Arizona Snowbowl Breaks Records With First-Ever June Opening in 80+ Years

• Mammoth, Timberline, A-Basin Keep Season Alive With Deep Late-May Snowpack
• Killington Hints Reopening After Surprise Snow Hits Northeast Peaks
• Midwest Milestone: Boyne Mountain Shocks Locals With Memorial Day Comeback
• Western Slopes Warm Up, But High-Altitude Flurries Still Holding On

USA REPORT

With Memorial Day behind us, more than half of the dozen or so ski areas that had stayed open up to last Monday have ended their seasons, but a handful are staying open into June. With ski areas including Crystal Mountain in Washington State, Mt. Bachelor in Oregon, Snowbird and Solitude in Utah, and The Palisades at Tahoe, California ending their seasons on Monday, it’s down to the usual late-season suspects to stay open into June. Special mention, too, must be made of Michigan’s Boyne Mountain which, after saying the previous weekend would be its last, caused a local sensation by reopening a narrow strip of snow for its Memorial Day weekend—believed to be a Midwest first.

Those still open, though, include Colorado's Arapahoe Basin (15/140 cm / 6/56"), California's Mammoth Mountain (56/96" / 140/240 cm), and Timberline (20/116" / 50/290 cm) on Mt. Hood in Oregon, which usually manages a nine-month season from November to August—the longest in North America. Hopefully, the fact that the snow is still lying nearly 10 feet deep means it can stay open another 10 weeks or so as planned.

Most unusual for a June opening is Arizona’s Snowbowl, which is opening this coming weekend for the first June opening in its 80+ year history, also making 24–25 its longest-ever season at over 180 days of operations.

Memorial Day was also due to see America’s only remaining summer ski area, Beartooth Basin—located close to the Montana state line in Wyoming—open for the first time in two years. However, despite the Beartooth Highway having its annual opening on schedule (the ski centre can’t open before that happens), ski slope opening was delayed by a couple of days for staff training. It’s aiming to remain in operation through to July.

In terms of the past week’s weather, one big surprise, although not wholly unprecedented, was snowfall in the Northeast as a late-spring nor’easter made landfall last Thursday, bringing plenty of rain but also a dusting of snow on peaks in Maine, Vermont, and New York State, leading Killington to tease a weekend reopening.
It’s been drier on the western side of the US—still getting below freezing into the 20s overnight, with occasional light snow showers still—but daytime highs in the 50s and low 60s in the afternoons in the coastal and Rocky Mountains.

USA FORECAST

Warm and sunny weather is expected along America's Pacific Coast for the coming week, with overnight lows above freezing even at high elevations, and daytime highs well into the 60s. Similar conditions, if a few degrees cooler, are expected on high slopes in the Rockies, with temperatures still dropping a few degrees below freezing up top overnight, and the chance of occasional light snow flurries up high, too.