Latest from Buller

So I just got off the phone to a friend up on the hill to get the latest on the conditions. Not too pretty I’m afraid.

Torrential rain from about 2am, but I think we knew that. It washed away a decent proportion of the natural snow.

Skiing was reduced to BB1 and the Carpet, Holden and Emirates were not open. Unfortunately looking at the Mountainwatch cam this morning you could see that there was visibly less snow on Lower LBS, so it will take a pretty decent natural fall and/or snowmaking to open the run, which I would imagine is particularly unlikely for the weekend.

Regrettably the rain also undermined the base on Bourke St and footsteps were breaking through to the grass.

At about 11am a hail/thunderstorm came in, and the snow properly started at 12:30pm. It snowed heavily for an hour, then eased, then came back in at about 3pm. At this stage the village looks white and there are a few cm on the ground, but it is still a nett loss.

Looking at the Forecast/Charts I can’t see a huge amount more falling, so fingers crossed for cold temperatures so the snowmakers can start to rebuild.

So unfortunately I think that solves my issue of whether to head up on the weekend, looks like I will be cheering on the Mighty Bombers at the G tomorrow night over a beer or 10. See you in the Frank Grey Smith! Pity, I’d far prefer to be at Grimus and skiing LBS on Saturday morning. Oh well.

I’ll update this if I hear more from the hill.

UPDATE:

Just got this message from a local @ 9:20pm:

It has been snowin pretty solid for the last 45min or so. Still would be at a net loss, but the grass we could see around our lodge is def gone and there is about 5-10cm on the steps of the lodge. I can’t hear snow makers though, so must be a bit wet. The report this morning was over night we lost baldy.

Wish last night didn’t happen, but at least it’s heading back in the right direction.

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