Brain Post: Why the Longest Day of the Year Isn’t the Hottest Day Between June 20 and June 22, the Northern Hemisphere leans closest to the Sun, giving us the year’s longest daylight and the steepest solar angle. Intuitively, that should be the time the temperature spikes, yet in most of North America, the deepest summer heat does not arrive until mid or late July and August. The delay, known as seasonal lag, […] Weather Clay Malott | June 22, 2025 0 Comments
Brain Post: Ski Wax and Its Environmental Footprint For decades skiers have relied on petrochemical waxes to make boards slide faster, but that speed comes with hidden ecological baggage. Traditional glide wax is a blend of paraffin, synthetic hardeners and, until recently, highly fluorinated additives that repel both water and dirt, dropping friction by a measurable few watts. Each time a ski is flexed or scraped, microscopic flakes […] Brains Clay Malott | May 21, 2025 0 Comments
Brain Post: Why is Fall Hotter Than Spring? A funny thing happens every September. You pull your hoodie out of summer storage, expecting crisp mornings, but then find yourself peeling it off by noon, as the sun feels closer to July than January. The calendar says we are sliding toward winter, yet the air insists on replaying summer’s greatest hits. The flip side of the story shows up […] Brains Clay Malott | May 15, 2025 0 Comments
Depth, Cold, Danger: What a 24-Year Satellite Study Just Revealed About Avalanches Imagine a north-facing slope in mid-February. The snow is deep, the air bitterly cold, and every few minutes you hear the distant whump of a settling slab. A new 24-year satellite study of the Altai Mountains in East Kazakhstan confirms what those sounds already whisper to backcountry skiers: avalanche danger starts and ends with snow depth and temperature. In fact, […] Avalanche Clay Malott | May 12, 2025 0 Comments
Turns All Year: A Guide for How to Ski Every Month of the Year in North America Ask any die-hard skier what keeps them up at night in the swelter of July, and odds are they’ll mention three innocent-sounding letters: TAY… Turns All Year. The idea is seductively simple: ski at least once every single month, no matter what the calendar or the weather says. The execution, however, is anything but. It demands early-morning alarms that ring […] Backcountry Clay Malott | April 28, 2025 9 Comments
From Silver Boom to Powder Legend: The Alta Ski Area Story High in Little Cottonwood Canyon, dawn breaks with the echoing boom of avalanche cannons across serrated peaks–a morning ritual at Alta Ski Area that hints at its rich and restless history. Few ski resorts can claim a genesis as dramatic as Alta’s: a silver mining boomtown turned ghost town, resurrected in 1938 as a skier’s paradise atop Utah’s Wasatch Mountains. […] Clay Malott | March 26, 2025 0 Comments
Mount Spurr Rumbling: Alaska Volcano Unrest Spurs Eruption Watch Alaska’s Mount Spurr—a 11,070-ft glacier-clad volcano 75 miles west of Anchorage—is showing worrisome signs of life. The Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) reports elevated seismic activity with numerous small, shallow earthquakes now detected daily beneath the mountain. Over the past month, more than 100 quakes per week have been recorded, some up to magnitude 2.7, totaling thousands of tremors since last […] Clay Malott | March 12, 2025 0 Comments
Vanished Slopes: Inside the Demise of North America’s Ghost Ski Resorts On a frosty morning in Michigan’s Leelanau County, the chairlifts at Sugar Loaf Mountain hang lifeless, and the once-luxurious lodge lies in rubble. It’s a scene echoed in dozens of locations across North America. In fact, nearly 60% of all ski resorts in North America have closed since the boom of the 1960s and ’70s. Economic shifts, warming winters, and […] Clay Malott | March 3, 2025 1 Comment
Skiing on the Equator: Investigating the Mythical Puncak Jaya Ski Resort Puncak Jaya—also known as the Carstensz Pyramid—is a 4,884-meter (16,024-foot) peak in the highlands of Papua, Indonesia, famed as the only place in the equatorial Pacific with year-round ice. In recent years, an intriguing rumor has circulated: that a ski resort once operated on the slopes of Puncak Jaya, making it the world’s second-highest ski area despite its tropical location. […] Clay Malott | February 14, 2025 1 Comment
The Daring Ski-Hayden Dream: War, Ambition, and Aspen’s Greatest “What if?” In the 1930s, a group of daring visionaries believed they could build a European-style ski resort high in the Colorado Rockies that might one day rival the grand destinations of the Alps. Their chosen site was Mount Hayden, rising above the ghost town of Ashcroft near Aspen—a snowy paradise they hoped would become a winter sports haven, complete with cutting-edge […] Clay Malott | February 13, 2025 0 Comments
