Ski Condition Consolidators - bad info this year

[billski]

I've noticed an erratic inconsistency in the numbers the ski report consolidators are reporting this year. I usually use snocountry.com, which seems to be feeding many web outlets.

For example, today, snocountry shows 12" for kmart, while the kmart web site shows 1".
Okemo: 5" versus 0-1"
some like Smuggs they get right 4" versus 4"

I see this often, and I'm not talking an inch or two difference. It also isn't stale data, I've been tracking that.
http://www.snocountry.com/snowclient/srlist.php?state=VT&command=statecond&satype=NA_Alpine
It's not a timing issue: I not only watch the time/date stamps, but contrast it against day-ago numbers. So it's not like they are dragging yesterday's numbers. I wonder if they are confusing the last 24, last 48, last week's numbers? Anyone have any insights over there?


Also, on rsn.com I like the day-to-day accumulation chart, but that seems fed by the same data and is consistently incorrect.
http://www.rsn.com/Resorts/Killington/Weather_Conditions
On rsn.com it seems like squirrels run the feed manually, since there are no updates on the weekend. I'm using Kmart as an example, but I've seen it consistently wrong for Jay, Stowe, Bush, MRG and even Suicide, which are the ones I watch closely.

Have I been sniffing too much pow? What's going on here?

 

[ERJ-145CA]

SnoCountry and weather.com don't even show my home mountain, Hidden Valley in NJ, as open, OnTheSnow has an accurate report though. These inaccurate reports could hurt the ski area I would imagine.

 

[billski]

I really started to notice this when I loaded the snocountry applet onto my itouch. It really jumps out there as wrong.
I sent snocountry a message, but don't expect a speedy response.

 

[freezorburn]

SnoCountry and weather.com don't even show my home mountain, Hidden Valley in NJ, as open, OnTheSnow has an accurate report though. These inaccurate reports could hurt the ski area I would imagine.

Ah yes Hidden Valley an great little NJ gem. I learned to ski on Chicken Delight and learned to jump on Qurly Cue.

Any new chairs they still have 2 a double and a tripple to the top? Do you still have to be a member to ski there? My home mountain is Bromley now it's just like Hidden on seroids.

 

[ERJ-145CA]

Same lifts, new owners as of last season, no membership needed this season but next season you will have to be a member to ski there on weekends and holidays.

 

[SnoCountry Dot Com]

VT and NJ issues

Good afternoon. Bill, I wrote you back and sorry for the errors with today's new snow in VT. As much as computers help and are a part of what we do, those were human errors this morning and have been corrected. I also notified Greg here at AZ to pull a current update so this site reflects the changes.

NJ question. Hidden Valley notoriously never updates our system to stay current. After several days of a resort not updating, we stop listing them for the sake of not showing old content. I did however pull a fresh report from their web site this afternoon and re-activated them, so you should see them just fine. I will also drop them a line about reporting more often so this doesn't happen again.

I joined this forum because we've worked with AZ for many years and wanted to let you know we're skiers and riders as well and do our best to stay on top of conditions. I'll never guarantee you'll be 100% satisfied, but trust me we're doing our best and I hope you still keep using SnoCountry and Alpine Zone for your online needs.

Thanks,

Andy Davis

 

[billski]

Yo Andy!
Thanks for the note and welcome! It looks like Okemo was fixed too. I really like you site (and AZ's site), I check it daily during the season. It helps me figure out where the sweet skiing spot will be, especially since mountain precip is not readily obtainable from weather sources.

I guess it would behoove customers of Hidden Valley to give them a call and rag on them for not keeping things up to date. I always believed it was the resort that "pushed' data at you, and so it seems you have confirmed that.

Do you do that charts for rsn.com or does rsn.com generate those?

Where do you ski?
Thanks again,
Bill

Good afternoon. Bill, I wrote you back and sorry for the errors with today's new snow in VT. As much as computers help and are a part of what we do, those were human errors this morning and have been corrected. I also notified Greg here at AZ to pull a current update so this site reflects the changes.

NJ question. Hidden Valley notoriously never updates our system to stay current. After several days of a resort not updating, we stop listing them for the sake of not showing old content. I did however pull a fresh report from their web site this afternoon and re-activated them, so you should see them just fine. I will also drop them a line about reporting more often so this doesn't happen again.

I joined this forum because we've worked with AZ for many years and wanted to let you know we're skiers and riders as well and do our best to stay on top of conditions. I'll never guarantee you'll be 100% satisfied, but trust me we're doing our best and I hope you still keep using SnoCountry and Alpine Zone for your online needs.

Thanks,

Andy Davis

 

[Greg]

Good afternoon. Bill, I wrote you back and sorry for the errors with today's new snow in VT. As much as computers help and are a part of what we do, those were human errors this morning and have been corrected. I also notified Greg here at AZ to pull a current update so this site reflects the changes.

