Finally!

Just in time for Martin Luther King Jr. Weekend!

One week ago Berkshire East Ski Area was waking up to -6 deg Fahrenheit temps, plus a windchill who knows how far below...

 
We made snow until Friday morning, opened five new trails, and watched the temps climb up to the the mid to upper forties on Saturday. We groomed starting at 10pm that night (at 42 deg F), the temp fell to 32 deg F at 6am the following morning.

All the while, we new we had 2 nights of snow making (this last Monday and Tuesday nights), a border line night last night (temp never got below 29!) and what was projected to be a one inch plus rainfall this coming Thursday.

It was looking like a slow motion disaster.

However, like Ben Hogan said, "A perfectly hit shot with a golf club is a fluke!"

True to form, the weatherman's early call of a dead center, rainy smack down on Berkshire East, has changed. That dreary report has been replaced with a distinctly, more wintery mix of snow and ice and the forecast is improving by the minute.

Just like Ben Hogan, a perfect prediction from a weatherman is a fluke.  

So, where are we? Right now, Berkshire East is expecting a minimum of 2-4 inches of snow and as much as 8.

The National Weather Service Winter Warning shows 1-4 four inches of snow and ice for our area.

I am more optimistic, because the protagonist in this event is a cold air mass that has been trending southeastward into the approaching storm from the south. For the last two days, the average predicted temp for Thursday has fallen by nearly 10 degrees F and is right at freezing. Since I am a follower of trends, my belief is that it continues and we will get something north of 4 inches of snow.

Globally, the weather pattern that has given us such a crappy start to the winter is finally morphing into a little more palatable. The Arctic Oscillation (AO) is trending to a more favorable negative. This means a high pressure system is developing over the arctic. Having high pressure in arctic allows the arctic cold to slip into our region, enabling a low pressure system to develop around the mid latitudes (45th parrallel). The subsequent instability allows storms to form that take advantage of the cold, moisture from the south, causing snow at Berkshire East. The past two barnstorming ski seasons have been a result of an extremely long, and negative AO. 

Back to our storm tonight and tomorrow. The cold is arriving as a result of a shifted to negative AO and is the fore guard of a larger, arctic air mass that will stick around for the next couple of weeks and should help deliver a much more favorable and normal winter, i.e. snow and cold. 

Snow making plan. 

This week we built a beachhead around our current open trail network in order to mitigate the damage of the since discarded rain event. Friday night will be the next time we can make snow. We will start of Flying Cloud, the Upper Exhibition Terrain Park, Upper Mohawk, Umass, finish Katie's Run, and work towards a large group of new trails to open next week. 

So, that's that.

Sorry about the lack of communication recently, I have been tapped out with work around the mountain. I hope to stay on the keyboard a little more diligently moving forward. I have also been planning the first ever mailbag and am considering changing the name of the blog.

More on this later, if things ever slow down.

One more thing.

A big thanks to Ski Patrol and Ski School folks for the help with the ski race this weekend. On Sunday morning, the snow hadn't set up because the temps never got below 32 deg F. Both of these departments helped out big by slipping, shoveling and maintaining the race course so that several hundred kids between 8-14 could have a great day of racing. Its really nice when a lot of people pull in the same direction to get things done and on Sunday, that is exactly what happened.

So thanks.