The Spring Ski Season that Could've Been...

As a skier and a weather enthusiast, I love to talk about the relation between weather and skiing. Of course, due to COVID-19, all ski areas in the country were shut down around March 20th this year, and none in New England have reopened yet. (One mountain in Southern California reopened with social distancing in place and there are signs that mountains in Oregon will be able to reopen within the next week).

As far as spring skiing in New England this year goes, we certainly could've had a fantastic spring. As I've been mentioning for the past few weeks on this blog, temperatures have been unseasonably cold in the East. Couple that with some late-season snowstorms this year, and conditions on the slopes could've been great well into May. Here's a current look at the Killington webcam atop the North Ridge Quad, showing a view that looks like it could be March.

North Ridge Cam on 5/12 (Killington)

Jay Peak, another Vermont resort that tends to spin the lifts into May, also shows wintery looking slopes on their webcam.

Jay Peak webcam (Jay Peak)

The trails are still looking pretty wintery thanks to the light snow that areas that saw snowfall yesterday. Here's a map of who saw some May 11 snowfall.

May 11 snowfall totals (NWS Burlington)

The NWS in Burlington is fairly confident that this will be our last snowfall of the year, given the warmup that is on the horizon.

Since the winter of 1988, Killington has operated their lifts into June ten times, with the most recent one being last year. Based on how the webcam looks now, it looks likely that they would have made it to June for the 11th time this year.

At some point soon, I'll do a winter 2020 skiing recap on the blog.