I’ll admit that we’ve been overly preoccupied with putting the finishing touches on the new website and that delayed me a few days from getting up with my buddy, Allen Mast over at the Mast General Store in Boone and Valle Crucis. We’ve been reporting on his "Fogs in August" winter forecasting approach, so I owed him a phone call to get the final verdict now that August has come and gone. I buzzed over there early and caught up with Tom Payne instead. I barely got the words, "Hey Tom, this is Mike with Ski…" out of my mouth when he interrupted, "Hey Mike, it’s looking like a great winter for you snow guys, huh?"
"You tell me Tom. What’s the word with the be-", I replied. (I didn’t get the word "beans" out of my mouth either. Tom’s quick on reading what people are asking and answers before you can get it all out. FYI, I like that because sometimes I don’t know what the heck I want to ask. So it’s good when someone can take on both sides of the conversation!)
Anyway, Tom replied, "TWENTY. By my count, we have twenty and you know we’ve been within 5% of being accurate every year since we started doing this." He stated his response more as a matter of fact than asking the question.
Evidently Tom is not just an old-school kind of weather aficionado as he added, "You snow guys should have a great winter, because with this being an El Niño winter, that’s when we get some big ones. (I assumed he wasn’t still talking beans, but snowfalls.)
Thanks to Allen, Tom and all the gang over at Mast General Store for keeping us informed as we look for ANY kind of sign of a great winter ahead. If you get a chance to come and visit Valle Crucis or Boone in the coming weeks, give those guys a visit as it is a one-of-a-kind old store with lots of ambience and some great deals on just about anything you can think of.
Meteorologist Brad Panovich Hints of Big Storms
In game planning the new SkiSoutheast and SkiNorthCarolina.com functionality and putting some finishing touches on some of the great things we’ll be initiating this season – I had the opportunity to speak with our unofficial weatherman, Brad Panovich of WCNC NBC 6 in Charlotte fame. (Or is it that he’s famous for being our SkiNC/SkiSoutheast weather guy and he works for NBC 6? Hmmmm.) Anyway, I was speaking with Brad and we are hoping to be able to announce some pretty exciting news as early as next Tuesday regarding Brad. More about that at that time. However, during that conversation he mentioned the El Niño winter as well. He said, "You know this is an El Niño winter and traditionally those provide our area with some pretty big storms."
Brad will be providing us his 2009-2010 Winter Forecast video sometime in October and we’ll share that with you at that time.
Check back early next week and several ski areas have sent us updated information about some HUGE preseason discounts on season passes. We’ll get those online for you guys to take advantage of. Until then, it looks like we have 20 snowstorms to look forward to in the 16 week period of winter. I don’t know about you guys, but that sounds like pretty good odds!
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