Old man winter finally showed up in a big way over the Martin Luther King holiday weekend with a double dose of frigid arctic air and snow.
We went deep into the snow zone on Monday when winter storm Izzy roared through the Northeast, dumping the first big region wide snowfall of the season. The cold last week and into this week also allowed snowmaking operations to ratchet up into high gear and give ski area operators the opportunity to substantially expand terrain.
Local ski areas, including Mount Peter, in Warwick, Holiday, in Thomson, Thunder Ridge, in Patterson, and the Victor Constant ski slopes, in West Point, all took advantage of the cold weather to pump out prodigious amounts of the manmade stuff and were offering a significant amount of their terrain. Hunter, Windham, Belleayre and Plattekill – all in the Catskills – had from 50% to 75% of their slopes open. It was the same for northern New York and New England ski resorts.