‘Hit to the shins’
Ski season keeps slogging along despite the lack of real snow
With many parts of New England recording their warmest winters in decades, to say it’s been a rather mediocre snow season for ski resorts is an understatement.
But that isn’t stopping many ski operators from keeping their mountains open to visitors in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. More so this year, many resorts have had to rely on churning out mounds upon mounds of artificial snow to fill the void from Mother Nature and keep a healthy snow cover primed for spring visitors to its mountains.
“Man-made snow usually helps in the early months to build the bases, but this year, it’s been a battle to build natural snow up on that base with such a very volatile and fluctuating Pacific subtropical jet stream,” said Stephen Durham, a ski forecaster in northern New England.
During the winter, the jet stream never got particularly amplified, taking big dips this winter, a pattern that prevented any major nor’easters from forming.
Early in the season, the jet stream pushed any storm tracks west, which put New England on the “warm side” of the pattern. That’s why the region saw above-average precipitation — and not much snowpack.
Wachusett Mountain in Princeton, north of Worcester, typically receives 50 inches of snow over the winter but this year stacked up roughly 30 to 40 inches.
“This season the December melt-out that really hurt the ski areas after a cold November was kind of a solid hit to the shins,” Durham said, as were the heavy December rains that washed away lots of the snow. “Many ski areas, though, recovered nicely in January and into February . . . We had a good stretch of snowmaking weather in the middle of January and there were excellent ski conditions” and plenty of powder for a while in late January into early February “but we are still below average snowfall for the season.”
Durham evaluated the data for the New Hampshire and Vermont ski areas, and found that for December through February (meteorological winter), the average temperature was the warmest it’s been in many years.
The effect of those high temps? • Burlington, Vt., saw 31.2 inches of snow compared with the average 61.9 inches.
• Concord, N.H., saw 30.7 inches compared with its average of 45.2 inches.
• Manchester, N.H., saw 23 inches against its average 31.9 inches.
Still, with a ski season that typically runs through April and even into May, Wachusett and other operators said they will probably stick it out only till the end of March, as long as the snowmaking keeps a plentiful supply of powder on the mountains.
More than 40 resorts are projecting an early April wrap-up, according to
the OnTheSnow tracking site. Others, like larger operators Killington and Sugarbush, expect to remain open through early May.
Typically, artificial snow production takes place during long, cold nights, but this year ski operators have had to improvise to compete against Mother Nature.
“Normally you want a full night of sub-27 degree temperatures, but in seasons like the one we just had, you take advantage of shorter time windows,” said Chris Stimpson of Wachusett Mountain.
He said it’s not the worst winter they’ve experienced, but “it’s essential to build up a snow base during the season.”
The ski facility even made snow on March 1, much later than they typically do. But, according to Stimpson, “with this snowpack, we should be able to get to the end of the month staying open.”
Snow-making, a process that’s not only hugely expensive but uses a lot of energy, has become more imperative for the ski business as many operators have made major investments in snowmaking infrastructure and new machines to improve overall snow-making capabilities.
Wachusett is also using technology that tracks the thin swaths of snow on its slopes as snowcats groom the trails. Special software compares the GPS position of the snowcats to a baseline measurements the ski operator took of the trails when the ground was bare in the summertime.
“This allows snow groomers to focus their operations on where the depth is lowest, shifting snow from surplus areas,” Stimpson said.
Durham believes the “This is going to be an ongoing battle for years to come. There are going to be winters where ski areas rely heavily on man-made snow.”