Tony Crocker":b809u39l said:Deja vu with the demise of the Epic Ski Forum in May 2017, and with the same assassin!
That would be Vail. Mountain News Corp is/was a wholly owned subsidiary of Vail Resorts. When Vail bought the Epic Forum in 2012 for its URL, it was put under the umbrella of Mountain News Corp, where it survived 3 more years under benign neglect. But when Epic Forum's software platform lost support, Vail wasn't willing to spend the $$$ to migrate it to a new platform and thus killed it.
OnTheSnow did have useful information. It collected daily snowfall on an automated basis and was useful in that regard in-season if direct reporting from a ski area was missing.
Obviously in the current environment, Vail is looking to slash costs, particularly those without a direct contribution to the bottom line. So a general ski news outlet is an unfortunate casualty. But there's some karma here. No one at Mountain News Corp lifted a finger to save the Epic Ski Forum or even its archives.
I don't know what "skiinfo" is. I'm quite sure it has nothing to do with the extremely comprehensive skiresort.info, which James and I used to expand the Worldwide Ski Map Google Earth file.
Chance Keso Sr. News Producer, North America |
OpenSnow does posts snowfall stats globally, but of course they are collected on some automated basis, with no curation for accuracy.
OpenSnow wildly overstated South America in 2024, discrepancies vs. ski area websites:
Portillo website 261, OpenSnow 423
Valle Nevado website 273, OpenSnow 361
I'm sure Chillan got a lot of snow in 2024 but OpenSnow alleges 687 inches!
I don't recall specifics but last winter in the Alps some of the OpenSnow numbers during the big early season looked reasonable and others not so much.
In North America I actually use OpenSnow snowfall numbers for in-season Progress Reports for a very few areas that do not post running totals on their websites. For data collection in May/June I insist on the horse's mouth.
Could be, I've heard that about https://www.snow-forecast.com/.I am not sure if they are just utilizing their model.