Rowsdower

Bear Creek isnt on there and Boulder already opened.

Its small and icy. Good park... if you shred you might like it. Personally I like BC more but maybe thats just my bias speaking.

This is exactly what happened late January last year. Hopefully it stays there and doesnt break down though. I hope I didnt jinx it or scare it away ^^

Ok, this is basically how to interpret a gfs model. This is 13 days out. By imlayered at 2007-11-13 Everything above the blue line is inside the cold air mass, everything below (south) is in a warmer air mass. This basically shows the border between warm and cold air. Here we are in the cold air. The wierd arrow f things show wind and windspeed. Think of them as arrows with the tines that make it look kinda like a retarded F at the rear of the arrow and the bottom of the F points in the direction the wind is blowing. The more tines and the longer the tines the stronger the wind. Precipitation is the big green/blue blotches. Green is lighter, blue is heavier, and purple/red is heaviest. The Ls and Hs are the centers of high and low pressure systems and the numbers under them are the millibar readings. The lower the millibar number the lower the atmospheric pressure the more intense the storm. Low pressure is associated with storms high pressure with fair weather. The black lines are called isobars. Isobars are kind of like topographic maps for atmospheric pressure. The more closesly packed the isobars the more rapid the change from high to low pressure, and tightly packed isobars also mean strong winds. Now on to really interpretting the map. Look at the big low pressure system over Newfoundland. Winds around a low pressure system always move counterclockwise, so in front of a storm the wind will be out of the south, behind from the north. Look at the winds... they go right around the low pressure system. Now look at the blue/red lines. Sure enough warmer air is being brough up in front of the storm due to the southerly winds. Behind the storm are the colder northerly winds. Ok now lets go ahead to the very end of the month. By imlayered at 2007-11-13 Now this one is hella interesting. Not only do we have a huge, possibly tropical system moving from the Gulf of Mexico into the Atlantic, the westerly flow is almost broken. The east coast remains mild since this massive storm system is bringing a southerly, easterly flow with it, but look off the pacific coast. A massive high pressure system dominates and cuts off the westerly flow!!!! Instead the high pressure systems clockwise wind flow is bringing in lots of cold air to the Great Plains. Once the large low pressure system moves away cold air should move in and stay. Rowsdower's forecast: If this high pressure forms I'd put my money on a Dec 8th opening, earlier if they don't mind opening on a weekday. The key word is if so don't get your hopes up too much since this is all weeks away and very much subject to change.

Some simple meteorological knowledge, accuweather, and some different weather models. Mostly I use gfs models since they give you wind, precipitation, and temperature all in one. I posted a link up top. The gfs can be a little confusing at first though. If for whatever reason the gfs link doesn't work just type "gfs model" into google, it should always be the first hit.

Around april and may noaa predicted abnormally cold temperatures for the northeast during december and january however they have since revised that as la nina developed. The thing to remember here is that this years pattern is not as strong as last years so we won't have 50s and 60s around New Years (thank god). Usually in mid to moderate la nina years temperatures average out to around normal to slightly below normal. Anyway weather updates: The storm at the end of the next two week period appears to have a signifigant amount of cold air behind it. The thing to watch is how long it persists. We ideally want a good week of cold weather here. However the warm air in front of the system is only appears to reach 50 (at this point) which is a good sign since each succesive warm up is a little less warm. The biggest problem is the path of the storm. Even though we see colder air we'll still be hit with a good two days of rain.

This is true and its nice that this year we're getting more of these cold snaps more frequently than last year. Last year it was warmer a larger percent of the time than it was colder during the early season. Right now we've got it about even or maybe slightly in favor of the colder side. Basically its a toss up at this point. The rule of thumb with this weather scenario is to assume its gonna get mild before a storm. The question though is where the storm tracks, whether the pattern holds or breaks, or whether the storm forms at all. All this can change temperatures and as GrilledSteeze said above, once you get out beyond a week you shouldnt believe in anything more than the trends presented because there are just too many factors to take into account. Even trends are often wrong. I hope I don't sound too contradictory here.

Even if the current pattern persists it's weak enough that the warm-ups will be far less devastating than they were last year so Bear should be able to go ahead with snowmaking regardless. Last year we had warm-ups in December that went well into the 60s. It's November and we're just pushing 50 a couple times a week. That's not too bad for November. If the westerly flow strengthens, I dont even want to talk about that.... To answer your question from the other thread - Boulder is much colder than Bear, thats why they opened. That and they were hell bent on just opening. If Bear really really really reallllllly wanted to they could open with absolute minimal terrain and one lift after a three or four day cold snap as well, but they're not going to unless they're desperate... like last year.

