Drought?

[bigbob]

Didn't Les Otten try and build a large snowmaking pond years ago and the locals shot him down. That's when he decided to cut and run and sold it for small dollars?

 

[machski]

Didn't Les Otten try and build a large snowmaking pond years ago and the locals shot him down. That's when he decided to cut and run and sold it for small dollars?

I think he cut and ran after the locals shot down his Hotel plans at South. He had just done the retainer reservoir off the river, it was new and hadn't filled with silt and sediment yet. Don't recall him have further pond plans imminently anyway.

 

[tumbler]

The pond was permitted to be deeper but was never excavated to that depth when originally built and after the flood of 98 and Irene. ASC sold it when the company was worthless and had to liquidate all the assets in 2001. Les changed the place for sure and made it possible for Win's group to keep building and improving even with the deferred maintenance they inherited.

 

[MandyJames]

I see much of the Northeast is in a pretty nasty drought. I see rain Monday/Tuesday for you guys then bone dry after that. I remember some pretty dry summers but the rain would always come again in September/October before ski season. Hopefully this dry spell does not go too far into the fall.

Any talk of snowmaking ponds drying up? Or rivers below the necessary flow rate to draw from?

Out here we've actually had some pretty good drought improvement, mostly in AZ and New Mexico but there's been marginal improvement in Utah. Lake Mead has actually seen a pretty dramatic rise in its water level https://www.8newsnow.com/news/local-news/why-lake-mead-continues-to-rise-while-lake-powell-falls/

This is a great question. Last year, almost all of New England had a relatively dry summer. In fact for most of the summer, there were a lot of days with no precipitation. However, something interesting happened in October - it started to rain very hard in mid-October, and it didn't stop for about a week. And much of this rain fell in the middle of the night, so a lot of people woke up to the sound of rain. We had a couple of meters of rain in that week, and it helped fill up all of the reservoirs that were low. And we even had some snow during that period, which helped with the snow pack in the mountains. So, there was a lot of rain, but most of it only fell in a very short period of time. This was a very unusual pattern, and this October was a lot like that. So, I don't think that means that we can expect the same thing next year. I think that the snowpack probably won't end up being as low as last year, but it is still early. If we end up having a *very* dry winter and spring, then it could get a little dicey for water resources for the ski resorts.