On Wednesday I was in class at Saint Lawrence when my professor mentioned that his wife was driving up Interstate 81 on her way to Canton. He was concerned about the heavy snow in the area.
I thought back to reports from last year and my focus drifted away from literature towards skiing at Snow Ridge.
Back in my room after class, I poured over the NOAA forecasts and snowfall predictions for the evening and the checked snow reports on the Snow Ridge website.
On New Year’s Day 2012, forecasters were calling for a short but intense blast of arctic air to sweep across the lakes into New York. While it didn’t look like we were actually getting the pattern change everyone was hoping for, some excitement was generated by forecast lake effect snows. While the actual totals were far less than predicted, For tBatt and Mattchuck, blind faith and determination netted some hard earned natural turns:
“Skiing groomers on manmade snow was getting old, pretty quickly. When I heard that the Tug Hill was forecast to get HAMMERED with 2′-3′ of lake effect, my ears perked up. I kept an eye on the radar and forecast totals.”
Over the past month, fresh snow has been a scarce commodity in New York State, the northeast and across most of the continent. After a long drought, Ullr pushed some cold arctic air across Lake Ontario and dropped a foot of lake-effect blower on Tug Hill. The just released video is from Tuesday’s Powder Day at Snow Ridge.
Snow Ridge Lake Effect from Ted Battesh on Vimeo.
“Skiing groomers on manmade snow was getting old, pretty quickly. When I heard that the Tug Hill Plateau area was about to get hammer with lake effect snow — to the tune of 2-3 feet — it got my attention. I kept an eye on the radar and snowfall totals.”
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