Just a couple of quick notes that have just arrived via SMS from our Hotham blogger:
To give an idea of snowfalls. There was ten cm plastered on the car at DP this morning. I’ve been out and about on the hill in unopened areas and there would have to be 15-20 easy with wind drifts bigger than that obviously. Pretty sure I could hear the snow makers going in the bottom of HV as well.
&
Summit and roadrunner tomorrow is the word around town.
UPDATED: Sunday June 18th 2pm
Drenched:
UPDATED: Sunday June 19th 12pm
There’s no way of sugar coating this, it’s pissing with rain.
It was one of those mornings where you wake up, hear the rain on the window and roll over for another half hour.
Eventually the guilt of laziness got the better of us and we headed out. My thighs were wet by the top of Holden chair and we headed straight for the sanctuary of Koflers, and will likely head straight back!
However the good news is that the cover is great for this time of year, and Tuesday is shaping up as a positive with a snow bearing storm on it’s way.
Remember folks, it always gets worse before it gets better!
UPDATED: Saturday June 18th 6pm
Not much happened in the afternoon, after swearing at 2 1960’s spec toilets over lunch we went back out for a ski but unfortunately the weather closed in and we packed it in again. The pants I have here this weekend are not at all waterproof, my good ones will be fixed this week, so rain wasn’t really an option. I did manage to fix the toilets this evening. However fortunately it wasn’t damaging the cover, and we are still ahead of where we were before last night’s snow.
There looks to be a little more rain on the way tomorrow and Monday, and then a strong cold front arriving in the early hours of Tuesday morning. This looks good for approx 30cm of snow which will be very welcomed for the school holidays.
Jane’s Weather sees the situation as follows:
ALPINE AREAS
Saturday: Showers, falling as rain through most elevations – only wet snow on the peaks from this afternoon. 2 to 5 mm of rain, 10 mm for Baw Baw.
Sunday: Showers, falling as rain through most elevations – only wet snow on the peaks. A period of rain at night – falling as a rain/snow mix on higher slopes. 5 to 10 mm of rain/wet snow.
Monday: The chance of rain showers. 2 to 5 mm of rain.
Overnight Monday and Tuesday: Rain starts Monday night and turns to heavy snow by early Tuesday (pre-dawn), lowering throughout the alpine. Snow showers follow from Tuesday afternoon. Around 10 mm of rain then 30 to 40 cm of snow by Wednesday/Thursday.
Click here for her full report.
The Weather Nerds are getting particularly excited about the prospect of the weather early next week, but Snowatch is a little more circumspect at this stage.
So fingers crossed that the forecasts rains remain light, and that we do receive a good coating on Tues/Wed. If that was the case I would expect Summit, Family, Shakey Knees and Skyline at Buller to open as a bare minimum.
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We arrived at 8pm to the welcome sight of fresh snow on the ground and in the air, and the snow guns blasting. I would estimate there was 10cm of fresh had fallen.
We knew that warm temps were on the way and when we woke up things looked a little soggy outside, with a misty sleet in the air.
We made our way up to Little Buller and were pleasantly surprised – the snow was a little sticky but we’ve had a few runs now an the snow was smooth and the run deserted, a pleasant change from last weekend. I’ll keep this updated through the weekend.
Deserted LBS:
Breakfast:
If you did get out on the mountain this weekend, let us know how it was in the comments below.
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Went out for a few turns. The cover is actually pretty decent. Weather looks to be clearing, out towards Omeo was pretty much clear skies. Wait and see how the next few days turn out.
UPDATE: Friday 7:30am
It’s wet in Melbourne and cold in the mountains, a good sign. Buller’s Village cam has signs of white & Hotham is reporting snow on their Facebook/Twitter feeds which is good news, it still doesn’t look like there is much in the front, but at least it will be snow.
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Thursday night is probably a bit late to start writing a post about the weather for the weekend, but my enthusiasm waned with the forecast yesterday.
It looks like it was a pretty stunning week at Buller – Lorraine Lock from snow-blind posted some lovely photos from today. While the other resorts looked to have been pretty murky during the week, Buller was bathed in sunshine, and blessed with near zero crowds. I know it’s a bit easy to get ahead of yourself & wax lyrical when there are effectively only 2 runs open, but I bet those up there this week would have had fun. Unfortunately the high pressure that dominated the week also led to large inversions overnight so no snow was able to be made, however from looking at Richard’s Report it would seem that Thredbo was able to make snow last night.
