All the talk is about the BOMBING OF SNOW into West Virginia and Maryland this morning! Wisp Resort is reporting 20"-plus and they are having issues with all that snow as they are only reporting ONE LIFT and 17 of 32 trails open this morning. They will be opening more of each as the day goes along. Michael Valach, Director of Skier and Rider Services at Wisp, isn’t all that happy with Maryland’s Governors office today as roads are closed across the state. That is making things pretty tough for skiers and snowboarders to get to that POWDER!!!
Winterplace Ski Resort President Terry Pfeiffer is LIVID as well but with the folks at THE WEATHER CHANNEL according to West Virginia Ski Areas Association spokesperson, Joe Stevens. "The Weather Channel killed us", says Pfeiffer according to Stevens as they began reporting and forecasting treacherous road conditions on I77 on Friday.
"As soon as that report went out, cancellations began pouring in", says Pfeiffer.
That supports what we were reporting a week or so ago. Sometimes there’s such as thing as too much snow and in this case too much over-reporting the gloom and doom of the highways. According to our research there is some snow and icy patches here and there along I77 this morning but traffic is moving very well with a lot of blacktop through that stretch of West Virginia.
Lisa Herring from our staff headed up to Canaan Valley on Friday and they’re happy campers this morning after 16" of snow fell there since late Friday. I spoke with Canaan around 2pm or so and they’d had nothing but rain and now this morning they got dumped on! We have not heard from Timberline yet this morning but they saw the same snowfall and should be in beautiful shape today. Canaan Valley is 100% open and expecting another 3-5" of snow today.
Snowshoe Mountain got DUMPED on with 23" in the last 24 hours. I spoke with Laura Parquette at around 4:15pm Friday and they’d only picked up 2-3" over the 4" reported Friday morning. Fast forward to this morning and they picked up 23". According to Joe Stevens they were getting 2-3" of snow per hour up there since late Friday evening!
Laura Parquette writes, "Camp 99 at Snowshoe and Fox Chase at Silver Creek* Wow! Nearly 2 feet of snow fell throughout the day and into the overnight hours on Friday. That means we’re starting off this morning with plenty of POWDER across the mountain. We have left some expert terrain ungroomed for you powder-hounds, so if you’re looking for your powder fix, head to Lower Shay’s, Choker, Widowmaker, Bear Claw, Flying Eagle or Sawmill Glades."
The glades and Camp 99 are awesome in those kinds of conditions. Heck they all are! Laura continues, "Snow continues to fall this morning and up to another 7" is predicted, meaning the powder stashes should be refreshed throughout the day for your skiing and riding pleasure. If you’re not here already, the road up the mountain has already been plowed and sanded this morning and it’s easy traveling as long as you take it slow. Our local team does a great job with the roads, so there’s no reason not to put down your shovel, pick up your skis or board and come play with us!"
I could not have stated it better! GO PLAY!!!
Bryce Resort in Virginia picked up 16" of snow from the storm and their fans are in store for some powder today!
Massanutten Resort is reporting 16" and our on snow reporter Meimei is there and reports, "Harrisonburg was in a "dry slot" for several hours last night when not much came down. So only 8-10 inches came down overnight to make it around 16" for the storm."
She was standing on Diamond Jim this morning at 10am when she called me and you could hear her excitement at the conditions. She said that Massanutten had not groomed Diamond Jim for the powder hounds today!
The Homestead reported 16" of snow as well.
Wintergreen’s Anna Marie Jones reports 21" of new snow and obvious POWDER conditions! They are now at 73" on the season with literally 49" of that snow coming in TWO HUGE STORMS! Let’s see that’s 24" for the season and 49" in the other three days! CRAZY!!!
This parculiar snow storm did some crazy things within the last 30 hours in terms of how, when and where it snowed.
The first number is snow in the last 24 hours and the second number is in the last 48. The final number is snowfall on the season to date.
Snowshoe Mountain – 23" – 27" – 142"
Wintergreen Resort – 21" – 21" – 73"
Wisp Resort – 20" + – 20" – 123.2"
Timberline Resort – 16" – 16" – 150"
Canaan Valley – 16" – 16" – 150"
Massanutten Resort – 16" – 16" – 48"
The Homestead – 16" – 16" – 47"
Bryce Resort – 16" – 16" – 47"
Winterplace Resort – 10" – 12" – 103"
Ober Gatlinburg – 0" – 0" – 24"
Appalachian Ski Mountain – 5.9" – 13.2" – 56"
Cataloochee Ski Area – 0" – 2.7" – 47.7"
Beech Mountain – 1.5" – 2.6" – 60"
(That is correct. Nearly a foot more snow fell at Blowing Rock than Beech since about 1am Friday morning through this morning at 7am!)
Sugar Mountain – 1" – 5" – 58.2
Wolf Ridge Resort – 0" – 1" – 47.8"
Sapphire Valley – 0" – 4.5" – 20.8"
It’s good to see some things don’t change when I take a week away from doing the snow reports. Sapphire Valley hasn’t updated their snow report since January 30th – nor any other reporting service. I don’t know if you noticed on our snow report page that we dropped Hawksnest, Scaly and Cloudmont from our reporting and added Liberty. The way things are looking, we’ll probably drop Sapphire soon. There’s no sense reporting when they don’t care enough to inform you themselves.
Ober Gatlinburg is one of the resorts that has just seen temps above freezing for the last 48 hours and they are reporting no new snow in that period. Conditions are just fine there even though they dropped their base ten inches in the last week.
There hasn’t been MANY seasons wherein Appalachian Ski Mountain receives as much snow as Beech or Sugar with their differences in elevations, but within the last two major snowstorms quite a lot more snow has fallen in Blowing Rock than at Beech and Sugar and that has App closing in on their snow totals for the season to date. Beech now has 60" and Sugar is just below that with 58.2" (they too have had more snow than Beech over the last couple of snowfalls) and App now has 56" of snow on the season.
Wolf Ridge is reportedly fully open today with all 20 trails. We’ve had several people ask us when they would be. They’ve actually been 100% many times this season so far. They just open and close trails sometimes during the day and week to preserve the best conditions.
As of 8:25am it is snowing pretty hard here in the mountains of North Carolina! After 6-8" of snow on Friday and then some rain Friday evening, we’re seeing SNOW AGAIN! Woohoo!
We’re on day 70 and there are 67 more days of opportunities to enjoy the snow for the 2009-2010 ski and snowboarding season!
That’s it for today. Go enjoy the snow! Check out the Snow Report at https://www.skisoutheast.com/skireports.php and please send us your favorite ski photos, ski videos, trip reports and comments to [email protected]