NJ question. Hidden Valley notoriously never updates our system to stay current. After several days of a resort not updating, we stop listing them for the sake of not showing old content. I did however pull a fresh report from their web site this afternoon and re-activated them, so you should see them just fine. I will also drop them a line about reporting more often so this doesn't happen again.

I joined this forum because we've worked with AZ for many years and wanted to let you know we're skiers and riders as well and do our best to stay on top of conditions. I'll never guarantee you'll be 100% satisfied, but trust me we're doing our best and I hope you still keep using SnoCountry and Alpine Zone for your online needs.

Thanks,

Andy Davis

Thanks for notifying me, Andy. I updated Killington's total manually.

 

[SnoCountry Dot Com]

Bill,
--ERJ-145CA isn't the only one asking for Hidden Valley. We had the same issue last week for the New York Times missing info for them. I did leave a message for them today and hope for better results.
--You're right. We rely heavily on the nearly 1000 resorts to report their conditions to us in a timely fashion. Some resorts are fantastic about daily accurate reporting and some are not. We do try to set aside some time each day to track down conditions ourselves for those not reporting, but it doesn't always work out the way.
--The RSN charts are something they do, but by looking at it they just archive what we send and make a chart out of it.
--Our office is in Lebanon NH and I also work in our radio division for our 450 radio station network. So, I'm up at 3 AM, which allows plenty of afternoon skiing at Dartmouth, S6, Sunapee, Okemo, Killington, Whaleback. Weekends I try to get a little further away from home to mix it up a little, but with two young daughters there are limitations!

Nice chatting with you guys!

AD

Yo Andy!
Thanks for the note and welcome! It looks like Okemo was fixed too. I really like you site (and AZ's site), I check it daily during the season. It helps me figure out where the sweet skiing spot will be, especially since mountain precip is not readily obtainable from weather sources.

I guess it would behoove customers of Hidden Valley to give them a call and rag on them for not keeping things up to date. I always believed it was the resort that "pushed' data at you, and so it seems you have confirmed that.

Do you do that charts for rsn.com or does rsn.com generate those?

Where do you ski?
Thanks again,
Bill

 

[ERJ-145CA]

Good afternoon. Bill, I wrote you back and sorry for the errors with today's new snow in VT. As much as computers help and are a part of what we do, those were human errors this morning and have been corrected. I also notified Greg here at AZ to pull a current update so this site reflects the changes.

NJ question. Hidden Valley notoriously never updates our system to stay current. After several days of a resort not updating, we stop listing them for the sake of not showing old content. I did however pull a fresh report from their web site this afternoon and re-activated them, so you should see them just fine. I will also drop them a line about reporting more often so this doesn't happen again.

I joined this forum because we've worked with AZ for many years and wanted to let you know we're skiers and riders as well and do our best to stay on top of conditions. I'll never guarantee you'll be 100% satisfied, but trust me we're doing our best and I hope you still keep using SnoCountry and Alpine Zone for your online needs.

Thanks,

Andy Davis

Thanks for the info Andy.

 

[Chesser]

That's good stuff, Andy. Thanks for replying. It's surprising that someone on your end manually takes the data ski areas report and updates your site. I imagine that's quite a bit of work to do every morning.

 

[ctenidae]

Andy rawks.

 

[Chesser]

While we're talking about how SnoCountry gathers data, I have another question for Andy: does SnoCountry make an effort to verify data, or judge the accuracy of the numbers ski area's report? If a mountain is claiming snow totals that are well outside of what other resorts in the area are reporting, will that raise an eyebrow with you guys?

Here's a hypothetical situation: say it's the Saturday of the MLK Holiday weekend and a cold blast has depressed numbers at all ski areas. A mountain, let's call it "Stowe" wants to drive some business their way, and so they try to make conditions look better than reality. To do this, they (hypothetically) claim that they've received 4-5" of new snow in the previous 48 hours as of 6am Saturday morning (and again as of 12:30 pm, and still again when I checked just now at 8pm). No other spot in Vermont picked up more than a dusting of snow in the previous 4 days or so, and no other nearby ski area is claiming more than that. Unless they benefited from a meteorological oddity, they've quite plainly tacked an fictional 5" on to their report. Does SnoCountry call them on this obvious lie, or just roll with it? Hypothetically.

 

[tcharron]

SnoCountry and weather.com don't even show my home mountain, Hidden Valley in NJ, as open.

Maybe if it wasn't hidden....

 

[ERJ-145CA]

Maybe if it wasn't hidden....

That's why I never have to wait in a lift line.

 

[CosmicDownhill]

That's a great question Chesser. I hope Andy replies.

 

[BeanoNYC]

I get text messages from Rezorter on any new snow during the week plus every weekend day. I'm subscribed to get a text message for pretty much every heavy hitter in VT, plus Hunter, Windham and Bellayere.