2010-11: The Greatest Natural Snow Year of Our Lifetimes?

[Patrick]

I was leaning towards "The Greatest Snow Year of Our Lifetimes in North America except Quebec* "

*And maybe, possibly the tiny at best mole hills of Ontario; but we're not sure on those cause, well why would we check on those?

Sorry Partick, but your fighting a losing argument here IMO.

Geoff and Riverc0il which spend their season here also seem to disagree with the East numbers. JSpin hasn't written in a while, so weren't sure what he would say. The only regular Eastern poster to agree is Rfarren which lives in NYC (that got hit) and ski often out West (no need for apologies needed).

[Patrick]

and dream about NEXT ski season?

The season is NEVER OVER (Skidog TM) !!!

[Marc_C]

My suggestion is that Patrick and Tony spend more time in the outdoors during the non-ski season instead of burning 1's and 0's over what has become a fairly ridiculous argument. But it is kinda amusing watching from the cheap seats.

That is why you spend so much time here in the Winter time?

Let's see.....spending time on a *ski* forum in the winter? Yep, that just seems crazy.

[Marc_C]

So, in other words, b/c the snow in your particular backyard wasn't as deep as you had hoped, then the claim that it's the best snowfall year across North America as a whole is invalid?

Uh, ok. That makes sense. Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?

1) Methodology. Tony's number aren't representative of Canada.
2) Backyard? Have you looked at a map recently? Are you totally clueless? Tony has ONE area reporting 92% in an area (Ontario and Quebec) which is more than 5 times bigger than California. He's claiming The Greatest Snow Year of Our Lifetimes. Maybe in California or out West...

Perhaps we just don't care all that much about Ontario and Quebec.

[Patrick]

Perhaps we just don't care all that much about Ontario and Quebec.

You're right...it's a terrible place. Nothing to do and nothing to see.

[Marc_C]

Perhaps we just don't care all that much about Ontario and Quebec.

You're right...it's a terrible place. Nothing to do and nothing to see.

Yep. Nothing but strip malls and urban sprawl, except for the vast stretches of emptiness. Just like Utah, but not as brown and barren.

[Mike Bernstein]

1) Methodology. Tony's number aren't representative of Canada.
2) Backyard? Have you looked at a map recently? Are you totally clueless? Tony has ONE area reporting 92% in an area (Ontario and Quebec) which is more than 5 times bigger than California. He's claiming The Greatest Snow Year of Our Lifetimes. Maybe in California or out West...I'm not the one to judge that as I don't fellow years after years of snow data.

1) Tony's numbers are representative for Western Canada which, let's face it, is where the majority of visits and acreage is.

2) Wait - Ontario and Quebec are fives times bigger in terms of area? It's surely not in skier visits or available acreage, which quitw frankly are the only stats that matter here. I heard Greenland had a crappy snow year too - you might want to hurry up get on the case, Patrick! It's scandalous!


Nothing you've written - literally nothing at all - punctures a hole in the case that, across the continent as a whole, 2010-2011 was the best snow year on record. Just like real estate, everything is local, so that doesn't have to mean it was a great year in your backyard. But for the ski areas representing the VAST majority of skier vists, that answer is unquestionably "yes". It's stunning you can't see how flawed your logic is here.

[Mike Bernstein]

I was leaning towards "The Greatest Snow Year of Our Lifetimes in North America except Quebec* "

*And maybe, possibly the tiny at best mole hills of Ontario; but we're not sure on those cause, well why would we check on those?

Sorry Partick, but your fighting a losing argument here IMO.

Geoff and Riverc0il which spend their season here also seem to disagree with the East numbers. JSpin hasn't written in a while, so weren't sure what he would say. The only regular Eastern poster to agree is Rfarren which lives in NYC (that got hit) and ski often out West (no need for apologies needed).

No - they don't disagree with the East numbers. You are COMPLETELY misrepresenting and/or misunderstanding what they are pushing back on. They have provided a qualitative narrative that, overall, it wasn't a great year in the East, particularly for the March-April period. Neither of them have disputed Tony's contention that it was an avg snowfall year in the Northeast. If Tony neglected to include parts of Eastern Canada, representing well under 10% of skier visits/terrain, you're just going to have to stew on that all summer. Where Tony sometimes goes astray is in taking the leap from his quantitative perspective and assuming that, for dramatically different skiing regions/cultures/climates, statistical relationships hold no matter what.

That said, note that Tony didn't make the claim that it was the "Best Ski Season in Our Lifetimes" or something like that. that could much more easily be argued against b/c it's a qualitative assessment rather than quantitative.

