A good laugh from Mt Baker Ski Area...

"Due to the upcoming mountain forecast calling for unusual weather patterns of heavy rain and warm temperatures MT. BAKER SKI AREA WILL BE CLOSED Wednesday & Thursday, but will re-open to normal midweek operations on Friday, April 1st."

Does anyone else find this amusing? I used to loathe Mt Baker when their snow report for the whole mountain was something more like the conditions that occurred at the top of Pan Dome at the coldest point during the previous 24 hours. At least we have the NWAC station now to keep them somewhat honest. At times I drove from B’ham to expecting 2 feet of new and saw no trace of it at White Salmon, skiing in rain on the lower mountain…

Anyhow I thought I’d post this tidbit and rant some about it…at least they're closing it down during heavy rain now. Maybe someday Baker Ski Area will even offer folks a webcam view of the real conditions at the resort, eh Duncan?

Like you said, we have telemetry now. What's there to complain about? Telemetry is more useful than a webcam.

I think that shows responsibility. Not only would the skiing be awful but there are a lot of places where a large slab could run and it would be difficult to cordon off all of those areas.

That is funny -- nice to see they're being so honest.

Maybe someday Baker Ski Area will even offer folks a webcam view of the real conditions at the resort, eh Duncan?

Like you said, we have telemetry now. What's there to complain about? Telemetry is more useful than a webcam.

Webcams and telemetry complement each other, since they provide different info on different time scales. A webcam is nearly realtime (especially if it is updated at least every 5-10 minutes or less), but the NWAC telemetry is not. The data on precip is always at least 1 hour old (since it's the accumulated precip over the preceding hour), and determining for sure whether it is raining or snowing (when the temp is hovering near freezing) requires viewing the last several hours of telemetry. But a webcam can tell you for sure whether it is snowing now, something which telemetry often can not.

I think the reason that they don't have a webcam is that Mt Baker ski area still has no landline phone service or electricity (at least they still did not as of a couple of years ago, unless something has changed recently). I remember reading a quote in the newspaper several years ago from Duncan Howat where he said that the lack of phone service was the reason they had no webcam online.

A land line may soon come to Mt Baker (or close) if the Massachusetts company that wants to dam Ruth and Swamp creeks has any luck.
www.bellinghamherald.com/2011/01/12/1811...d-on-two-creeks.html

Moscawulff did you ever run a ski area?