The Ski Season in Photos #4

Skiers want snow. We want it now, we want it tomorrow, we want it next week and next year. Let it snow anytime, all the time.

Christmas-Storm-2012

Ski resorts on the other hand, well they’re a little more particular. They want snow. But they want it on Wednesdays or Thursdays or Saturday afternoon.

The last thing they want is any kind of weather that prevents the hordes and hungry masses from gettin’ on the highway and headin’ to the mountains.

Christmas-2012-Snowfall-Prediction

The 2011/12 season was another story altogether. It was hardly cold, didn’t snow much and temps went right to blow torch in early March. After that kind of performance, it seemed like the resorts were ready to take any snow any time.

Winter arrives in New York.

After a season that had northeast resort reeling, nobody was being to picky about how they’d take their snow. But this year something a little magical happened.

After every ski family in the northeast was done with their holiday celebration, there was a day of prime travel weather, and them boom. Nearly every single ski resort in the northeast got over a foot of snow, and it was game on.

VT-Freeheel-Sugarbush

We’ve been calling the 2012 Christmas snow the “Billion-Dollar Storm.” If the entire US ski industry is worth $6 billion a year and the big holidays per holiday periods account for two-thirds of annual revenue, that might be a bit of an exaggeration.

But there’s no doubt that that storm’s timing and widespread distribution of snow was exactly what the northeast ski biz needed.

One thing is for sure, snow lovers found a way to play in it, and there were big smiles throughout the mountains of the northeast.

3 comments on “The Ski Season in Photos #4

  1. All the ski areas in CA and OR got several feet of snow around Dec 23, 2012. It was a good Christmas Holiday week for them too!

  2. Tussey Mountain All Seasons in Pennsylvania has appreciated a much snowier season as well. Last year, Tussey was forced to close February 29 due to a lack of snow. They were predicting to stay open until March 17 this year. With added snowfall throughout March, Tussey Mountain All Seasons skied until March 31, according to Sue Matalavage, the office manager for Tussey Mountain.

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