UPDATE: Sun 7th 2pm:
After a slow start this morning I finally got out around 11am – the view out the window wasn’t terribly appealing when my alarm went off so I decided a few more hours sleep was on the cards.
The skiing wasn’t at all inspiring, but the good news was that it started snowing heavily at about 1pm. We have received 2-3cm in the last hour and the radar looks particularly promising.
Jane’s Weather is showing the potential in the next few days, however due to the complex nature of this low the outcomes are difficult to predict.
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Sat 6th 4pm: There’s no way to sugar coat this – the weather has not been kind to the snow this week. Extremely warm temperatures and winds have had the ‘hair dryer’ effect and melted a huge amount of snow. Much of the natural snow is now gone and we are almost back to snowmaking areas. Fast One is pretty much the only run open on 100% natural snow. Crazy considering last week I was skiing Powder Keg, Sun Valley, Cow Camp and Hog’s Back.
To add insult to injury it rained for much of the drive up last night and was very wet when we arrived on the mountain. However it turned to sleet and then snow around 9:30pm. I went to bed slightly hopeful but with little faith – it was snowing again when I woke up but looked to have remained dry for most of the night.
So with the heavy snow falling I went out relatively optimistic. It was obvious that a huge amount of snow had melted but a few centimetres of fresh on top was heartening. However halfway down Little Buller Spur on my first run the little hope I had was literally dampened when it turned to rain. It was only snowing on the top half which made for a very wet lift ride. 2 runs there and that was enough, headed into Koflers which was a Zoo. Did a few more runs around Fast One, Family, Wombat & Shakey Knees. It was the same story everywhere – fresh wet snow up high but rain affected snow down below.
It’s still snowing now at the village but I doubt very much whether it will be snowing down to the base of the lifts. The temperature has been hovering around freezing since 9pm last night.
Jane’s Weather is confident of a lowering snow line tonight into tomorrow and Monday, with a moderately optimistic amount of snow forecast.
Seasoned Aussie skiers will know that it always gets worse before it gets better, so hopefully this is the lowest ebb before we head back into positive territory. I can think of years like 2002 and 2009 where the season didn’t improve during August, but I can think of many more that did, so hopefully things will turn around, but of course we never really know.
