snowmaking just yet.
WEST VIRGINIA is coming online quickly…
Canaan Valley and Timberline Resorts saw 3.2" of new snow and that makes it 24.2" on the new season so far. They are making snow now with the idea of opening December 10th for Canaan Valley. Timberline plans to open December 8th.
Winterplace Resort is reporting 1.5" of new snow and 29°. There’s no snowmaking happening this morning as temps are marginal.
We have a lot to share and we’ll be updating as quickly as we get new news.
THINK COLD! THINK SNOW! THINK COLD – AGAIN!
We urge you to visit:
www.HighCountryWebCams.com
www.HighCountryWeather.com
www.SkiSoutheast.com
Send your comments, photos, videos or anything on your mind to: [email protected]