It's the start of day #4 for me in British Columbia, so apologies for the shorter discussions this week...the internet is a bit slow. We had so much fun yesterday hoping and jumping our way down the mountain. Here's what it looked like.

What a fantastic powder day it was for some areas of the state on Christmas morning. Steamboat reported 11 inches and I heard it skied like Champagne. Powderhorn led the list with 14 inches, and Vail came in with 7 inches but locals reported far deeper conditions with light, fluffy snow. As I said back in November when it wasn't snowing, it only takes two to three weeks of consistent snow and cold weather to go from little snow on the mountains to great conditions. And even though we're still about 30% below average snowpack for this time of year, things are skiing very nicely. I hope you're getting out to enjoy it!

There are two storms to talk about over the next week, with the first starting today (Wednesday) and lasting through Friday, and the second arriving sometime next week. The second storm is going to be a pain to forecast, so we'll get to that in a minute.

The first storm will move through slowly and bring snow for the better part of 48 hours, from midday Wednesday through midday Friday. It won't snow heavily for all mountains all of the time, but most areas should pick up a good 4-8 or 5-10 inches by Friday morning, and maybe a bit more in a few lucky areas. The snow will initially favor the San Juans (Durango, Wolf Creek, Silverton) today through tonight, then the winds will switch around to blow from a more westerly direction by Wednesday night and this will get the snow going for most other areas. I think Thursday will be a great day to ski and ride with fresh snow in the morning and more falling throughout the day. Check the detailed snow forecasts for each resort here (I don't have time to list all of them in this discussion but I do hand-forecast for all of these locations each day). Snow will continue Thursday evening and then taper off by midday on Friday. Friday morning will be another great time to be on the hill. Get out there!

The weekend will be dry and gorgeous, and then another storm will move in next week. We should see good accumulations at some point with this next storm, but I have no idea when it will arrive. The American GFS model combines a storm moving south from Canada with a storm off the west coast and merges them over Colorado around New Years. The (often more correct) European model predicts that the storm off the west coast will take its sweet time moving east and Colorado won't see snow until later next week (Thursday-ish). Right now I'd split the difference and anticipate snow moving back into Colorado during the middle of next week. 

Have fun in the POW!

JOEL GRATZ