Slippery Slopes: Climate Change Threatens the Future of Skiing in North America At the base of a Massachusetts ski hill one recent November, sunlight glared off a patch of sloppy snow “pooling like dirty mashed potatoes” as the thermometer hit 59°F.1 Scenes like this–unseasonable warmth turning early-season snow to slush–are becoming familiar across the United States and Canada. Ski resort operators and skiers are sounding the alarm that winters are warming, snowpacks […] Brains Clay Malott | February 6, 2025 1 Comment
Brain Post: Groundhog Day – Origins, Accuracy, and Cultural Quirks Every February 2, millions tune in (or head out) to see if a furry forecaster will predict the end of winter. In this post, we dig deep into the origins of Groundhog Day, the legend of Punxsutawney Phil, and what the data really says about his predictive prowess. The Origins of Groundhog Day Groundhog Day finds its roots in ancient […] Clay Malott | February 1, 2025 0 Comments
A Day in the Life on Spring Break in Jackson Hole, WY Spring mornings in the Tetons have a distinct flavor. The first rays of light touch the upper ridges, illuminating untouched snowfields where skiers and riders hope for that perfect combination of powder on shaded north-facing slopes and spring corn on the sunnier ones. Jackson Hole Mountain Resort‘s Aerial Tram ascends swiftly, carrying early risers whose breath fogs in the crisp […] Featured Article Clay Malott | January 29, 2025 0 Comments
SnowBrains PNW Forecast: Massive Christmas Storm Cycle Will Bring 5+ Feet This Week This forecast was created at 2:00 a.m. PST on Saturday, December 21 A broad, mild weather pattern will keep snow levels high for much of the upcoming stretch, but a series of storms will deliver steadily accumulating snowfall to the mountains from Saturday through next weekend. Some valleys will see more rain than snow due to these elevated snow levels, […] Weather Clay Malott | December 21, 2024 0 Comments
Google DeepMind’s GenCast Sets New Standard for Medium-Range Mountain Forecasting High-stakes decisions in the alpine depend on getting the forecast right. A month’s worth of anticipation can hinge on whether a distant storm sets up over the northern Rockies or takes a hard turn somewhere over the Pacific. At a time when sudden thaws, unusual precipitation patterns, and volatile storm tracks are becoming all too common, the value of pinpointing […] Weather Clay Malott | December 11, 2024 0 Comments
Brain Post: What is a Rain Shadow? Picture this: A storm gathers off the Pacific, its clouds heavy, bloated with moisture stolen from the ocean. They press forward, barreling toward the rugged face of a towering mountain range like the Sierra Nevada or the Cascades. As the storm meets the peaks, it’s as if an invisible hand drags the moisture-laden air skyward, lifting it higher, step by […] Weather Clay Malott | December 3, 2024 0 Comments
Brain Post: What Does a 50% Chance of Snow Actually Mean? You wake up, pulling back the curtains and checking the forecast for the day. Your weather app reports a 50% chance of snow between 9 and 10 a.m. Excitement bubbles up—visions of fresh tracks through powder fields dance in your mind. But hang on. Does that mean half the mountain will be blanketed in snow? Or maybe it’ll only snow […] Weather Clay Malott | December 2, 2024 0 Comments
Cutoff Lows: The Rogue Weather Systems Behind Massive Dumps You pull back the curtains to an unexpected winter wonderland. Everything is buried. A heavy blanket of fresh powder covers rooftops, vehicles, and the slopes outside your window. There’s a certain mystery to snow days like these that sometimes defy the forecast and keep powder hounds guessing. Sometimes, the culprit behind these massive dumps comes courtesy of one of the […] Weather Clay Malott | November 21, 2024 0 Comments
Global vs. Mesoscale Weather Forecasting Models—How Do They Differ? Weather models the best tools we have for peering into the future of the atmosphere, but not all models are the same. When forecasters talk about global and mesoscale weather models, what exactly are they referring to? Global Models Global weather models are exactly what they sound like. They look at the big picture, covering the entire planet. These models […] Weather Clay Malott | November 20, 2024 0 Comments
Brain Post: Temperature Inversions—Nature’s Double-Edged Sword Nature’s Temperature Trick A cold, clear winter morning: the world seems frozen in place. The valley below lies blanketed in frost, with fog pooling in the low spots, almost as if nature pressed pause overnight. This scene isn’t just picturesque; it’s the result of a fascinating atmospheric phenomenon known as a temperature inversion. Typically, warm air sits closer to the […] Weather Clay Malott | November 14, 2024 0 Comments
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