And I thought last week’s weather was pretty drastic. In the span of the last 24 hours we have seen quite the change in weather conditions across the region. The last two days have been fairly mild but that has all changed this morning as a front moved through overnight and sent temperatures tumbling back into the teens and 20’s for most ski areas.
To illustrate just how drastic the temperature drop has been, take a look below at the weather station data from Beech Mountain.
The temperature around noon yesterday was in the 50’s and this morning it’s in the teens with a wind chill in the single digits. Wowza.
Even more impressive is the temperature drop up at Canaan Valley and Timberline. David Lesher noted this in his morning report…
Rainshowers ended overnight then a few light snowshowers at daybreak, becoming very windy and much colder, temp falling to 15F at 7AM…a drop of 44 degrees since yesterday afternoon.
That’s nuts.
Those colder temperatures are accompanied by some strong winds as well. I saw several of the resort webcams shaking when I was doing my morning check of them. The Massanutten cam was all over the place just now. If you are on the slopes today, be prepared for some lift delays due to the wind. Snowshoe even noted this on their snow report.
Kind of/kind of not surprisingly, we only have three resorts that made snow overnight. I say kind of/kind of not surprised because we are into March now and snowmaking has been tailing off in the last few weeks. Also, if you look at the Beech weather graphic above, you’ll see that it didn’t drop below freezing until after midnight. So maybe the snowmakers were just getting a good night’s sleep.
App Ski Mountain, Cataloochee, and Snowshoe are the ones who did make snow. That picture of the top of the post is from Cat this morning and below you’ll see the scene at App just a bit ago. It just looks cold.
As for the snow….well it didn’t quite pan out as expected. I talked yesterday morning about how the NWS forecast for the West Virginia resorts was 1-4″. All Mother Nature gave us was a trace at Canaan, Timberline, Winterplace, and Wisp up in Maryland. Snowshoe was able to muster an inch overnight. I was reading the NWS forecast discussion last night and they mentioned how the front was moving through much quicker than forecasted so the cold air didn’t catch up to the precip fast enough. I’m guessing this is the main reason for the lesser totals.
None of the North Carolina resorts saw much in the way of snow either. Only Sugar is reporting any snow this morning and it’s only 0.2″ AKA a trace.
There are some flakes still falling this morning on a few of the cams. For the most part though this round of snow is over. I say this round because more is on the way for tomorrow night. It looks more promising as several inches are possible for the West Virginia resorts and those in Northwest North Carolina. I’m pretty pumped for it, but my girlfriend is not too excited to drive up to Snowshoe in it tomorrow night. Something about being on the road in the middle of nowhere West Virginia at 11pm when it’s snowing with no cell phone signal just doesn’t do it for her.
In between now and then, it’s going to remain cold. I’m really hoping we see a lot of snowmaking tonight across the region. Everyone SHOULD be able to make snow tonight but we’ll see who actually does so. I hate to continually talk about it, but it’s late in the season and it’s going to get warmer next week, so the more manmade snow we can get on the slopes the better. I think tonight will be a good indicator of who is done with snowmaking and who is not. That’s just me speculating though.
Snowshoe Summit
I just looked at the front of the site and the countdown clock to the 2016 Ski Southeast Summit at Snowshoe Mountain is under 2 days now! We’re less than 48 hours away woo! Mike told me we have a list of 70 confirmed people now, which isn’t too shabby considering we’ve only been promoting this thing for 2 weeks now. Mike is about to send out an email to everyone with an updated itinerary, so be on the lookout for that shortly if you’ve already signed up. We’ll be doing a live report Saturday morning in the village somewhere and then getting photos and video in the afternoon near Powder Monkey.
And if you haven’t signed up, there’s still time! The forecast for the weekend looks fantabulous and snow conditions should be awesome!
https://www.skisoutheast.com/2016-ski-southeast-summit-at-snowshoe-mountain/
We’re halfway though the work week. Enjoy your Hump Day and think cold and think snow!