Open Snow

Has anyone ponied up for the Open Snow Pro membership?  Is it worth it?

Can you please post a review of it here

one of my favorite sites..
i enjoy reading Joel's discussions.

i don't see the advantage to paying. that said i still might , just to support the site..

Had not seen it before, I like the format - it is easier to get a quick snow forecast. I would not pay for premium information. They seem to have enough sponsors to keep things going. Now they just need to do a credible job.

Boy the new format for Open Snow is fancy, and way less useful than the old version.

You used to able to look quickly and see where the snow was going to fall across NY.

The new version sucks ass.

Harvey wrote

You used to able to look quickly and see where the snow was going to fall across NY.

I bet I could make a prediction pretty quickly without that app.

JTG4eva! wrote

The new version sucks ass.

totally agree

Joel asked for feed back on the new format, he said just don't say it sucks..lol

but it does

Where can I give my feedback?!?!

My buddy pays for it.  He said its only $20 for the year.  And, I think he gives a much more pinpointed forecast, ie. like for each ski area and I think it also has elevation related and extended forecasts in the pay site.

 

I pay for it, I like the western forecasts...
it's a little more detailed but not by a lot..
I treat it as a donation..

What, ass wasn’t good enough?

I’ll give you more!  Honestly, I haven’t figured out how the new version works.  However, that’s the problem.  The old version was pretty damned user friendly and intuitive.  In no time I could have a dashboard showing my favorite resorts and how much snow they were going to get in the next 5 days.  The Daily Snow reports, which I love, were easily accessible from that Dashboard.  I liked it so much that I subscribed and could then see forecasted snow for 10 days.  If I wanted to do more work, which I don’t, I could drill down for more info.

Now....heck, every time I try and find something, or spend more time adding Daily Snows, and Favorite Mountains.....I still can get the concise, user friendly info I used to.  I get frustrated and give up.  Yeah, I could probably work to get to something that might be user-friendly-ish......but like I said before, I don’t want to work.  


Ok, with the voice of Witchy in the back of my head telling me to stop hyperventilating........

After setting up a bunch of shit, which took more work than the old site, I now have a Favorites screen that looks somewhat useful.

I still don’t like the bar graph presentation of forecast snow for the next 10 days.  I also don’t like that I have to scroll through my favorite mountains and squint at the bar graphs to see who is getting the most snow.  In my old dash it was super easy to see if Baker was going to get twice as much snow as Crystal, or if Alta or Snowbird was going to get more than Squaw or A Basin.

At least the Daily Snow are convenient again.

Another thing you could tell Joel.....because the site is snow and weather, not just Resorts.....it’s seems kind of lacking that Larry will talk about the gobs of new Northwest powder, without so much as a passing reference to the persistent weak layer that is currently at the very bottom of the Northwest snowpack.  Even in bounds on controlled slopes there have been issues related to that, so it seems worth a mention.  No, I don’t expect them to avy forecast, but at least make mention so people might give it more thought than they otherwise might have.

I haven’t read much on that layer but it sounds like it could be a persistent, season long problem.

That kind of snowpack is scary af. I’d steer clear of their BC.

Yeah, in the past week there have only been 3 backcountry reports on TAY, and they all kept it low angle.  Seems people are respecting the danger.

What they really need is a wet, rainy PNW storm to consolidate the snowpack, because right now it’s acting way more continental than maritime.  Amazing what a day or two of serious surface hoar at the beginning of a season can do....

It’s just a surface hoar layer? Not a good chunk of temp gradient rot?

After a slow start and a little bit of snow they got a significant rain crust.  The day I saw that reported my radar went up.  After a little more snow they had some significant surface hoar.  Bad mojo number two, with all of that in the first 8 to 12 inches of the snowpack.  Then the last week or so shit exploded.  Baker got like 60 inches in 3 or 4 days time, snowpack from 12% to 100% of normal in two days time.  With fluctuating snow levels they got a few light crust layers mixed in.  However, it’s that early crust and weak layer from the hoar that is causing the trouble right now.  At Baker, in bounds AFTER avy control, a 4 foot deep slide ripped down to the ground in the Chute.  I’m no snow science expert, but I’m not sure they’ve even had a snowpack long enough for it to rot.

I guess I’m glad I hadn’t had any December opportunities to head out there, as I have in the past.

I’m sure it’ll settle down, it’s the PNW after all and the Cascade Concrete will do it’s thing, but it may take some time.

A rain crust near the ground or any at all can really spice things up.

That’s what we had that season Powder Mag sent a writer and photographer here. I kept getting huge, terrifying whomps where hundreds of feet of slope would drop and move enough to to knock off all the snow on the saplings. Ken, who is built like a pixie and probably weighs almost 50 pounds less than me wasn’t experiencing it but i would even taking up the rear on the skin track. We stayed off the north faces and sure enough when we finally got big snow every north face went huge. The slide on Core Ridge was at least a mile wide. That may have been the widest slide I’ve ever seen.

It’s kind of fun to go out and figure out that stuff on your own without an actual forecast. Or it is at least when things go smoothly.

raisingarizona wrote

A rain crust near the ground or any at all can really spice things up.

It's going to be sketchy for a while longer... even more cold snow coming in the next several days.  I'm not complaining,,, in bounds at Mission has been spectacular.  A handful of people sharing 2000 acres of goodness

with the new open snow the pro is there is shit ton more info with hourly info for example it’s says tommorrow at 9 am WF will have sustained winds at 80 and gusts to 95
That made it easy to decide to allow my son to sleep in and skip training

But honestly as a long time 5+ year paid user I really liked the old format and the new one frankly sucks.  They should put in the old interface then allow you to drill down to the new hourly details.

JasonWx wrote

I pay for it, I like the western forecasts...
it's a little more detailed but not by a lot..
I treat it as a donation..

That's my approach as well.  I do like having a short list of favorites so I can check my planned destinations quickly.

I can tell the new version probably is designed for cell phone screens.  But I liked the more horizontal displays better since I check OpenSnow on my laptop.  I don't sign up for email updates much.  But it's fun to get warnings for snow storms based on picking a given predicted depth such as 4 inches or 10 inches.

I use OpenSnow for the Rockies, not the northeast.  Makes a difference to me that Evan's forecasts for Utah are now only on OpenSnow and no longer on his own blog.  I pay attention to Alta all season long even when I'm not going until April.