Snow Reporting
December 18th, 2008Posted in Skiing Everywhere
Tuesday I opted to go nordic skiing. It snowed lightly all day, so I knew the Tetons would be gaining snow depth, but it wasn’t a hard snowfall in the valley so I didn’t figure I was missing many good fresh powder turns. I may have been wrong.
Grand Targhee’s Wednesday morning’s snow report said 11″ fell in the past 24 hours.
I really like the way Grand Targhee, gets a more important detail into their snow reports than just the total snowfall of the past 24 hours. As a zealous powderhound, I usually don’t care so much about what fell during the previous day when the lifts were open and skiers were tracking out the new snow, I care most about what fell after the lifts closed, and Targhee provides that crucial detail in their morning snow report. Wednesday’s complete report stated that out of that 11″, a total of 4 ” had fallen after the lifts had closed. With that detail I learned I probably had missed out on some good skiing on Tuesday afternoon when it must have been snowing hard. Luckily, I could probably still enjoy much of that on Wednesday morning, since Tuesday was a midweek day in mid-December so there should not have been many skiers tracking up the snow as it fell. With the bonus of 4″ of new resting on top of the previous 7″, Wednesday was a day I had to go check out the snow. (I did, and it was great skiing!) Next week, during the holiday season, a report of 14″ with 2″ falling after the lifts close would suggest I go nordic skiing rather than searching hard for residual patches of 14″ snow on a heavily skied mountain.
Just for fun, I recently checked snow reports at a couple of dozen western resorts and found that only Alta, Snowbird and Crystal Mountain also included in their snow reports the important detail about how much snow had fallen overnight, rather than just give the usual 24 hour total. Why do so few ski areas provide this important detail? It can’t be that it is hard to do, ’cause its pretty effing simple to do, and the people in charge of compiling the snow reports must be skiers who would certainly enjoy knowing this crucial information. (I’ll bet they already do collect this information for themselves, and friends, even if their resort doesn’t publish it.)
I suspect resort managers and marketing people think they’ll get more ticket buyers if they only report the bigger, more impressive, 24 hour total. Telling powder aficionados that a big storm dropped all its snow while their mountain was full of Saturday skiers isn’t as compelling as a Sunday morning snow report of 16″ in the past 24 hours. Buyer, beware.
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