Six Feet of Snow

Isn't it funny how a turn of phrase can trigger memories? Reading Tom's snow report yesterday brought me back to those road trip selects tapes we always made. Little Feat always made the cut and there was nothing like harmonizing to Lowell George singing Six Feet of Snow.

That's a lot of snow! When you consider how early in the season it is, that's pretty impressive. Despite all that natural snowfall, Okemo's VP of Operations Barry Tucker assured me that his crew is "continuing to make snow aggressively." Successful resurfacing efforts brought a number of trails back online for this weekend and it looks like there's more snowfall on the way. I'm hearing 6-10 inches! Fingers crossed.

Back to Lowell ... "Don`t you know the ice and snow is sneaking in through my windows ..." Cheers!

Snowmaking: It’s not only what you’ve got... it’s how and when you use it.

We’re moving toward Opening Day… but it isn't going to be this Saturday, November 15 as we had hoped :(

As always, November openings are weather permitting and the temperature volatility is really tough to bet on this time of year... and the forecast calls for another warm up into this weekend. Rest assured, the snowmaking crews are not letting any opportunities go by... in fact the snow guns began blasting Okemo's 3,343 ft. summit white again today at about 11 AM, and the guns are on outside as I post this entry. The last effort that ended on Sunday, November 2 brought the snow to the top of the steep on Upper World Cup. The focus now is to make on the summit area and to push down World Cup as far as we can go with a goal of top-to-bottom coverage as soon as we can get it.

Okemo will continue to be very aggressive, but as expensive as energy is these days, we won’t be foolish. Our system is designed to make optimal snow at temperatures below 29 degrees F wet bulb. When mountain temperatures are within our design range, Okemo snowmakers can open more acreage faster with our HKD air-water system than other systems can produce... even fan guns. Okemo has the ability in both water capacity (pumping and storage) and air plant to be more competitive than anyone else in the state when temperatures are within our range.

If you’re counting, you know that 96% of Okemo’s trails have snowmaking. This year’s operational focus is on energy-efficient, early-season snowmaking. Last winter, Okemo tested some new energy-efficient HKD guns and the HKD SV-10 and Genesis tower guns were a huge success. So much so that 80 of these new snowmaking guns were added to the Okemo arsenal this
year. Due to the ability to make snow more efficiently at closer-to-freezing
temperatures, Okemo can now make more snow than in previous years using much less energy… a fuel-cost savings of $377,000.

While it looks like it's going to be too warm to make snow from Wednesday onward through this weekend... please stay in touch with http://www.okemo.com/ for the latest or better yet, read this blog daily.

Keep your fingers crossed and your tips up!

Put Yer Dukes Up Fall

We all make mistakes, and so it turns out I was wrong when I said Halloween marked the end of warm weather. The forecast for this week is far from wintry, but with every last warm day I know it’s only a matter of time until they’re a thing of the past and it’s all-out wintertime. Our thermometers have been shooting up and down like those strong man games at carnivals guys hit with the giant sledgehammer to win their girlfriends cheap stuffed animals, and it appears that the battle is on. Fall and winter are in a game of tug of war, and I think we all know who’s going to come out the victor.

With Okemo’s state-of-the-art snowmaking equipment and our team of snowgun slingin’ outlaws, I highly doubt fall will rear its rain-favorin’ head around here for much longer. Our guys got the snowmaking underway this weekend up on Buckhorn and Countdown, but they’ve had to holster their snowguns for just a little bit until the temps dip back down. I took a trip up earlier to check out their handiwork and couldn’t help but let out a big yeehaw!