Winter Weather 22/23

I don't think this storm was the killer we thought it might be. The temps only surged for 12 hours tops, and the rain is soaked into the snow. A repeat next weekend will not be good, however.
 
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My back yard now.The Racquette River is out there about 100 yards
 
Milo Maltbie said:
I skied Great Gorge on my 21st birthday, which was mid-March. IIRC it was winter at the top and spring at the base. but I'm sure it was mostly natural snow that season, which was before the 90s.

mm
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Vernon Valley/Great Gorge would have been rarely open if they did not have snow making. They would get 50" to 60" of natural snow in a good year. In the early 1970s there was a snow drought from NNJ to the Cats and the temps were on the warmer side. These conditions were one of the reasons Snow Bowl in Jefferson, NJ, closed after the 1974 winter (also high energy prices). There was a small lake that I walked by on the way to school. We played hockey on it until 1973. From 1973 on the town would not open the lake for skating because the ice never got thick enough. A couple of winters it never got ice. We never played hockey on it again.

VV/GG (Mountain Creek) base is about 400ft elevation and tops out at roughly 1400ft. The weather would change for the better once you hit Butler on Rt 23 north - just west of 287. The elevation gain from RT 23 in Pompton Plains to Rt 23 in Butler makes a real difference.
 
My question is what is the expected end result of the next few days? Are we expecting to lose a significant amount of currently open terrain? Or are we looking at more typical northeast conditions on most of what is currently open?
 
TheGreatAbyss said:
I dunno - Did the ski areas of southern PA, West Virginia, The Poconos, or the hills of Northern NJ ever rely predominantly on natural snowfall? I don't remember Vernon Valley/Great Gorge being a particularly natural snowy place back in the 90s.
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The WV ski areas have had snowmaking but depended on natural snowfall well into the 2000s. Intrawest invested in snowmaking for Snowshoe. Timberline's former owners failed partially from lack of capital for improving snowmaking, as well as updating lifts.

The NC and VA ski resorts/areas had 100% snowmaking from the start. Several that have survived opened in the 1960s or 1970s based on the snowmaking technology invented in the late 1950s that was fully developed by the late 1960s. There are quite a few "lost ski areas" in the southeast that opened based on natural snow that didn't make it to 2000.
 
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