Warmer weather affects start of NC ski, snowboard season

An unseasonably warm start to winter this year has had a chilling effect on typical cold weather activities such as skiing and snowboarding.

Some N.C. mountain towns are forecast to see temperatures in the low- to mid 60s on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day – which would be record highs, based on data collected by the state climate office.

Winter sports locations such as Sugar and Beech mountains, as well as Charlotte-area ski and snowboard rental shops, rely on colder temperatures to drive business.

Kim Jochl, director of marketing for Sugar Mountain in Banner Elk, said fewer people are on the slopes so far this month compared with past Decembers.

On Wednesday, they had five slopes and two lifts open, slightly fewer than on Tuesday. But she said there are no guarantees for staying open over the holidays.

“The weather does not look promising for the next few days,” she said.

This isn’t the first time they’ve seen this kind of weather. “We’ve been in situations where we closed once or twice or three times throughout the season,” she said.

Reopening Sugar Mountain isn’t difficult, Jochl said, and there’s a lot they can do in a short time to create snow and prepare the slopes for skiing and snowboarding.

At Beech Mountain, which is about 200 feet higher than Sugar, the higher elevation has helped the creation of snow in recent weeks, said Talia Freeman, director of marketing.

“The only challenge for us is, when it’s warm in Charlotte, people aren’t really thinking about skiing and they don’t know how cold it is up here,” she said.

At Ski Country Sports in Charlotte, the warmer-than-normal weather on the East Coast has driven down ski and snowboard rentals, said store manager James Hunt. But it hasn’t affected the number of customers in the store because of better-than-expected conditions on the other end of the country. “With the West Coast having such a good season already, we’ve still been doing well,” he said, referring to apparel sales.

Ski slopes in Colorado and other states have been overwhelmed by weather systems that have dumped several feet of snow in some areas. Another system was expected to drop some 4 feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains late this week.

“It’s been a great snow season so far from the Rockies to the higher elevations in the Cascades and the northern Sierras, and it’s been the total opposite on the East Coast,” said Bob Oravec, lead forecaster with the National Weather Service.

Hunt said colder weather certainly boosts sales at Ski Country Sports, but bottom line: “We haven’t really seen a bad turnout.”

The Associated Press contributed.

This story was originally published December 23, 2015 at 11:36 AM with the headline "Warmer weather affects start of NC ski, snowboard season."