From The Denver Post (Jesse Paul):
October has been one of the warmest on record in Denver and temperatures around the state over the past several weeks have felt more appropriate for outdoor lounging than snow sports.
So as November begins with the promise of more above-average heat in the forecast, should Colorado’s skiers and snowboarders worry?
“It’s not time to panic just yet,” said Joel Gratz, founding meteorologist of OpenSnow, a website that tracks conditions on the slopes. “Even though we have very little snow, there’s not a very strong correlation with how the ski conditions will be toward the end of December.”
However, Gratz said, anyone looking to make early season turns might need to be patient because he predicts possible delayed opening days and limited coverage on open slopes. While Arapahoe Basin kicked off skiing and snowboarding in Colorado and North America on Oct. 21, other areas are waiting for the weather to start cooperating.
Wolf Creek Ski Area in southwest Colorado says it won’t open as planned on Friday. And Keystone Resort — also slated to open on Friday but facing a dearth of snow because of the warm temperatures — says it will make a decision in the next day or two about how to proceed.
“We’re going to cool down a little bit during the middle of (this) week, so there might be a little more high elevation snowmaking,” Gratz said Monday. “But I don’t see super cold weather coming and I don’t see around-the-clock snowmaking this week and potentially not the next week as well.”
Loveland Ski Area, which typically opens in mid-October, still had no set opening day as of Monday morning.
“We’re just waiting on Mother Nature to bring those cold temps back,” said John Sellers, Loveland’s marketing director.
Loveland began making snow on Oct. 3, but since then Mother Nature hasn’t made things easy. The good news, Sellers said, is the ski area has completed most of the work required to get its first run open, meaning a few more cold nights is all that’s needed to get the season kicked off.
Sellers said the goal is always to start getting skiers and snowboarders on the slopes as soon as possible. Last year, Loveland opened on Oct. 29…
Jim Kalina, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Boulder, says there won’t be any major cool-off in the near future and that the Climate Prediction Center is calling for above-normal temperatures through November.