Ski Areas and their fictional Seasonal Snowfall Averages

So, inspired by a comment on a different thread about going to Colorado to ski pow, I thought off hand - "Why bother when you can just drive to Jay."

And I tried to look up seasonal snowfall in Colorado, and it listed A-Basin right at the top (alphabetically) with 350".

I thought, that doesn't sound right. I've been there a bunch and I love the mountain, but I've sure as hell gotten skunked there more than once. So I added up the previous five years from OnTheSnow, divided by 5 and got 258.2". We all know these same areas exaggerate their totals, but what gives as to picking and choosing the five best years to base your average? Two of the last five, this mountain hasn't cracked 200"s so color me confused. But, it's not just them, it's every mountain that either never updates the totals or just nudges it up every once in awhile.

Very weird.

I'm amazed that Colorado snow totals are below 300 inches. I would never have guessed.

It does seem like eastern areas are not including the last 5-10 years in their averages.

My limited experience with Jay was reassuring. It snowed. Jay reported five inches. Seemed like maybe 8 to me.

And of course I have the utmost confidence in the reported Gore Mountain Snow Totals.

Very curious to hear what others say about Colorado.

Then you've got Alta. If their reported 880 inches was really only 700 - does it really matter?

Just did the five year for Gore, 145". The year you're missing was pretty good, 195"

After last season, I think ski areas are going to be very slow to update their averages.

Though some NH areas had back to back banner years 2009-2011.

Averages are kinda pointless to me. When it comes to deciding where to go, I'm a "what have you done for me lately" kinda guy.

I never knew those numbers existed for Gore.  I'm not honestly sure how they do it as Gore publishes numbers in an irregular fashion  - often more than once a day, giving totals for the last 24 hours. With long duration events it's really hard to figure out what is going on.  And Gore doesn't publish a running seasonal total. That's why I started doing it - I really wanted to know.

The OnTheSnow numbers look high to me but still pretty reasonable, and as I said, I just can't figure out how they do it.  OTS numbers look reasonable for summit totals (my numbers are base) - but how would they get them?

At the end of the year I check with Emily (Gore Marketing) to see if they are close, and she' usually gives me a number that is within 5 inches of what I've got.

It's a lot of work, so I think I'm going to retire from the job and just use OTS numbers.

Sorry for the drift. Carry on.

One little wrench in your plans - it seems like some of their data is more complete for some mountains than others.

A Basin does have an awfully long season, though. Maybe the longest in the country? Oct. to June, most years, and, in a good year, July 4. That's a pretty big window to measure snowfall.

Im sure the long window helps on good years, but if it's been dry I don't think it helps and they shut down in may anyway. Look at the records, two sub 200 seasons. It's really surprising.

Maybe they let TJF and his buds do the snow totals - he reports knee deep on dust on crust days