Open:

http://www.snowbird.com/
and
http://www.skiutah.com/photocontest08/

Snowbird will be open weekends throough at least Father's Day!! Here is what it looked like on 31 May:

http://www.snowbird.com/ski_board/photo.php?photo=955

Over a one hundred inch base stil...at mid-mountain.
The Colonel

Thanks Colonel, for starting a new thread related to skiing.

I was thinking the same thing. It must be nice to be skiing right now. All we have is this stinkin rain!

Rain? Clear in a million in DC?

I greatly dislike reading/discussing something I know I won't be able to do for at least 150 days... It saddens me. Maybe after a week of the predicted 90 degree/sticky/crap I'll be more inclined.

Looks like Aspen will be open for Father's Day, too.

http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20080609/NEWS/881122427

At the great risk of frustrating kwillg6, I just got an email from Snowbird indicating that, of course, they are open Father's Day weekend, and weather depending, might well be skiing/riding through July 4th weekend!!
It has happened before, but not often.
The Colonel

As they're having fun in Colorado... Roger, I hope you're on high ground...

Thanks Lou. High enough, not so high as to get sniped by a tornado though (I hope!).

Yeah, it's been a little over 48 hours since our last severe thunderstorm, thank goodness the next one is less than 3 hours away I was starting to worry my basement might dry out. What on earth would I do with a dry basement??? Grrrrr....

But, of course, a wet basement isn't that bad of a problem compared to what some other folks are experiencing. Southern MO and Arkansas have been underwater since March, and then there's all the tornadoes like in Manhattan and West Iowa. So no, things aren't so bad here, we're doin' alright.

Hehe... wrote a "hope you're doing well" on the other thread. Nice to hear a wet basement is your only problem.

http://www.photolibrary.fema.gov/photolibrary/photo_details.do?id=11931

Sorry Lou, but it was too much temptation to show you kissing babies and old ladies in your old job

I have friends in Manhatten. Haven't heard from them for a while. Also, got some colleagues in Terre Haute and they have some of the same issues as Roger. I drove I 70 from Colorado to back in the 90s. I couldn't beleive the destruction of the flooding im the mid west. What's worse was the stench of the residue. Wonder how long it took to get that erased from their memories?

I have read that the US has the most volatile weather patterns in the world due to the converging jet streams and temperature differences. No other continent has the potential for tornados as we do according to the study.

You're correct in that we have the most volatile weather patterns in the world. There are tornadoes in India, but never on the face of the earth do you see the fluctuations and calamities as we have in the US.

In my previouos life as an FCO, I'd say that flooding, then tornadoes, were the most poigniant and saddest disasters. For a family to see their lives' memories float away is heart-wrenching. It takes a huge toll on both people and responders. And oftentimes, flooding affects those who can least stand up on their own, as lower elevations are usually the places where cheap land allows the poor and less fortunate to live. I can amply sympathize with the folks in Iowa. We can throw all the bureaucratic euphemisms as "why do they live there" or "bet they're insured" etc... but still, to see three or four generations of memories go away in a five minute period is sad, sad, sad.

Yep, I live on the periphery of tornado alley. We've got flooding and tornadoes down to a science. My wife is from El Salvador. They've got volcanoes and earthquakes down cold there (they treat a 5.8 earthquake like a Kansan treats an F1 tornado- YYYAAAWWWWNNNN. Oh and watch the tourists scream like babies- and earlier this spring I was the tourist). Someday maybe we'll live somewhere with calm weather. Maybe.

I used to think that the Mid-Atlantic had some of the most insulated weather in the country- yes there were occasional hurricanes, blizzards, and tornadoes but they weren't annual events, not by a longshot. Seems like everywhere else in the country- or most everywhere else- had the potential for SOMETHING to hit pretty much every year.

Where do you- general question here- think the weather in the United States is calmest? I still think the Mid-Atlantic, maybe south-central PA if you want to narrow it down.

IMHO the most benign weather in the US is the Mid-Atlantic, you're totally correct. We NORMALLY don't have to worry about a 9.0 earthquake or having the Delmarva Peninsula fall into the ocean. Hurricanes tend to be tropical storms by the time they get here, and even though we had Isabel in 2003(?) and it tore up the Tidewater area, it was by no means a Charlie or a Katrina. The Mid West has the worst tornadoes on the face of the earth. New England has Nor'Easters and weather extremes (the highest winds on the face of the planet were recorded atop Mt Washington), and the entire South has tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, ad nauseam. Even violent earthquakes. The Emergency Management doomsday scenario is not San Andreas Fault, but the New Madrid Fault, site of the most violent earthquakes in North America from 1811-14. The subsedence of the earth changed the course of the Mississippi and can still be seen today. The worst part of the New Madrid Plate is that as we haven't seen a major earthquake in that area for 200 years, there has been very little retrofitting and therefore another 8.0 would be the nightmare of our history. New Madrid is both the Mid West and the South, as the fault goes from Illinois clear down to Memphis and even down into Arkansas and Mississippi. Over 15 million people live there. It would be catastrophic. The other thing is that whereas the California plates are primarily on rock and granite, and the earthquake damage areas tend to be constrained, the New Madrid fault is below sedimentary fluvial soils that would liquefy and even expand the destructive range of the earthquake. The 1811 earthquake cracked chimneys in Boston, even trans-Appalachian. The public domain USGS picture below shows the point of roughly equivalently strong earthquakes and their damage potential in CA and the MS valley. Food for thought....

Anyway, I'm glad to live where we live.

Did y'all see this photo from Iowa:

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/a-remarkable-photo-from-tornado-country/

Storm season is starting to wind down out here.

Roger, that's an amazing picture. It must have been just a little scary to be standing on your porch when that thing was coming through....