Have you experienced powder-filled dreams over the past month? Did you find yourself longingly staring at the last few snow patches on Stein’s Run and Ripcord earlier this month? Are you spending your nights scrolling through your ski photo gallery from last season on your phone?
Well have I got a cure for you. To help hold you over until next winter, I’ve compiled a few fun snowfall stats from the past season. Hopefully you enjoy them. But if you find yourself dreaming about winter and wondering about other snowfall related stats, feel free to reach out to me at jbleh@sugarbush.com, and I’ll do my best to get you some answers.
180
Our annual snowfall this year. For the record, that’s the 4th lowest total since we started keeping track during the 1966-67 winter. It only ranks lower than 1979-80, 2011-12, and 2015-16 winters. Bummer. Though it’s worth noting that we did change the way we measured snow only a couple years ago. And as you can no doubt tell from our summit snow stake on a windy evening, we’re quite likely underreporting a bit on our top end numbers. But have no fear, we’re looking this summer at ways to hopefully provide a more accurate snow stake at the summit.
50
Snowfall we received in January. If you recall the skiing this winter was excellent from early/mid January through February. Outside of that we saw pretty significant warmups. But that excellent stretch was mostly thanks to no freeze/thaw cycles and some above average January snowfall. Those 50″ in January rank 26th (tied with two other seasons) out of the 55 seasons we kept track of. Our 10 year average in January sits at 43″.
140
The number of days we were open this season. It’s a little lower than our typical operating period, but do you remember how warm November was? We weren’t able to open until December 9th, about two weeks later than normal and the latest I had ever seen us open. Still, it’s pretty impressive we were able to make it all the way to May given the slow start to the season and hot streak through March and April. A round of applause to our snowmakers!
21
The 72 hour snowfall total on January 19th, our highest of the season. We saw 10″ on January 17th, another 10″ on January 18th, and a final 1″ on the 19th. That storm finally kicked us up to 100% open. You would have found me hiking over to Castlerock before they started spinning the lift the next day.
13
The longest stretch of days without snow during the season. April 3rd to April 15th. The second longest stretch was 9 days between March 20th and March 28th. Interestingly enough, 1″ of snow fell on March 29th, and without that those 9 days would have really been 12 days without snow (we received 2″ mid-day on April 1st). Based on how little snowfall we received from mid/late March onwards, it remains all the more impressive that we made it to May. A 13″ storm from April 16th-18th definitely saved us.