What a gorgeous start to the midway point of the work week. After a couple of gross mornings with rain and fog, there’s nothing but sunshine and blue skies to be seen on the webcams this morning. Check a few of them out below. Click to enlarge.
With those blue skies and sunshine we’re seeing some inversions this morning. It was 29.9 degrees on Beech Mountain while a couple miles away and a 1500 feet below it was 17.5 degrees in Banner Elk. Inversions are crazy.
While it is nice this morning, yesterday did see a tiny amount of snow fall at some of the resorts. Snowshoe, Timberline, and Canaan are all reporting a trace and John Cossaboom from Ober Gatlinburg emalied and said they got a dusting. Nothing to go crazy about, but I figured it’s worth mentioning.
Most everyone is holding off on snowmaking for now. It appears that only Wisp and Sapphire made snow overnight. Sapphire had to add to that nation leading 126 inch base. Ha! That was sarcasm. For real though, what are they trying to pull?!
There will be plenty of time to make snow in the coming days. The next week looks so cold, especially Sunday. That Arctic blast is still on schedule to arrive tomorrow, so enjoy the sunshine and warmish temps today while you can. Depending on how aggressive the resorts are, we could see around the clock snowmaking tomorrow through early next week if they wanted to. I’m sure some will turn the guns off for the big holiday crowds, but they could keep them going if they wanted to. This next week or so of cold should allow for enough manmade snow to be layed down to ensure good conditions into March. Woo!
How cold am I talking? Here’s the forecasted temperatures for Snowshoe through Monday.
Thursday: High of 18, Low of -8
Friday: High of 6, Low of 6
Saturday: High of 14, low of -11
Sunday: High of 0 (Zero!), Low of -7
Monday: High of 18, Low of 13
Wowza! That is frigid! Sunday just sounds miserable unless you have the right gear. Layers upon layers and hand and toe warmers. That’s the ticket.
There’s also a little bit of snow to talk about, mainly for tomorrow and tomorrow night. Here’s the current NWS forecast.
Cold, check. Manmade and natural snow, check. Lots of open terrain, check. It’s going to be a good President’s Day Weekend.