Today is the final day of the 2007-2008 ski season for every resort in the region except Timberline Resort in West Virginia which is open for one more week. More about them in a bit.
For the rest of the ski area’s of the Southeast, today means closing snow sports ops for another season. A few days ago (despite what I just read from at least one local weather guru) forecasters were calling for a gorgeous weekend, with sunny skies for Saturday and Sunday with temps in the 40s. However, Saturday was a drizzly, wet and much cooler than expected day with even some freezing areas into the North Carolina mountains. Today promises to be another cool, yucky day and maybe that’s a fitting end since the weather hasn’t really cooperated as we’d have liked all season. "Roller coaster" has been the term most used to describe the weather all season long.
The weather up and into West Virginia for Sunday does not look much more inviting as there’s a 50% chance of freezing rain with highs in the mid to upper 30s. The NWS reporting station at Snowshoe is reporting "unknown precipitation" at 8am, but is calling for a chance of rain showers after 11am.
Wisp Resort in Maryland may dodge the rain for their final day of festivities as the forecast there is for mostly cloudy skies and a high near 46°. This has been a goofy season of weather.
The low was 31° overnight at Appalachian Ski Mountain but it’s already 53° as of this 8:30am update. Right now things look to be clearing off a bit and maybe they will be able to dodge the rain for one more day of good skiing and a lot of fun planned for their Meltdown Games.
They have a 10:30am "80′ Long Rail Contest" planned and then the funny stuff takes place at 1pm in the form of their Pond Skim and Costume Contest! They will wrap up their season with a 4pm "Chinese Downhill".
Snowshoe Mountain in West Virginia put on all of their "Last Hurrah" weekend of fun into one day (Saturday) and we hope to get you some photos of that fun. They are open for one more day today with 28 trails of frozen granular, spring conditions with some icy, thin coverage and bare spots according to Laura Parquette.
Timberline Resort is showing 29° this morning and they have 23 trails open for today. Timberline is going for one more week and plan to do some closing weekend of festivities for April 5th and 6th with a Local’s Cup Race, a Patrol Sled Race (that sounds cool) and a Fireman’s Race. They also have a bump competition and a GS Race open to all alpine, telemark and snowboard racers. Call them at 1-800-SNOWING for details.
Timberline also has some sweet plans for the off season as they are building a new, slopeside hotel over the summer. We’ll get you some more information about that as well.
Wisp Resort, located in Western Maryland is open for today with 28 trails, snow tubing and mountain coastering. They also have 3 of 4 terrain parks open for their final day of fun for the 2007-2008 season. They have a pond skim of their own planned today at 1pm at the Bear Claw Tubing area.
That’s it for today!
Send your comments or closing day reports, photos etc to: [email protected]