New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
‘Abnormally warm’ weather ushers in Connecticut ski season
January is typically an optimal month for ski resort activities such as snowboarding and tubing due to the month’s often frigid temperatures. However, recent temperatures that have seldom dipped below freezing have created a challenging beginning for Connecticut’s ski season.
According Mark Dixon, chief meteorologist at WFSB Channel 3, the first week of January 2023 was the state’s eighth warmest in its recorded history. A number of factors such as a jet stream over the Pacific Ocean carrying mild air to the East Coast and a strong polar vortex are attributed to the warmer weather in 2023, according to the meteorologist.
So far, it’s been an “abnormally warm January” according to Jay Dougherty, general manager of Mountain Southington Ski Area.
Dougherty said that interest in mountain sports this winter has remained consistent with the Christmas holiday week being among the resort’s busiest in recent years.
However, the resort doesn’t expect huge crowds when the weather becomes unseasonably warm. Despite this, it is not all “doom and gloom” for the resort as warmer weather means that “you don’t have to be so bundled up, and you don’t need to keep running inside for hot chocolate.”
“In Connecticut, we’ve never really relied on natural snowfall. It’s always been about the temperatures. Yes, the warm temperatures affect us, but most of us have built our snowmaking systems around that so that when it gets very cold, we can capitalize in just a few days and cover our mountain,” Dougherty said.
“It is southern New England
and we’ve had this situation before.”
Dougherty explained that the resort works early in the snowmaking process to ensure there is enough of a base depth for riders. “We put an extra effort into snowmaking early on, and we’re kind of pushing the limits of temperatures of where you start up at,” Dougherty said.
“It is always better to start up
at a lower temperature because your production is multiplied. We’re starting to run at 28 degrees on those nights when we’ll go to make snow and make sure that the snow surface is good.”
Artificial snow is made when pressurized air and water are pushed out of a cannon or another device that sends the mist out. That mist crystallizes
into snow when it interacts with the outside air, creating the artificial snow, according to Business Insider.
As Connecticut’s ski resorts look ahead to hopefully colder months filled with more snowstorms, resorts in the state are perhaps more primed to deal with the unseasonable weather in comparison to northern ski resorts that aren’t used to the varying conditions. “I think a lot of the northern resorts are not quite used to big fluctuations in temperature, so their snowmaking plans for their hills are a lot different than ours,” Dougherty said. “We’re used to putting two or three feet of snow on a hill, whereas some northern resorts where they’ll put a foot down and that foot will last a full season.”