“We opened with one of our largest openings in the past decade,” said Stacie Harris, a spokesperson for Big Sky Resort.
Harris said the large opening was thanks in part to mother nature putting snow on the ground ahead of Thanksgiving.
“We had a really strong early season snowfall with over 50 inches of snow about 180% above average in November,” Harris said.
A few mountain ranges over, Red Lodge Mountain spokesperson Troy Hawks says their resort saw something similar.
“We had a really great turnout. One of the largest turnouts we’ve had for our opening day in many seasons,” Hawks said.
Hawks said Red Lodge Mountain saw over 1,000 people on the mountain for opening day, about 3 times as many people compared to last year.
Both resorts also have snowmaking operations, which have supplemented the natural snowfall that has petered off.
Austin McDowell, a meteorologist from the National Weather Service, says both areas are currently below their average snowpack this time of year.
“There were certainly a couple events in early November that made it look like we were getting off to a pretty good start, but now that we’ve gotten towards the end of November and here early December, it’s been on the dry side," McDowell said.
After last year’s low snow year, many were hoping that this year's predicted La Niña forecast would provide better conditions for snow.
“The La Niña scenario is becoming less and less likely, still favored, but less likely than it was before,” McDowell said.
La Niña refers to below-average ocean temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, which can have effects in the Northern Rockies that tend to be cooler and wetter winter weather.
Still, McDowell says there is a lot of winter left, and good snow years can fall out of the La Niña prediction, and current data from the climate prediction center show just that.
“It does show that we are just leaning ever so slightly in that direction, and we still are trending for above average precipitation,” McDowell said.
Southwest Montana has a 33% chance of below-average temperatures and a 60% above-average precipitation for the next few months.
