I hope you had a Merry Christmas skiing powder at Copper!

The storm total snowfall from Sunday midnight through Monday midnight was 17 inches. This is far higher than my forecast, which went up to about 10 inches.

So what happened? The Christmas Day storm brought a lot of moisture, and this is the fuel for snowfall. I was hesitant to forecast higher amounts since the previous storm on Friday night into Saturday has similar characteristics but underproduced a little bit. The difference was that the Christmas storm tracked a bit further south than the previous system, right over Copper, so all the factors were aligned for heavy snow.

Now on Tuesday morning, you’ll still find fresh snow as about 2 inches fell after lifts closed on Monday afternoon, and there are 660 acres to ski, so there will undoubtedly be some leftover powder from Monday as well.

The forecast for the rest of the week looks dry and at least partly sunny, with just a low chance of a few flurries or snow showers now and again. We’ll have a better chance of accumulating snow on Saturday night and Sunday.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned each morning for a new update!

JOEL GRATZ, Meteorologist at OpenSnow.com