powderfreak

Back over to light snow even on the valley floor. Crazy after having the sliding doors open last evening and it feeling almost humid, that flakes are now falling.

There are different metrics. Skier visits are still counted as an individual unique pass scan on a given day. So if you walk up to a lift, get scanned, that is "1 skier visit" whether you are there all day or just take one run and then go to work. What I was alluding to is when you see the earnings reports and it says "skier visits were down 4% but ticket revenue and units sold was up 5%" is sort of like a sports stadium saying physical attendance was down a bit, but we still sold more tickets ahead of time. I've never seen how many unredeemed days are sold but it has to be a decent number.

Yeah I have no firm data on that but the amount of people using a pre-purchased product to access skiing & riding has to be significantly higher. Also goes to your comment about paid attendance at sports or concerts/shows, vs. actual attendance. In the end, paid attendance is what matters to the business.

Regarding the tipping point… I think you can say that about just about any product or service out there right now. Everyone feels like they are at the tipping point whether you are buying groceries or going on vacation. So here’s the thing, the numbers have been decent this season. I think we’ll find it’s down a little bit, as it was expected to be down with the economy, inflation, there was election unknowns at the start of the winter, folks were less likely to pay up front. However, there’s a supply and demand aspect to skiing and riding… where it’s a very fine line between comfortably crowded and oh my god this is a problem crowded. Ski areas hear both complaints that it’s too expensive but it’s also too crowded. So weekend spur-of-the-moment decisions are definitely getting cost prohibiting. The big resorts want you to decide well in advance if you are coming. They do not have the capacity to absorb all of the already planned folks AND a massive influx of spur-of-the-moment decisions. Luckily there are a lot of smaller non-mega resorts to go to as well. Those places are more price friendly for short term decision making.

Thawing out today… late afternoon scene.

Solid squall line moving across the area now.

Posted by a friend in West Bolton today…

It occurs pretty similarly from upstate NY through VT, NH and ME. I think VT just often gets the headlines due to the large number of dirt roads over large areas... maybe? I dunno, maybe it's just that it's close to more population so we hear about it more than the rural ADK, western ME, N.NH areas? The best mud-season content though usually comes out of VT for sure.

I think it's pretty gross outside on the whole, but that's just the water logged snow, deep mud, filthy snowbanks and moist warmth. Anywhere the lawn is exposed, you sink down like 2" walking on it, footprints filled with water immediately. The driveway is 6-8" deep mud ruts. It's kind of gross as a whole, lol.

Also, what did you have for 2017-18 for total snowfall?

Good data points, J. I think "solid" is a fine way to describe it, ha. Tough to find the right adjective but your data fits what my overall gut opinion was feeling. It's nothing near historic or all-time and maybe my verbiage is just pushing back on some of those claims you hear on social media or at the mountains. It was a very good, solid (I think you hit the nail on the head with that word) winter. The snowfall seems like something we should see at least 2, maybe 3 times per decade IMO. We've just had some poor winters since 2018-19 that may be skewing opinions. The lack of rain in the heart of winter WAS the memorable part though. Just added up snow on snow on snow without a thaw event. We will need to see where it goes from here because if this winter sort of slowly dies from here on out, opinions may change a bit. The truly high-end winters for the mountains all have good Marchs where they typically end the month with higher upper elevation snowpack than they entered the month with.

Intriguing to see if this can mix some more wind down.

Blow torch wind at MVL… must be downsloping off the Worcester Range as it’s not happening here. Multiple 40+ mph gusts and even hit 54mph with temps in the low 60s. METAR KMVL 162205Z AUTO 17025G47KT 10SM SCT050 OVC055 16/11 A2968 METAR KMVL 162145Z AUTO 17022G35KT 10SM OVC050 16/11 A2972 METAR KMVL 162140Z AUTO 17025G37KT 10SM BKN050 16/11 A2972 METAR KMVL 162135Z AUTO 17024G35KT 10SM BKN050 16/11 A2971 METAR KMVL 162130Z AUTO 16026G37KT 10SM SCT050 16/10 A2971

Water ways opening up rapidly. They’ll be open from here on out now. The gullies will be raging if we get an inch of rain tonight.

BTV with 69F. Not bad. 61F here. Snow taking a beating.