Killington’s announcement today that the mountain will be closing this Sunday, April 25, 2010, officially marks the end of their worst ski season on record.
The season started off strong with some early snowfall that allowed Killington to open the weekend of November 7, 2009, but that didn’t last as rain and warmer temperatures forced them to close over the Thanksgiving weekend for the first time in their history. They managed to re-open the mountain on December 2, 2009, but snowfall was much less than expected and it pretty much remained that way throughout the season, even as the rest of the Northeast experienced record snowfalls.
In fact, the 2009/2010 total snowfall of 203″ was the worst the mountain has seen since the 2005/2006 season. And, the 18″ of snow from March 1 onward is a record low.
Combine the low snowfall with the unseasonably warm temperatures over the past 3 weeks and you’ll see why the mountain has been decimated. In fact, the K1 gondola closed on April 2, and temperatures that following weekend reached 78 degrees. It was fun skiing in shorts, but no amount of snowmaking could make up for the rate at which the snow was melting.
All these factors combined to only give us 153 ski days. And yes, that is also another worst on record.
There’s always next year!
(Source: Killington Historical Snowfall and Statistics)
UPDATE: As has been pointed out in the comments, we should have said “Killington has worst season in recent memory.” We only went back 23 years.
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