Anticipating Snowfall on the East Coast

Snow has fallen and resorts are already opening. If you’re like me, you’re wondering what this year will bring to your local resort – will it be good or should you lose all hope of powder days and instead focus on the other aspects of your ordinarily ridged and pathetic existence.

As it turns out, no one truly knows what will happen. All things that have been said up to now have been PRE-dictions. In snow forecasts for this winter, the North East is all but looked over, instead media brings hopeful outlooks for states like Idaho, Colorado, and Montana. As a Californian, this knocks my confidence in what my snow year will look like.

However, there is once fact that can rally hope: the average snowfall. Snowfall from past years can tell us two very important things: when the most snow will fall and how much should fall. Colorado, Idaho, and Montana on average get the highest amount of snowfall in December, from there it tapers off until Spring. In the North East, resorts usually see more snowfall in January and February than they do in December. While the West is notorious for the amount of snow it recieves, Vermont’s Smugglers’ Notch resort, which gets 324 average inches, is comparable to resorts in California and Montana, which get around 400 average inches. Smugglers’ Notch and Vermont have the highest average snowfall, followed by New Hampshire at 200 inches, and Maine with 197 inches.

Don’t lose sleep over the opening of Colorado’s A-Basin (which, by the way, only has a three-foot base) and be comforted, instead, by past seasons. Vermont, get ready for the awesome January and February snowfall and if you plan a ski-cation for the West, book it for March.