Looks Like A Promising Couple Of Weeks. It has been a terrific week of skiing and riding in most of the U.S. and Canada and I have been lucky enough to squeeze in a couple of days. Loon Mountain on Tuesday was wonderful; miles and miles of packed powder and views of the White Mountains that are hard to beat.[Read More…]
A Comeback For The East And Midwest, More Pow For The West. I spent the first two days of this week with fellow members of the North American Snowsports Journalists Association at Windham Mountain, NY, where the crew did an outstanding job of providing a fun surface in the wake of a mid-season meltdown last Sunday. One of the presentations[Read More…]
The West Continues To Luck Out, Cold Coming East By Month End. Despite a wildly changeable run of weather in the East recently, I managed to get two days of wonderful winter turns in early this week. It snowed on Monday at Sugarbush as I skied packed powder with my son. Wednesday at Killington surfaces were just about perfect packed[Read More…]
Happy New Year To All Of My Fellow Senior Sliders! In the two weeks since my last post, the western slopes of the U.S. and Canada have been the unquestioned winners in terms of fresh snow. Just prior to Christmas, the trail counts from British Columbia south to the Sangre de Cristos of New Mexico were on the lean side,[Read More…]
Except The West Coast. Last week I discussed the role of upper level troughs as they relate to our insatiable appetite for fresh snow, both natural and machine made. Most of the time, troughs are indeed our friends but that doesn’t necessarily mean that upper level ridges are the enemy. The influence of ridge is just like the old cliche[Read More…]
And Regional Forecasts From West To East. Had my first day on snow last Thursday at Jiminy Peak in the Berkshires. It was a wonderful day on nearly perfect snow: chalky packed powder with some windblown pillows of powder along the edge of several trails. Today, I thought I would tell you about the jet stream feature to look for[Read More…]
By the time this piece is posted, I will have enjoyed my first turns of this season, at Jiminy Peak in the Berkshires. The skiing should be superb after more than two feet of new snow from the early week storm. It was a slow mover and got stretched out from west to east due to a blocking pattern to[Read More…]
Jet Stream Changes Bring In the Chills. Last week I wrote about the “haves and have nots” in terms of favorable early season winter weather. The East was very cold with occasional snow while the West was warm and dry. For the most part, that is still the case, as the eastern Great Lakes and Northeast are in line for[Read More…]
The Difference Between East and West Is Remarkable. Over the past few weeks, I have shared with you some of my winter forecasting tricks of the trade but now it is time to get down to business and do some actual forecasting. The pattern change that was foretold a couple of weeks ago by the re-curvature of a typhoon east[Read More…]
A Negative NAO IS Friendly To Skiers. Right Now, It’s Smiling. During the upcoming winter I will be producing condensed regional forecasts on a weekly basis, hopefully providing readers with another nugget of info before they pick a destination for time on the slopes. I will refer to a number of different reasons for forecasts that you will probably not[Read More…]
The Typhoon Rule Can Predict Chilly Wet Air In North America. In an age where computer models are believed to be the only viable long range weather forecasting tool, there remains a very effective technique for looking ahead a couple of weeks that had its roots in World War Two. It is called the “Typhoon Rule”. When the far western[Read More…]
Snow At The End Of Summer Dazzles The Northwest. How is it that a storm can produce a four foot snowfall before the first week of the new season is over!? That is exactly what happened last weekend as portions of Montana got absolutely buried. Parts of Idaho, Washington, California, Oregon, Wyoming, and Colorado also saw snow, which undoubtedly got[Read More…]
SeniorsSkiing.com’s New Columnist Places His Bet on 2019-20. [Editor Note: Herb Stevens is a veteran meteorologist and television weatherman. SeniorsSkiing.com is very proud to introduce his new column which will appear weekly throughout the season.] When a long range weather forecaster starts to put together a winter forecast, the first element that has to be assessed is the state of[Read More…]
