Here's Steve enjoying "Showtime," a
groomer at Tamarack Resort, with a sea
of clouds down below.   

"Bone dry" wintry air will continue overhead at Idaho's ski areas through Thursday statewide. A series of weak systems will try to drop a few inches of snow Thursday-Sunday, but no significant accumulation is expected. 

7-day GFS Deterministic precip map for Idaho shows a very light chance of snow
in the next week ... with less than .02 hundreds in the green zone and higher amounts
in the Southeast corner of Idaho by the weekend.   

Skier ripping the corduroy at Brundage Mountain Resort (courtesy Brundage). 

Seeing some substantial chance of snow coming Monday-Wednesday of next week as a series of storms are likely to knock out the High Pressure system aloft in the Northern Rockies. 

10-day GFS snow forecast for Idaho looks promising for new snow early next week.  

OpenSnow Forecast Data Update

On Tuesday (1/12), we began updating the automated forecasts on OpenSnow with a proprietary blend of data from the GFS (American), GDPS (Canadian), and ECMWF (European) weather models.

Previously, we combined information from our local forecasters, the National Weather Service (NOAA), and data from the ECMWF (European) weather model. This method only provided hourly data for the United States and relied on a single model to produce our snow forecasts for the next 10 days.

Why is this new forecast data better than the old forecast data? The benefits include:

• Blending multiple global models increases accuracy and confidence in the forecast.
• Hourly data for any location in the world.
• Proprietary snow-to-liquid calculation to improve accuracy, especially in colder environments.
• Improved method for calculating the snow level (elevation that separates rain from snow) to provide a more realistic forecast, especially at the beginning of storms and during times of intense snowfall.
• Ability to create a forecast for any location and elevation to ensure that we are forecasting conditions on the mountain and not for a nearby town.

We also plan to add even more global and high-resolution models into our proprietary forecast blend over time. Our goal is to create the most accurate snow forecast and we're just getting started.

The data can be viewed as hourly forecasts for the next 5 days and daily forecasts for the next 10 days. Available data includes:

• Chance of Precipitation
• Day & Night Snow Forecast
• Day & Night Snow Level
• Daily High & Low Temperature
• Hourly Temperature
• Hourly Wind Speed
• Hourly Wind Gust
• Hourly Cloud Cover %

This new blend of forecast data is available on OpenSnow for over 2,000 locations around the world and we are adding new locations every day.

Explore Locations → OpenSnow.com/explore