We’re in the "lull before the storm mode" this morning in a number of ways. First, there is this morning’s temps. I am monitoring readings at the highest elevations all across the Southeast that are ALL near 50° for morning LOWS! Snowshoe is showing 54° and Sugar & Beech are showing 48°. That is the high-to-low range. Crazy!
Around noon or so today we should see the temps begin to fall all the way to 25° tonight (and colder in some areas) and then how about HIGHS in the 20s to around freezing on Friday and Saturday??!!
That means that at some point today you will hear the roar of snowmaking equipment across the region. That is GREAT news to Holiday weekend skiers and riders.
WHILE ON THE WEATHER …
We’re so fortunate this season to have so many weather gurus providing us with input this season. Special kudos go to our longtime friend and meteorologist, Brad Panovich of WCNC, NBC 6 Charlotte fame; and newfound friend (and meteorologist) Matthew East of Carolina News 14 in Charlotte. Most ski related websites don’t even HAVE a meteorologist providing accurate content and we are estatic to have two great friends and pros on board.
Matthew East is providing regular (every 3-4 days) weather discussions to offer us what to expect in the way of weather across the Southeast and Mid Atlantic, and Brad Panovich is sending us Video Weather updates that graphically gives us the same great weather segments that WCNC provides on the air weekly.
Thanks to both news stations and these fine guys for helping to keep our visitors informed.
ONLY TWO SKI AREAS OPERATING TODAY…MORE FRIDAY!
For Thanksgiving Day your skiing and riding options are limited. There is Snowshoe Mountain with 6 slopes and trails in West Virginia; and Sugar Mountain with two trails of what they self-report as thin coverage and bare spots.
I know that we recieved some trail reports from both resorts, as well as Appalachian from Wednesday and we will post those this evening.
Once temps nose dive there is no question that the resorts will crank up the snowmaking equipment to full output. Those that do will make us some very nice conditions for the Thanksgiving Weekend. Temps will be nice Friday and Saturday. NICE – as in COLD, COLD, COLD.
Brad Panovich and Matthew East both forecast some snow for the area. Both meteorologist agree that the accumulations will be LIGHT across the North Carolina mountains with perhaps 1-2" of snow! Snowshoe, Winterplace, Timberline, Canaan Valley and Wisp in West Virginia and Maryland may see 5-6" of snow.
So it will be cold, snowy and perfect for some skiing, football, skiing, leftover turkey, skiing, and maybe even a bit of time to come up and choose & cut your christmas tree.
TESTING OUR GUNS!!!??? 🙁
Many of you guys don’t know this small fact, but each season the ski resorts have to fire the snowmaking equipment and check it for any leaks in the system or anomolies that would cause problems once the real season hit. W-e-l-l-l-l we probably should have performed a test drive of our own "delivery system" before the season got started. I mentioned that I had to install a new computer last week and migrate all of my programs and the files that I need to assist me in all of the information gathering that goes into doing our early morning reports.
Throughout this past week I did the morning updates from our office and things went off without too many glitches and I thought I was ready for prime time.
…and then I tried to connect to my office computer remotely from home this morning and n-o-o-o-o can do! I used to have all of my files and skiMails pouring into this trusty laptop but I figured I’d go with the newer computer, etc. Not the best idea so far. We’ll work the kinks out, but for Thankgiving Day I won’t be able to update any Trail Reports that you guys sent in.
Thanks to Kevin Stewart for the Snowshoe pics. I WAS able to get to those since they were sent to our main server. I will get to the rest this evening after I have a chance to shovel down some turkey and spend a bit of time with the family.
FINAL NOTE:
Due to the above system glitch, I have combined this Thanksgiving Day report to show on both SkiNC.com and SkiSoutheast.com. Regular, segregated content resumes on Friday!
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