Snow hits Utah, Colorado slopes early and often this season

The skies have dropped seasonal gifts of snow on many winter resorts in the Western U.S., earlier and in greater quantities than expected. And that bodes well for the 2010-11 ski season.

“We are in truly great shape,” said Jessica Kunzer, director of communications for Ski Utah, a trade group that represents that state’s resorts.

The Wasatch Mountains east of Salt Lake City have lived up to their reputation as a storm magnet. “We got out to a super head start,” said Jared Ishkanian, spokesman for Snowbird ski resort, where snow gauges topped the 100-inch benchmark Nov. 22, putting the month on par with the snowier months of January and February. By early December the total accumulation had leaped to 150 inches — 12½ feet — an impressive start to a season that is expected to see more than 500 inches, on average, before it concludes in June.

The season was off to a spectacular start in Colorado too. By the last week of November, a month that would conclude as the snowiest on record, 100 inches had fallen at Steamboat Springs. “We typically get to it in late January,” said resort spokesman Mike Lake, who is optimistic about a superlative season.

The early bounty has extended to the rest of the state. “We have snow to spare so far this season,” said Melanie Mills, president of the Colorado Ski Country USA trade group. “Many of our resorts saw more snow in November than they have seen in more than a decade.”

Resorts around Lake Tahoe also report plentiful early-season conditions. Boreal had an Oct. 29 opening, the earliest in California.

Meteorologists credit the La Niña weather phenomenon for the above-average precipitation in Northern California and the Northern Rockies. “We’ve seen a lot of storm activity coming down from the Pacific Northwest,” said Brian McInerney, hydrologist for the National Weather Service forecast office in Salt Lake City. “The ski areas that are in the northern Wasatch Mountains are doing exceptionally well,” he said, in stark contrast to the last three years that witnessed little activity until mid-December.

Snow hasn’t been as plentiful across Southern California, Arizona or New Mexico, where it took Ski Santa Fe until Dec. 10 to open a small section of its terrain with 20 inches of combined machine-made and natural snow. Nevertheless, spokeswoman Candy DeJoia celebrated because the opening was a few days earlier than last season’s. With overnight temperatures in the teens, she expressed confidence that snow-making would complement, or perhaps replace, storms.

In the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains, several snowstorms dusted ski hills and temperatures dipped low enough in November to make snow, hinting at a promising season. “It was a heck of a start,” said Chris Riddle, director of marketing for Bear Mountain and Snow Summit. “You can’t have a great season without a good start.”

Mountain High and Snow Valley opened with limited operations and single-digit snow depths in some cases. Warm temperatures in early December quieted the snow guns and delayed the opening of Mt. Baldy.

“La Niña is not necessarily a bad thing,” Riddle said. Forecasts predict a dry but also colder season. Salvation may not come from the skies but from snow making.

Info: https://www.skiutah.com, https://www.coloradoski.com, https://www.skilaketahoe.com, https://www.skisantafe.com, https://www.bigbearmountainresorts.com