I must say I do enjoy the early morning viewing of the Bourke St webcam on a sunny day. Its Eastern exposure creates a lovely picture on a fine morning, just what I need to see first thing:
We do have some weather coming. A bit of a ‘clipper’ front late tonight or tomorrow, with another very weak front on Sunday, and something more substantial due on Tuesday. Earlier in the week the ‘clipper’ had some potential but this has been downgraded on the models.
Jane’s Weather has summarised it as follows:
ALPINE AREAS
Today: Dry.
Tomorrow: A burst of snow on the upper slopes, rain on the lower. Just local showers to follow (snow on the upper slopes). 5 cm of snow.
Saturday: The chance of showers, falling as rain. 1 to 2 mm of rain.
Sunday: The chance of showers, falling as rain, then an increase in these at night as a rain/snow mix up high. 3 to 5 mm of rain.
Monday: Most likely to be dry. Snow starts at night or early Tuesday and should quickly lower throughout the alpine. This system looks like around 20 cm at the moment.
Click here for her full outlook. Weatherzone concurs, with particularly bleak snow levels on the weekend.
The Weather Forum regulars keep referencing a Westerly flow, which is not good news for Bullerites – as was discussed to my dismay a couple of years ago.
I have a feeling that things will be pretty average over the weekend. I’ll still head up as I have quite a few chores to do at the lodge, but I do think that it could be a little crappy. Plus my most waterproof gear is in at Remote Repairs getting patched up and DWR’d so I can’t see myself spending huge amounts of time outside.
The good news is that it would seem that there will only be enough rain to be annoying, and not enough to do any real damage ahead of the snow predicted for Tuesday. Buller was painfully close to being able to open more terrain last weekend, so if we see a decent net gain between now and Tues/Wed I would anticipate areas like Summit, Shakey Knees and Family Run to open, which would be most handy in the lead up to the school holidays.
If you did get out on the mountain this week, let us know how it was in the comments below.
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Awesome day. Same as everywhere else, need more snow. Very, very quiet.
In a rare move, I took my DSLR up to Buller on the weekend, and even more rare, I actually took it out and about!
Here’s a few high quality pics from the weekend: (Click on the images for a larger version)
We also made some stops on the way down the hill to take some more pics:
If you did get out on the mountain this weekend, let us know how it was in the comments below.
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UPDATE: Monday June 13 12pm:
It’s all a bit “deja vu all over again” today – more blue skies, firm fast snow on Little Buller and good company & a lovely lunch at Koflers.
Crowds were lower than yesterday which was welcomed, it got a little crazy, but numbers were still solid today.
The snowmakers got a limited window early this morning when the humidity dropped, but it didn’t last long and they weren’t able to make a substantial amount of snow to open new runs. Summit, Shakey and Family are very close.
Took a few more snaps, although there wasn’t a huge amount of point as there was little change in the view from the last 2 days:
Of note were the pink skies from the Chilean volcanic eruption. There’s a hint of excitement about this event due to the incredible ski season in 1992 after the Pinatubo eruption. I will do some homework on it midweek and see if I can find any correlation.
UPDATE: Sunday June 12 4:30pm
After a bit more sedate evening on Saturday things were feeling much better this morning. However it really is quite conflicting being able to ski on Opening Weekend!
We still didn’t burst out of the gates this morning, and were met with a sizable queue at Holden. We knew this meant that Little Buller and Wombat lift line would be crowded so coffee at Koflers seemed to be a much better option. When we finally made it down our suspicions were confirmed:
Word had no doubt got around about the blue skis and reasonable conditions! I heard from some others that there were a few speed demons out there ruining it for everyone else.
>One wait in that line was plenty, so we headed back to Bourke St to do a few runs with the niece and nephew. Anticipating a bit of a lunchtime lull we headed back to LBS and it was much nicer.
It looks like they have run the cats down the Summit but there still isn’t quite enough snow to open:
According to Patrol, Family Run and Shakey Knees are the runs that will likely open next with a couple of nights more snowmaking. They are very close, just need a shade more snow.
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After a festive late night, this mornings movements were a little slow. We had to wait almost an hour in line for our season passes which was pretty frustrating since they had our photos on file and they were paid for in December.
We then headed up to Koflers for some hangover cures and went for a slide. Little Buller is in fantastic condition, great cover all the ay to the bottom load station. The top half of Wombat was closed and ungroomed but that didn’t stop some intrepid explorers and Patrol ended up opening it.
However there’s only so many times you can ski Little Buller so we donned the skins and went for a quick hike up to the summit to take some photos and check out the view:
All in all, it was lovely weather and great to have skiing on Opening weekend.
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What a beautiful looking morning – my on-the-ground reporter has just sent these through:
And a couple of lovely webcam shots as well
With images like that, there’s not much more to say.
