"Liberty Mountain, when's the snow coming?"

It's a question that's on the minds of many. The anxiousness and excitement for the start of the snow guns and a new winter season are continuing to fill our emails, phoneroom and Facebook wall. We talked about these feelings for snow and opening day in our last blog post, and the wonderment remains. Naturally, the anxiousness and excitement are still here. So again we, along with many others, ask, when is opening day?

Before we can try to answer "When is opening day?", we first need to answer "When can we make snow?" There's no opening day or winter season without snow, so we need that fluffy white stuff, and we need a lot of it!

As you all probably know, making snow depends heavily on the cold temperatures (wet bulb temperature to be exact) and the length of time such temps stick around. Cold temps could sweep the area two nights in a row, but if that's followed by a couple warm days with 50 degree temps, especially in the beginng of snowmaking stages, snowmaking opportunities are unfortunately lost. Sometimes the cold temps don't appear on the thermometer until 4 or 5 in the morning, leaving no time to produce snow before the warmer temps arrive for that day. Of course natural snow is always welcomed when trying to blanket the mountain, but is that predicted to arrive anytime soon? And more importantly, is it predicted to stick around?

"Meteorologist Madness", as they like to call it over at Accuweather, is building excitement on Accuweather.com. The meteorologists are gearing up for the snow and rain storms around the U.S. that are marking the beginning of the winter season. Meteorologist Henry Margusity posted a snow potential map for the U.S. yesterday. Here's what he's seeing for this weekend:

So is Carroll Valley and Liberty Mountain included in that little piece of blue that is brushing the southeastern corner of PA? It looks pretty darn close.

Henry Margusity also posted a video this week discussing his predictions for snow for this weekend. Towards the four minute mark of the video, he does say that the Philadelphia area could get 3 inches of snow this weekend. About 20 seconds later he says that the "snow lovers" of Baltimore and Washington, D.C. could see 1-3 inches as well. He finished his video with a few quotes - "I got a feeling the big ones are coming!", referring to the larger amounts of snow that will hit us sometime this winter season, and "Winter is here and winter is here to stay." Both are comforting remarks as we descend upon another ski season. Check out Henry's video by clicking on the picture below.

While Accuweather gives us hope that some natural snow may fall on our mountain this weekend, what are they saying about cold temperatures? Cold temps = snowmaking. Here's what Accuweather predicts for the next ten days (just click on the images to visit the website)...

That may be a lot of weather talk to digest, but it's what's on all our computer screens here at Liberty. We are just as anxious and excited about the approaching season as you are so we want to get the snow guns going soon, but when it's most beneficial to the mountain. As forecasts change, we'll be better able to predict snowmaking and an opening day sometime in the near future. Keep watching for updates and announcements at skiliberty.com.