How do snow reporting websites get updated?

[zinger3000]

There are a bunch of websites out there that have snow and trail reports (snocountry.com, onthesnow.com, etc.) Lots of TV stations have reports both on their websites and their broadcasts. How do they all get this information? Is it up to the snow reporting websites to contact the ski area to get this info? Or is it the other way around, with the ski area sending out the info? With all the websites that have snow reports, it would seem like a lot of work to get the information out there to so many sources.

 

[Nick]

We just switched here from Snocountry to Onthesnow. (Primarily b/c of cost). I'm not sure how they get their info, but we finally have everything updated with the exception of the map.

you can check snow conditions by resort profile

or check all snow conditions in a given state right away.

The downside on our switch was that we lost "Number of Trails Open". They have that info, but suffice it to say it's prohibitively expensive to sign up for that service. Like, way into the 4 figures on an annual basis.

 

[threecy]

There are a bunch of websites out there that have snow and trail reports (snocountry.com, onthesnow.com, etc.) Lots of TV stations have reports both on their websites and their broadcasts. How do they all get this information? Is it up to the snow reporting websites to contact the ski area to get this info? Or is it the other way around, with the ski area sending out the info? With all the websites that have snow reports, it would seem like a lot of work to get the information out there to so many sources.

SnoCountry (NESAC) I believe is a pay service (not sure if that's still the case to be featured, but to be pushed in a market, there are various fees).

Each member ski area is to submit a conditions report (online interface, fax, or phone...not sure if the latter still exists) with required fields, every 24 hours, when in operation.

SnoCountry then pushes these reports to its web site, newspaper snow reports, radio reports, etc.

 

[Nick]

I guess for them the incentive is free marketing, they get to expose their information to everyone who consumes the information (like AlpineZone)

 

[nashuaskibum]

SnoCountry is to elements, there is the conditions that you find on their webpage that you update on a daily-ish basis. Then there another service on their end where you go and submit your daily (PDF format) snow-report that gets it ditribution through email and fax, to ski shops, lodging partners, etc.

Some websites then either pull from SnoCountry or they are on your fax/email list. So if you are then part of a broadcasting group that does snow-reports they either pull it off your site, or off the faxed SnoCountry report.

Most of it is done on the Resort side of it though. So for like SnoCountry website side of it will auto regenerate the next day with whatever your last report was, and then pull what it thinks the weather will be from it's own source. So if there is no major changes and it has our current weather we don't really have to update it on a daily basis.

If you got any other questions on it feel free to ask, I'm just learning it all this season myself.