Mike Brookins
Mike Brookins is a meteorologist for CNY Central.
Read more: Local, Environment, Weather, Entertainment, Outdoors, Tourism, Sports, Ski, Report, January, Thaw, Utah, Trip, Snow, Race, Fun, Ski Central09
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January thaw is defined as an observed but unexplained temperature rise in mid-winter which melts snow and ice. Most, but not all years we see this phenomenon here in Central New York. This year we did and to put it frankly, it stinks. After heavy and hard hitting snows earlier this month which opened up the mountains to near or close to 100%, conditions are back to good instead of great. Still plenty of snow on the trails and with the great grooming done at resorts, surfaces should turn around nicely by mid-week.
I am fresh back from a whirl wind tour of Utah ski resorts. I skied 4 mountains in 4 days and by the end my legs were limp. My ski buddies and I choose to ski Utah for the second straight winter for three main reasons. Number one is the price. Airfare to Salt Lake City on par with other mountain or west coast areas, but lodging can be gotten for a lot less money, thanks to most of the ski resorts being a short drive from the city. All most all of them are 30 minutes from the airport. We saved a bundle by commuting to the ski areas each day. Lodging close to the resorts comes at a premium. And that leads to reason number two, how quickly you can be on the mountains. With a short get away of 4 nights, I didn’t want to spend another 3 or 4 hours after landing at the airport to get to the ski areas. Lastly we choose here because it has the greatest snow on earth. That is the saying around Utah. And they get tons of snow, much more than even around here on the Tug Hill. Last winter a couple resorts had over 600” of snow for the season. Funny thing is both this and last year we hardly received any snow while out there. There were huge snow bases, upwards of 60 inches deep, but little of their famous light powder. That was OK though. I probably wouldn’t ski very well in 24” of powder, not to mention my skis are not made for powder skiing. And a large part of their snow comes from lake effect off of the Great Salt Lake. We can relate to that stuff around here! I skied Alta, Snowbird, the Canyons, and Park City in that order. I’ll go deeper into each ski area and share some pictures of them over the next four weeks.
There is a fun celebrity ski and board race coming up next month that I wanted to let everyone know about. Save The Peaks will be held at Labrador Mountain on Saturday February 20th from noon until 2:30. The same day as Labfest which is held every year at the mountain and is a blast with lots of people and things to do. The race benefits a very worth while cause, the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund of CNY. And yours truly will be participating, along with fellow meteorologist Matt Stevens. It is a NASTAR format race with television and radio celebrities from around Central New York teaming up with ski patrollers, instructors, cancer survivors and people who want to raise some money while having good old fashion fun. There is still time for anyone to get involved and register. Details can be found at Labrador’s web site labradormtn.com.
Let me know how your recent trip to a local ski area has gone. Just post a comment right below this Blog about your trip so other readers can hear about it. Better yet, take a digital picture and shoot it my way via email at mbrookins@CNYcentral.com. I might show it on the WSTM NBC-3 Television ski report next week! Happy trails…
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