We obviously have several weeks of waiting yet. In the interim we'll be looking at developing conditions and crossing our fingers for cold temps. This is therefore not necesarily an "opening thread" at least not yet, hopefully it will be soon. Right now its more of a weather thread. Anyway here's today's accuweather 15 day forecast: http://www.accuweather.com/forecast-15day....62&metric=0 As you can see a small window opens between the 17th and the 19th that will bring favorable snowmaking temperatures. However this will only serve to cool down the pond and the ground since there will be a two day period following where a slight warm-up occurs. Then three more days of cold temperatures followed by another warm up, so no snowmaking at least in the next two weeks at this point. Here are the latest gfs models for the next 16 days: http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/nwprod/an...0/model_l.shtml You want the 10m Wnd 6 hour pcpn, its the first column. Looking at these we see a series of storms moving through following a northern track that blocks most of the coldest air from dominating our area. Basically the cold that should be sticking around is being held north by a strong westerly flow which keeps the jet stream farther north than it would typically be. This pattern is not favorable for the east coast as storms dig troughs across the western US but push huge amounts of warm air in front of them. This also makes most storms major rain makers. A typical winter pattern puts storms on a more southerly track that brings in colder air and pulls storms north bringing moisture along the coast to run into cold air coming from Canada, in essence forming the classical noreaster. While it is only November it would still be nice to see a more winter like pattern forming. Looking towards the end of the gfs forecast we see a major storm move south but still track north up the great plains and a warm ridge forming across the east. Long story short; cold air is coming but it isnt sticking around long enough. What does this say for snowmaking? Well probably none will take place the next two weeks, however as we move towards december a colder pattern, or simply a less warm pattern will develop that will allow for snow-making. My current opening date predicition for Bear Creek is Dec 8th-9th or the 15th-16th. Think Cold!

Maybe to get enough terrain covered for an opening but it takes a good week of blowing straight through to open the whole mountain with decent conditions. Looking at weather conditions don't look to terrible, the warming trend that was supposed to jack temperatures into the 60s is down about 10 degrees which is very nice despite teh rain. However the latest gfs models are showing the same western pacific flow dominating just like last year. Which we all know is a bad thing. However said pacific flow is weaker and allowing more cold air to leak in. We can only hope that the weaker la nina pattern will deteriorate faster rather than persist into december. There needs to be a new thread for this too.

no

DAMN YOU ACCUWEATHER MAKE IT COLD. It looked so good yesterday now it looks so not good. Either way its sick to see the mountains starting to come to life again.

Personally I think arranging the park correctly and setting things up properly is more important than what crazy new rails you can make. Last year Bear had a ton of great stuff that wound up being sub-par a lot of the time due to poor placement. They set up lines where you bottlenecked into one hit that would become rutted after heavy riding. Place hits of equal difficulty next to each other in sets of two or three. If you can't handle either hit then just ride by or go to a different park. Putting "self-esteem booster" rails in the "expert" park all by itself is a bad idea since it'll get tracked real quick since absolutely everyone who rides through the park will hit that specific rail. Besides where would they put a freakin bus? btw: I am not ragging on Bear's park and I dont want it to seem like I have beef with those involved in the park.

In all respect Bear Mountain's junkyard terrain park did look kinda fun. Although you probably need a damn tetanus shot after day of riding. Besides Bear Creek already has a subaru in their park.

clearly I'm joking

These are all good reasons but my real question was why aren't there any NE mountains above 5k? Enviromental issues, land issues, is it just not possible at this point to have a new resort on the East Coast? The climate in the White Mountains is about as harsh as that of the Rockies. Treeline out west is around 8,000 ft give or take 1 or 2k. In the Northeast its closer to 4,000 or 5,000 ft. I mean they had snow on Mt Washington in August for crying out loud! Why has there never been an attempt to develop a higher elevation ski resort in the northeast?

Ok question. If a mountain in North Carolina with and elevation of say 5,000 ft can open in the beginning of November why isnt there a New England resort with an elevation of 5,000 ft that would open in October?

I'll do photography for Bear's park.

Earliest opening date for a PA mountain ever???

Hey snoskate... umm, nice avatar.

December 1 10:30

Never been to the place but Ski Denton apparently has some really challenging terrain. It's way out in north central PA though. There really aren't many places in PA with good straight up natural terrain to ride. This place takes the cake though since I think Denton is much smaller.

Maybe the snowmakers struck a deal with unholy powers over the summer and that's why they're saying they can open the mountain in 1/3 less time or whatever. How else could they do it other than with the aid of spirits....

The scary movies were not, I'm 99.9% sure of that. As for it being haunted? Well the question there is really whether or not you believe in ghosts.

Native American burial grounds? I dunno, but there are all sorts of wierd mines up past the tubing park. A bunch of them were flooded too.