There will be free skiing today on Bourke St from 12-3, with at least 4 lifts planned to open tomorrow. Tickets for the long weekend will be half price – $52 for adults & $28 for kids, with a generous upper age limit on the Kids prices of up to school Year 12.
The car is packed, just need to get through a day of work and then it’s up to the mountain for tonight’s festivities.
I’ll be up at about the crack of noon tomorrow, to go for a slide, go to Koflers and hopefully take a few pics for everyone.
If you do get out on Bourke St today for free, let us know how it was in the comments below.
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Looks like iPhone apps are all the rage.
Hot on the heels of Hotham, Falls Creek has just released theirs:
At first glance it looks a little limited, but Falls has posted on Facebook that they are expecting an update in a week that will include GPS and Cams.
You can Download it from iTunes by clicking here.
Buller is rumoured to be refreshing their app as well, keep an eye out for one with a similar functionality to the Hotham & Perisher apps.
In a week or so I will do a full rundown on everything a mobile user needs to follow the snow this year.
If you have downloaded the app let me know your thoughts in the comments below:
Note from aussieskier: Welcome to our new Hotham Blogger ‘Disaffected Corporate Worker’. He has just arrived on the mountain for the season and will be providing regular updates. To get the ball rolling see a few shots that were snapped off today:
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UPDATE: June 9th at 1pm
A quick lunchtime update – these pics just arrived via MMS:
No further word on any extra lifts for the weekend – will update if I hear anything. As predicted Temps have warmed and the preciptation has headed East, looks like this snow event is complete for Buller.
If you are on the mountain and have anything to report or add, please drop us a line in the comments at the bottom of this page.
Remember to ‘Like’ aussieskier.com on the top RHS of this page & follow us on Twitter.
UPDATE: June 8th at 8am
Some More Pics:
Conditions will be assessed on a daily basis and we are ready to turn the first lifts of the season for skiing and boarding this weekend. Lifts open for Saturday are expected to include Blue Bullet, Holden Express, Wombat and Bourke Street Carpet.
Note the word ‘include’ – they aren’t restricting themselves to just those lifts if the weather cooperates.
Just got a photo MMS’d from the mountain:
The official snow report is stating 13cm overnight, and the comments that accompanied that picture suggested drifts of up to 50cm near snow fences etc.
Overnight temps of -6c has allowed serious snowmaking to occur.
Will keep this updated as I find out more.
Very soon we will have on-the-ground reporters at Hotham and Buller blogging on the latest conditions.
UPDATE: June 7th at 6pm
I’ve been covering the weather forecasts in another post that has been updated over the course of the day, but in case anyone hasn’t noticed, it’s snowing.
The big news (though not at all unexpected) on the Mt Buller front today is that they have confirmed that lifts will indeed run on Opening Weekend. At this stage they have only committed to BB1 but I would be most surprised if there isn’t more, but of course this is all depending on the outcome of the next few days. My prediction is that we will see at the very least Summit, Little Buller and Shakey Knees in addition to BB1/Bourke St/Baldy. If I can get to Koflers on Saturday, I’ll be a happy camper.
As mentioned early it’s a wonderful PR exercise, and no doubt a major source of bragging rights among the resorts, and in this situation they do make a very real effort to open as much as possible.
The webcams are pretty iced up at the moment, so it’s hard to tell exactly how much has fallen, but this post on the forum from a local suggests that 15cm fell in 2 hours today, no doubt when the big front went through after lunch.
The temperatures have plummeted, and the tell-tale speckled cloud that we love so much is visible on the radar, and satellite meaning more snow is definitely on its way.
I will keep this post updated as I hear more from the hill, particularly to do with which lifts/runs we can expect for the weekend.
UPDATE: June 6th at 6pm
Lorraine Lock has posted a fantastic blog update on snow-blind:
Click here for the gallery with over 20 photos taken this afternoon during a brief clearing.
Thanks Lorraine! You can also Like snow-blind on Facebook.
PREVIOUS POST: June 6th at 8am
Just a quick post to get this week underway.
Looks like the resorts received a modest snowfall overnight, doesn’t look like more than 10cm anywhere, accompanied by cold temperatures. Snowmaking should be proceeding at full swing, given the current temps at approx -5c.
Looking at the Mountainwatch Streaming Cam it would seem that there’s snowmaking on lower LBS. It’s too foggy to see the top half of Bourke St, let alone Baldy, Shakey or Summit.
Not a huge amount of new snow is forecast today, but a second front is due to arrive tonight into tomorrow bringing more significant snow through Thursday. Among others, The Frog is particularly excited.
Stay tuned as I will keep updating this post as more information arrives. If you have anything to add please use the comments below:
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