[Patrick]

They have provided a qualitative narrative that, overall, it wasn't a great year in the East, particularly for the March-April period.

Yes, Tony is the numbers guy. I also deal with numbers for a living.

1) Methodology. Tony's number aren't representative of Canada.
2) Backyard? Have you looked at a map recently? Are you totally clueless? Tony has ONE area reporting 92% in an area (Ontario and Quebec) which is more than 5 times bigger than California. He's claiming The Greatest Snow Year of Our Lifetimes. Maybe in California or out West...I'm not the one to judge that as I don't fellow years after years of snow data.

1) Tony's numbers are representative for Western Canada which, let's face it, is where the majority of visits and acreage is.

2) Wait - Ontario and Quebec are fives times bigger in terms of area? It's surely not in skier visits or available acreage, which quitw frankly are the only stats that matter here.

2) Wait - Ontario and Quebec are fives times bigger in terms of area? It's surely not in skier visits or available acreage, which quitw frankly are the only stats that matter here.

Wrong on the skier visits side.

The Quebec skier-visits are actually bigger than BC. QC visits are slightly than 4 Western Provinces together. Eastern Canada visits versus Western Canada were 29% greater.

Nothing you've written - literally nothing at all - punctures a hole in the case that, across the continent as a whole, 2010-2011 was the best snow year on record.

I would agree to across the US as a whole, 2010-2011 was the one best snow year at ski areas on record.

OR

to across in the sample of ski areas mostly concentrated in US, 2010-2011 was the one best snow year at ski areas on record.

Nothing you've written - literally nothing at all - punctures a hole in the case that, across the continent as a whole, 2010-2011 was the best snow year on record.

If that is the title, Tony's case and assumptions would go down in flames under serious peer review.

[Tony Crocker]

1) Methodology. Tony's number aren't representative of Canada.

My data from western Canada is probably as good as from the western U.S. in relation to ski areas, acreage, skier visits, etc. Snowfall was huge (~140+%) in coastal B.C. which gets ~3.5 million skier visits and 122% in Alberta and the rest of B.C. (4.8 million skier visits and the largest region of my 8 overall by acreage).

I would agree to across the US as a whole, 2010-2011 was the one best snow year at ski areas on record.
OR
to across in the sample of ski areas mostly concentrated in US, 2010-2011 was the one best snow year at ski areas on record.

No I don't think the data is U.S. centric at all; Canada overall had a season as strong as the U.S. did. If you added in all of Canada to Kottke and used their methodology weighted by skier visits, I would strongly expect the same conclusion.

I've been through the rest of EMSC's list of 300 areas (not complete but should be enough to be representative), and the Midwest, MASH and Southeast combined total 3% of U.S. skier acreage. Ontario and the prairies probably have similar relationship in Canada. For molehills (and even the mid-sized areas) that are nearly totally dependent upon snowmaking, I reiterate the point that they are not relevant to a discussion of snowfall, no matter how many skier visits they get. I'm sorry if Patrick is offended by his Ottawa locals falling into the "snowfall not relevant" category, but I suspect most would agree with me on this. Leslie Anthony (who is from eastern Canada) did in supervising the Powder article in 1995.

The major limitation in my calculations is for which areas can I obtain reliable data. That's one reason for defining by regions; some regions I have a lot of areas, others not so many. I originally defined the regions in terms of distinct climate zones, but it turns out the division is fairly equal in terms of ski terrain also. Within each region it's reasonable to ask if the data for the areas I have is representative for the region as a whole. This question was first asked for the known "bad" region New Mexico, and New Mexico carries a 1/48 weight in my "Best Natural Snow Year" overall figure. New Mexico averages 800K skier visits, and its acreage numbers are also somewhat under 2% of the overall total. A similar exercise gives Alaska (the other bad subregion) a ~1% weighting in the above 3 categories.

For the Quebec case, Patrick is correct that I only have one area Le Massif. Le Massif was 93% this year, which is not that far off the 102% for the Northeast as a whole. The townships are almost certainly close to the ~100% of their Northern Vermont neighbors. So I don't think "102% for the Northeast" distorts Quebec much at all in 2010-11 for the Quebec areas where snowfall matters.

With respect to the "weight by skier visits" controversy, it is certainly possible that a big snow year by my weighting or area size could be mediocre by skier visits. You would need a bad Northeast snow year combined with the heaviest snow in the Northwest, Northern Rockies and western Canada. But that's not what happened in 2010-11. Northeast wasn't bad, just average, and the highest snow regions were the ones #2 and #3 in skier visits. Kottke and I have both demonstrated this and the conclusion about 2010-11 remains the same when weighting by skier visits.

