Last January was the first time I saw a big-time inversion in SLC. It did remind me of L.A. in the 1970's, but I've been going there for ~25 years so I suspect that was an extreme. My understanding is that Denver gets those winter inversions too. I would hazard a guess that wind would be more likely to break them up than in SLC.
skiing gets progressively worse throughout the inversion since the high pressure keeps out any new snow.
All ski regions go through dry spells. But the consistency of LCC snow conditions over a whole season are the best in the world. Bringing that into the discussion would dissuade a ski-centric person from living anywhere else. We've just been through 2 crappy Novembers in the past 3 years and the skiing is still up to snuff by Dec. 15.
extremely dry air, plus weeks of 100+ scorchers in the summer
July/Aug averages for SLC are high 90 low 61. With very low humidity that's pretty comfortable. Anybody here rather be in say, Washington D.C. at 88/68 with high humidity? SLC's 4,500 foot altitude also results in summer nighttime cooling. Denver is similar to SLC at 88/60 and Reno is 89/50.
I find this a very useful reference for comparing city climates around the world:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/world/city ... w=n_guides. Other sites cover many more places in the U.S. but I like the format of the BBC tables, which I've used for the L.A. vs. Santiago and Tokyo vs. D.C comparisons.
To return the discussion to its original geographic location, it looks to me like Front Range Colorado is in for a bad holiday ski season. There was a website that tracked the percent of terrain open Thanskgiving, mid-December and Christmas week for many Colorado resorts from 1988-2002. I downloaded it and have updated it since to ~20 years of data. The results for mid-December this year are grim:
Area
Current 25th
50th 75th percentiles
A-Basin
16% 12%
33% 63%
Breck
42% 27%
55% 74%
Copper
20% 33%
44% 65%
Keystone
14% 35%
56% 89%
Loveland
18% 27%
65% 85%
Now the usually reliable places:
Steamboat
32% 57%
77% 92%
Vail
26% 64%
81% 95%
Winter Park
27% 48%
66% 79%
This year's mid-December numbers are similar to average numbers at Thanksgiving. This situation is not like the Cottonwood Canyons a week ago, where a 4 foot dump converted marginal to near full coverage in a few days. Those kind of storms are very rare in Front Range Colorado.
The only way I could be misinterpreting this data is that for perhaps financial reasons some resorts are holding off opening lifts/terrain until the holiday season. But with regional snowfall running at 43-63% of normal I don't think so. Bottom line: Destination skiers should avoid these places until at least mid-January.
