'Mother Nature is still in charge': Area skiers brace for cold on slopes the next few days

If you live in Central Massachusetts and you look out your window right now, you're probably seeing snow.

Winter is finally here. The stoke for skiing and snowboarding is at its highest point since New England ski areas first started opening in November.

When people see snow and their backyards, that's when they really start thinking about hitting the slopes. And that time is now.

You don't need an experienced meteorologist like Tim Kelley, a skiing weatherman, to tell you we're in a cold pattern now. But I called Kelley a few days ago to talk about the weather, and he confirmed it.

Cold, really cold

"It’s cold, too cold," said Kelley, of Weymouth, who spent 29 years as an on-air weather guy at NECN and NBC-10 TV stations.

Kelley is now an independent meteorologist. He also does forecasts for Jay Peak in Vermont. When he's not fooling around with his various ski and surf weather cams and other gear, he's up skiing at Stowe where he has a place, usually midweek.

"Yes, cold is dominating now — through next weekend, and then it's going to try and warm up. But it looks like Canada wants to refill with cold," he told me.

Indeed, cold air has invaded the American Northwest (Great Falls, Montana saw its coldest morning in 40 years the other day) and Canada from the West to the East. Some beneficiaries of that have been the ski areas in Quebec north of Quebec City, such as Le Massif de Charlevoix and Mont-Sainte-Anne, which received a bounty of about three feet of new snow last week.

Here in New England we enjoyed some of that snowy largesse too, before and after Saturday's rains, and most ski areas rebounded nicely over the latter part of the long Martin Luther King Jr. weekend.

Although we will certainly see more freeze/thaw cycles, we can look forward to a pretty cold March because of that cold Canada air mass and because El Nino, the Pacific warm weather pattern, is starting to fall apart, according to Kelley.

Kelley said he doesn't mind when his forecast is wrong. That is, if he predicts rain and it snows instead.

As for people who complain about the wide percentage variabilities in weather forecasting (I must admit I'm one those who's sometimes annoyed by the "15 percent chance of rain" forecast and it pours), here's Kelley's response:

"I laugh. I say you're spoiled," he said. "I mean, Mother Nature is still in charge."

"Even though you can dictate to your computer, your phone or your watch to wake you up at 6 a.m., and the train will be there at 7 and your meeting is at 10, Mother Nature does not operate on appointments, and Mother Nature is large and in charge," Kelley added. "We often overestimate or underestimate or completely miss what happens."

Skiing fun even in bad weather

But I'm with Kelley in that I don't really mind what the weather is how much snow we got, or just how cold it is, we just like to get out there — unless it's raining hard.

I'm planning to hit Stowe and Bolton Valley in Vermont this coming weekend in conditions that Kelley say will be brutally cold.

I'll be prepared with a balaclava under the helmet and hand warmers plus liners in my gloves. I'll set my heated socks to at least 2 and probably wear two pairs of long underwear, under a few other layers. Another trick for skiing in the ultra-cold is sneaking indoors every couple of runs, and making sure to make a lot of turns to keep the muscles firing.

"Sometimes I wonder, should I go skiing or not? And I think every time I've gone skiing, I've been glad I came up that day," Kelley said. "I didn't know if it was going to be good, but I was glad I came up."

Ski Massachusetts

Unlike its northern New England neighbors, Massachusetts doesn't have a super-active ski industry group that lobbies on behalf of and promotes ski areas.

For example, Ski Vermont and Ski New Hampshire are fully staffed organizations that operate year-round.

In contrast, the Massachusetts Ski Areas Association, based in Lenox in the Berkshires, is volunteer-run and operates on a small $89,000 annual budget.

This season, however, the MSAA, or Ski Massachusetts, made a visible showing at press conference the night before the Snowbound Expo ski and snowboard show in Boston in late November, along with their colleagues from Ski Vermont, Ski New Hampshire and Ski Maine.

State backing

Importantly, Charlie Ticotsky, deputy director of the Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism, was there in support. And MOTT shared the Ski Massachusetts booth with the ski areas during the consumer show.

MOTT is in its third year supporting a custom dynamic digital marketing campaign to promote the state's 11 ski areas on Hearst Corporation media properties, notably WCVB in Boston. The media spots are crafted at the Hearst Story Studio in San Francisco.

The ski areas are, east to west: Ski Bradford in Haverhill; Blue Hills, Canton; Nashoba Valley, Westford (celebrating its 60th anniversary this year); Wachusett, Princeton; Ski Ward, Shrewsbury; Berkshire East, Charlemont; Jiminy Peak, Hancock; Bousquet, Pittsfield; Ski Butternut, Great Barrington; Otis Ridge, Otis; and Catamount in Egremont (it also lies partly in Hillsdale, New York).

Tom Meyers, the veteran Wachusett marketing guru who is still a marketing adviser there in semi-retirement, was on hand at the Boston event as were representatives from a bunch of the other Bay State ski areas.

"When I came to Massachusetts more than 25 years ago, winter was barely acknowledged as a season and the ski areas were not widely promoted," he said, in remarks from the podium to the crowd at a pre-show industry party.

"Fast forward to 2023 and here we are sharing the podium with our neighboring New England states on an equal footing. I feel like Ski Massachusetts has finally arrived and is no longer the poor stepchild of New England skiing.

"We take our role as feeder ski areas very seriously, helping to introduce skiing and snowboarding to literally thousands of new skiers and boards every winter," Meyers added. "We help remind folks of the importance to get outdoors in the winter to enjoy the benefits of fresh air, nature, exercise and quality time with family and friends."

Ski Massachusetts also took part in the Big E exposition in West Springfield last September.

—Contact Shaun Sutner by e-mail at s_sutner@yahoo.com

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Area skiers brace for cold on slopes the next few days