In terms of acreage or acreage + vertical (Quebec City/Charlevoix/Saguenay + Townships) is about 1/5 of (Vermont + New Hampshire + Maine). Since I typically get 10-11 areas reporting from the latter, I'd like to get a second one from Quebec, preferably one of the Townships. I've seen that large season total dataset from Sutton; I'd like to figure out a way to make that work.

My suggestion is that Patrick and Tony spend more time in the outdoors during the non-ski season instead of burning 1's and 0's over what has become a fairly ridiculous argument. But it is kinda amusing watching from the cheap seats.

I have to agree with Patrick here. While I do have outside summer pursuits, I definitely have more time to do research, crunch numbers and respond to threads like this in summer than in winter.

[Marc_C]

My suggestion is that Patrick and Tony spend more time in the outdoors during the non-ski season instead of burning 1's and 0's over what has become a fairly ridiculous argument. But it is kinda amusing watching from the cheap seats.

I have to agree with Patrick here. While I do have outside summer pursuits, I definitely have more time to do research, crunch numbers and respond to threads like this in summer than in winter.

Go for it, guys!
Just remember....in SnowDome.....two men enter, one man leaves.

[rfarren]

Ontario and Quebec...which is more than 5 times bigger than California.

and has 1/5 of the skiable acreage. Come on dude... stop bitching about measly 200 ft vt mole hills not getting enough snow so that backyard ski race groups don't have to worry about falling and bruising themselves.

BTW, the Daks are not part of the appalachia... any geologist will tell you that... their proximity could be confusing, but, as the daks are actually a growing mountain chain they are clearly not part of the appalachian chain. The appalachian chain through NY is represented by the catskills and the daks are due north. Therefore your statement that everything north of the appalachia was below average is wrong.

[rfarren]

They have provided a qualitative narrative that, overall, it wasn't a great year in the East, particularly for the March-April period.

For the record, their complaint was that it was too cold, and therefore the snow didn't corn to their liking. That to me only supports Tony's hypothesis. Frankly, if it was too cold up north, they could've easily remedied that situation with a 2 hour drive south, and then waited for things to warm up. I watched this spring closely as I planned to get more skiing in April after my western excursion. Money held me back, but weather most definitely did not.

[Geoff]

They have provided a qualitative narrative that, overall, it wasn't a great year in the East, particularly for the March-April period.

For the record, their complaint was that it was too cold, and therefore the snow didn't corn to their liking. That to me only supports Tony's hypothesis. Frankly, if it was too warm up north, they could've easily remedied that situation with a 2 hour drive south, and then waited for things to warm up. I watched this spring closely as I planned to get more skiing in April after my western excursion. Money held me back, but weather most definitely did not.

Not really. I can get anywhere in Vermont in 2 hours other'n Jay Peak and Smuggs. Mount Snow didn't soften any more than Killington did. It was a very cold spring.

Tony has the western view that a cold spring is great because it preserves snow. That is probably true at high elevations in the west where you can find north-facing packed powder. In the east, cold weather in the spring is useless. What you want is a daily freeze-thaw that promotes corn snow development. You don't want daytime temps to be extreme in either direction.

Furthermore, snow in March & April is useless unless there is at least a foot of it and it comes down dry rather than as sludge. We've all had epic March & April powder days but 6" over refrozen spring surface is a reason to roll over and sleep another few hours.

I think Jay Peak got the 3 feet that Quebec saw in late-March when most of Vermont (as far north as Stowe) saw downpours. I do a lot of business in Sherbrooke, QC and they were digging out for several days. At places like Orford were below average until that big storm.

[Patrick]

Ontario and Quebec...which is more than 5 times bigger than California.

and has 1/5 of the skiable acreage. Come on dude... stop bitching about measly 200 ft vt mole hills not getting enough snow so that backyard ski race groups don't have to worry about falling and bruising themselves.

Racers like it better when it icy. Try meters instead of feet. Snow isn't only for Alpine skiers, great cross-country skiing locally...when it snows.

BTW, the Daks are not part of the appalachia... any geologist will tell you that.

I know, but as a geographical point of view...

The mountains are often included by geographers in the Appalachian Mountains, but they bear a greater geological similarity to the Laurentian Mountains of Canada.

Therefore your statement that everything north of the appalachia was below average is wrong.

You're clutching at straws here...okay...if you take regions north of the geographical definition of the Appalachian all the way to the North Pole, snow accumulation would be generally below average. Gaspe Peninsula is also part of the Appalachians and I believe they were under average also, so that might some small exception as inside the Appalachians.