Welcome to the La Niña season at Mt. Baker, Washington.
The snowiest ski resort in North America (based on average annual snowfall) will open its slopes this week. Wednesday, November 20, 2024 will be a passholder’s appreciation day, and will be followed by a public opening day on Thursday, November 21.
A winter storm warning was in effect until 10 a.m. local time on Monday at elevations above 2,000 feet, according to the National Weather Service. A video posted on Facebook by the ski area’s social media team showed Mt. Baker’s CEO and President Gwyn Howat standing in waist-deep powder, with snow still coming down.
“We’re going to be running out of the upper elevation Heather Meadows Base area on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday this week,” she said. “We’ve got lots of new snow, we’re sitting good.”
Chairs 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 will all be up and running for opening day. The operations team is hopeful that Chair 5 will also be ready to go for Wednesday, but if not, it should be spinning later in the week. GM Mike Trowbridge filmed a video of themselves from outside Chair 5, in the middle of conditions checks, with Doug Grant.
“It’s pretty darn deep out here,” Trowbridge said, as he was predicting five feet of snowfall outside of Chair 8. “We’re going to try to open up as much of the mountain as we can for you, as soon as we can.”
There are eight chairlifts and two rope tows that service 1,000 acres of snowboarding and skiing at Mt. Baker. The ski area boasts a vertical drop of 1,500 feet.
Photo: Judith Dixon/Getty Images
Mt. Baker has an average yearly snowfall of 688 inches, according to its website. Back in the 1998-1999 season, the ski area received 1,140 inches of snowfall. That has since been verified by NOAA as the World Record of snowfall during a single winter season.
“I swear to God, our locals got to the point where they dialed the snow phone, and if there wasn’t more than 10 inches of new snow, they wouldn’t go,” Howat told The Seattle Times in an interview recalling the historic winter. “For those who were on skis and snowboards, it was the winter of a lifetime,”
Snow showers are predicted from Monday through Wednesday, with 18 inches of snowfall projected. Thursday is expected to be cloudy, then the snowfall will start back up again Friday, with 4 inches coming. Another 9 inches is in the forecast for Saturday.