Is It Snowing?

Nov 26, 2006  ·  02:26 PM  ·  permalink

For the past couple of weeks, the snow here in Colorado has been less-than-inspiring. For anyone who likes skiing hard pack and groomed runs under the sun, things are just fine, but I like my runs deep and I’m not above admitting: I’m getting a little desperate. What’s a fella to do?

Fortunately, the internet affords many ways to vicariously enjoy the snow elsewhere and simulateously keep one’s finger on the pulse of the slopes. I am of course referring to the miracle of online snow reports.

For comprehensiveness, you can’t beat OnTheSnow’s Snow Reports or Sno Country’s Ski Reports. These two each cover practically the whole world, so no matter where you intend on skiing, you can find the latest conditions. The downside is: you have to go to their website to get those conditions—blech.

For both comprehensiveness and convenience, Yahoo Snow Alerts will send the conditions of your choosing as SMS or email. Rubber Snow also offers SMS snow alerts and a little bit more customization than Yahoo. I’m setting up some alerts there for my favorite local resorts so I can prepare to hit the slopes when the snow starts to fly.

But for me, the holy grail of snow reports is feeds. When I was at Colorado Ski Country USA, I created an RSS and XML feed of all the Colorado Snow conditions on the Colorado Snow Report. I still use it, and there’s nothing more convenient than being able to see snow reports along with all of my other news.

Unfortunately, it seems we were ahead of the curve at Colorado Ski Country, because I haven’t found any comprehensive—nevermind customizable—snow report feeds. Sure, you can get Utah Snow Report feeds, Australian snow RSS, and even snow report feeds for Japan but why hasn’t some enterprising party built the world’s ultimate snow reporting site with feeds and alerts for the whole world?

I’m sure someone will, but in the mean time, we’re compiling links to all the snow report feeds we can find over at del.icio.us. Know something we’ve missed? Please, give us a hand.