Best source for weather

[ski diva]

A lot of ski people are weather junkies during the winter. I know I am. So what's your favorite source for weather?

I have two that I like quite a bit: Weather Underground , which I find gives quite a bit of detail and a pretty good forecast. And Best Ski Weather, which provides all kinds of info that skiers actually care about: snow depth, wind, temp, etc.

In Vermont, I also love the Vermont NPR weather, which is done by the Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury. A nice detailed forecast of the state.

Anyone have any other suggestions?

 

[SnowHot]

We use Intellicast
I like their radar options as well as the 10 day forcast lay out.
We find it very helpful with our business as well as our play.

 

[Jilly]

Even thought I'm a Canuck I use Intellcast for their radar. That is just great. As for the weather, we have 2 great options up here. Weather network.com is similar to your weather.com. They also have english and french TV stations. Also the government has a website and you can call up just about anywhere in Canada. For ski conditions I never trust the resort site. Weather underground is good, or for Tremblant its the Tremblant-insider.com. JB007 (screen name) has the best report for the mountain. Tells it like it is.

 

[liquidfeet]

I look at about four sites before I ski. The two I rely on mostly are Snowsource.com (very reliable for snow conditions especially) and BestSkiWeather.com (this guy's a real ski fanatic! & predicts dumps rather well). Both of these are updated daily with info for the ski mountains I frequent.
I also look at two regional weather summaries in paragraph form from our friends at the National Weather Service, one for ME and NH: https://iwin.nws.noaa.gov/iwin/me/summary.html; and the other one for VT and NY: www.srh.noaa.gov/data/BTV/ZFPBTV.
Oh, and for a very nice two-hour radar loop of precipitation right now in New England I go to: http//:intellicast.com/IcastPage/LoadPage.aspx?seg=LocalWeather&loc=mpv&prodgrp=RadarImagery&product=RegionalRadar&prodnav=none (there are no spaces in this thing) (if I typed this correctly it will be miraculous). I've found the "higher summits forecast" done by the people at the top of Mt. Washington to be unreliable, so I don't go there. Maybe for Tucks, but not for any skiing.

 

[Snowbird]

I second Intellicast. It's easy to read and has great radar. I always check it before I go skiing.

 

[ski diva]

Another great source for weather, particularly in New England, is Matt Noyes weather blog. Matt's the weather guy for the New England News Network, and he really does a terrific job.

 

[nelsapbm]

Definately intellicast.
For local weather www.wcax.com
Also, Scott on the Skivt-l listserv and www.firsttracksonline.com gives a great forcast for Northern Vermont.

 

[mkhouse]

For the Tahoe area, I go straight to the National Weather Service:
https://www.wrh.noaa.gov/rev/prodreq.php?wfo=rev&sid=rev&pil=zfp&pvnum=6 (the Tahoe report is the 2nd section down. Other weather sites usually seem to paraphrase this report, and here we get the info from the source.

There's also the Caltrans road conditions site:
https://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/roadinfo/

And the Nevada Department of Transportation road conditions site:
https://safetravelusa.com/nv/

I've also got a great Widget on my Mac that gives me the current Doppler radar so I can check storm progress easily.

 

[ski diva]

I thought I'd bump this up, because Weather Underground has changed its interface, and it's very, very cool. I liked it before, but it's even better now. You get a graph that shows hour by hour temp, windspeed, and precipitation. I know other weather sites do this, too, but this is more interactive than others I've seen. You put your cursor on the graph, move it from left to right, and it shows you what the weather will be at various times throughout the day. Check it out.

 

[sibhusky]

I have a NOAA point forecast app on my Android tablet that does that.

 

[altagirl]

NOAA for me. Before we go skiing, we check the plot and you can see the wind speeds and snow amounts (plus temp) over the past 24 hours, along with wind directions, water density... It helps figure out what the snow will actually be like as well as how to dress.

 

[abc]

For weather in the villages/valley: Weatherspark.com

It's all graphic (well, it's got a descriptive one but that's not the selling point of the site). It also has 3 different weather model options you can choose from. So you get an idea how much confidence to put on a particular forecast. (I can tell weatherunderground is based on one of those models. They always have the same forecast, even when it's wrong!)

For mountain specific forecast: snow-forecast.com (different from snowforecast.com)

The one nice thing about this site is it shows where the rain/snow line is with respect to the top/bottom lift, by the hour. Especially valueable for spring skiing.

 

[Christy]

Weather Underground is very inaccurate for mountain forecasts out here. They use random weather stations that aren't even in the mountains--for Crystal, for example, they use a weather station in the hamlet of Greenwater, a half hour away and 3000-5500' lower than Crystal. (Greenwater gets almost no snow). They don't even have a lot of other mountain or ski locations.

 

[Jilly]

To go along with Christy's statement, I don't trust anything that comes out of the Sstates for Canada. We have the WeatherNetwork and the government's Environment Canada. But I do like to look at Intellicast's weather map.

 

[marzNC]

I only use Weather Underground for travel weather, meaning off season or for travel days for a ski trip. For someplace I go often, there is usually a local source that is more useful for the slopes. For instance, https://www.wasatchsnowinfo.com for LCC/BCC for a trip to SLC. For Massanutten, I use Intellicast and my own judgement based on experience. Can be cloudy and/or raining in the valley but quite a good ski day on the mountain. That's also true for Beech Mtn in NC.

 

[Christy]

Can be cloudy and/or raining in the valley but quite a good ski day on the mountain.

That's why I like the National Weather Service (NOAA) site--you can pinpoint the forecast to the exact location so you really get the mountain and the right elevation.

 

[Perty]

I use snow-forecast.com, though we frequently call it snow-liar.com. In general it is unspeakably optimistic about 7-9days out, but if snow is forecast in the next couple of days, it tends to underestimate the dump depth. It's good for the rain/snow limit and I really like the maps showing predicted fall in the Alps over the next 6-120 hours with my resort of choice pin pointed in the the middle. The optimistic forecasts do make me feel good,,even if the excitement is short lived.

The best local forecast in France I use is Chamonix meteo, which tends to be very accurate and is updated at 8.30 each morning and twice at weekends. It's pretty accurate and gives a good idea of weather in a 30km radius of Chamonix (but not the other side of Mont Blanc).

 

[marzNC]

That's why I like the National Weather Service (NOAA) site--you can pinpoint the forecast to the exact location so you really get the mountain and the right elevation.

For a big mountain in the Rockies, I've used NOAA but tend to rely more on a local website geared to skiing. For Massanutten, the valley is too close for NOAA to have a true point forecast for the mountain itself. For up to the minute temperature, Mnut has a weather station mid-mountain that is report on their website. Hard to get an exact weather status for Wintergreen for similar reasons.

 

[altagirl]

For a big mountain in the Rockies, I've used NOAA but tend to rely more on a local website geared to skiing. For Massanutten, the valley is too close for NOAA to have a true point forecast for the mountain itself. For up to the minute temperature, Mnut has a weather station mid-mountain that is report on their website. Hard to get an exact weather status for Wintergreen for similar reasons.

That's where it must depend on the mountain. Here - NOAA has three weather stations just at Alta - you can get temperature and wind speed at the base, mid mountain and peak at Alta, and snow/water measurements at mid mountain. Similar stats on most of the big resorts in Utah.

But yeah, if the forecast isn't pinpointed at the resort and even if you don't know where at the resort (base conditions vs. peak conditions can be quite different), it's not doing you much good.

 

[callmijane]

Opensnow.com with Joel Gratz!! He's awesome.