Snowmaking has begun for 2017-18

Wow. Who needs snowmaking?

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Wouldn't you think Loveland/A-Basin might be close to opening since they have already blown some snow before this storm and rate to blow more in the cool air that will surely ensue? But both areas still have stale spring reports on their snow report pages. For A-Basin, Al's Blog is current but no mention of when opening is likely to be. Perhaps 10 inches of Colorado fluff is still just a drop in the bucket in terms of advancing anyone's opening date. Past history indicates that snow before Oct. 15 is nearly always irrelevant to the upcoming season. Snow before Nov. 1 is usually irrelevant unless there's a lot of it as in 2004-05 in CA and UT.
 
I think it's somewhat wet snow (even at altitude), and thus might be able to help them open sooner, but by itself probably will not be quite enough. They are not providing much of any updates because of power & internet outages. You'll note that Abasin for example has gotten only one web cam working so far this morning (all of them went offline at like 2am). I know I70 shut briefly at some point last evening too.

As you note, this is very early season for such a snowfall. While it will warm up, right now I only see two days of warmish temps in the 10 day (the weekend). I know the N facing stuff is already holding snow OK from the, thus far, minimal snowmaking that had been done. So it'll be the flats and non-N facing stuff that will be the biggest issue.
 
Seems extremely likely that opening day in Colorado will be somewhere in the Oct 11-14th range at this point. Warm weekend followed by coldest air of the season and cold overnights all next week. So, depends on just how cold and just how long into the mornings it stays cold.

Loveland finally finished with the very top of Chair 1 and grooming it out. Still a lot of snow for them needed on the long flat run-out at the bottom of the chair. A-basin looks a touch behind as to being able to start grooming anywhere, but has a MUCH shorter total run to make snow on that they could (and likely will) still win the race.

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