A Quiet Monday; Three Ski Areas Open; All Eyes Are on the Forecast

Appalachian Ski Mountain is open for day and night sessions today (Monday) and with 8 slopes open as well as terrain park features. Catalaloochee and Sugar are open with day sessions only. Cat is playing on three slopes from their mid-station down and Sugar has five slopes open.

Snowshoe Mountain is just sitting pretty, primed and ready to open on Wednesday with what appears will be more terrain that the rest of the region combined.

Everyone else?

Well, all other ski areas are simply keeping an eye on the weather forecast and hoping for a prolonged window of cold air to begin making snow in earnest. Most all ski areas have made some snow, and there’s even some natural snow on the ground at a lot of the mountaintops across the entire region. Beech Mountain, Banner Elk, all of the ski areas in Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland ALL have some natural snow (at least a dusting) on the ground. So everyone is “feeling it” and ready for some cold air to hit that will trigger the best snowmaking crews in the entire United States.

Does the Forecast Favor Ski Resorts and Snow Lovers?

According to most every weather expert in the region, things look really good for a cold and snowy winter. However, winter doesn’t start until just before Christmas. Right now we’re dealing with Fall and to be honest, Fall can be a bit of a wait and see, frustrating time for ski resort management teams and the skiers and snowboarders that want to play.

Okay, here’s a bit of full disclosure – ski resort ops are used to this. While they might be a little antsy or trigger happy and ready to get going, they have all grown accustomed to simply doing everything they can that is within their control to prepare their equipment and staffs to be ready to move at a moment’s notice. However, they also know – better than all of us – that what they have no control over is the weather.

Right now, that forecast looks a little inconsistent for snowmaking opportunities, and we think we’ll see some bursts of snowmaking here and there. However, the likelihood that we will see more resort openings over the next week is slim.

Looking at the forecast for the two highest, ski resort elevations in the regions looks like this:

Snowshoe Mountain: Looks like some snow and snowmaking temps Tuesday Night. More cold Wednesday and Thursday nights. So things should be GREAT for their Wednesday opening and for the coming weekend.

Today – A slight chance of rain after 3pm. Cloudy, with a high near 47. Southwest wind 10 to 16 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%.

hat’s it from yours truly today. I have to cut things short this morning to make it down to the hotel restaurant before they stop serving breakfast!

Beech Mountain: Could see snowmaking temps Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights. That could mean an opening here and there. However it could also be borderline snowmaking ops. We’ll see.

All said…it’s early. Way early. So for now, go play at Appalachian Ski Mountain and Cataloochee today. Snowshoe will be ready for you Wednesday. The weekend looks great for all of those guys with SOME additional snowmaking temps.

We’ll see about others…

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