SAM Magazine—Dover, Vt., Dec. 19, 2023—Several inches of rain fell across most of New England Sunday into Monday, causing many ski areas to temporarily suspend operations due to the heavy precipitation and high winds or significant local flooding, or both. According to early reports, damage to resort infrastructure appears to be limited. Damage assessment is ongoing at several resorts in New Hampshire and Maine, which appear to have gotten the brunt of it. 

Maine

Sunday River, Maine, closed due to weather on Monday, Dec. 18, and will remain closed as resort personnel continue to assess the damage caused by the 5 inches of rain that fell “in a short period of time,” the resort’s mountain report said. The next update will be published at 1 p.m., Dec. 20.

While the resort has not confirmed the extent of the damage yet, videos and images on social media tell some of the story. The bridge/culvert at the entryway to the Grand Summit Hotel appears to have been washed away, a mudslide appears to have crashed into the Gould Academy building at the Barker base area, and there appear to be washouts widespread around the resort’s base areas, including South Ridge. 

Sugarloaf also paused operations today to assess damage. Route 27 was closed from Kingfield south of Sugarloaf up to the Canadian border as of mid-Tuesday afternoon. “Rain fell and it fell hard, causing damage to roadways and infrastructure both on mountain and around campus,” the resort said in its online mountain report. Sugarloaf plans to share an operational plan later today.

Nearby Saddleback will remain closed for a few days, according to spokesperson PJ McSparran, who said the road leading to the base lodge was damaged but there wasn’t much damage on the mountain. McSparran hoped snowmaking operations would resume tonight.

On the coast of Maine, Camden Snow Bowl had to push back its planned opening date to Tuesday, Dec. 26, saying in a social media post that “Monday's rains did a number on the snow our snowmakers made last week.” The ski area plans to fire up again on Thursday. 

Snow Bowl also gave a shout out to its fellow Maine ski areas: “We also want to send positive energy to the good folks at Sunday River especially, but to all Maine's ski mountains, as they assess damage and make necessary repairs to get back on their feet.”

Ski Maine executive director Dirk Gouwens said that, as of midday Tuesday, most resorts are waiting for the water to go down so they can do proper assessments, but he hadn’t heard any reports of on-mountain damage yet, mostly damage to roads. 

New Hampshire

In New Hampshire, the town of Lincoln at the base of Loon Mountain received about 3.7 inches of rain in 24 hours, causing some damage locally. Loon VP of marketing Kevin Bell said the resort paused operations yesterday due to the weather, and remained closed today so that staff and other local residents could tend to recovery efforts, and so the mountain could drain. 

Despite all the rain, though, the resort fared OK and will reopen Wednesday with the same amount of terrain it closed with after snowmaking resumes tonight, said Bell, who also noted the Loon team has been able to lend a hand in the community where needed since recovery work at the resort was limited.

Waterville Valley, Cranmore, Wildcat, and Attitash were all closed today as they assessed their mountains and planned to provide updates on operations. 

Cranmore said it plans to reopen on Wednesday. “Our Valley saw a lot of flooding and road closures, but the water seems to be receding now,” said GM Ben Wilcox. “We did okay considering.”

“Having new buildings and drainage in our base area really made a difference, and the buildings all fared well,” he added. The resort lost some snow and experienced trail wash-out in a few areas, but with snowmaking starting up again tonight, said Wilcox, the mountain hopes to be back to offering skiing and riding off the summit by the weekend. 

Vermont

Vermont experienced what some are calling its second 100-year flood in the last six months, after a deluge on July 10 dropped upwards of 8 inches of rain and caused widespread flooding from which many areas are still recovering. 

This week’s storm produced between 2 and 3 inches of rain across the state. Coupled with snowmelt, several rivers crested to record-high levels and many of the same towns that flooded in July were underwater again. Similar to the July event, though, it appears that most ski areas escaped without catastrophic damage, other than to snowpack. 

Magic Mountain, which has been battling marginal temps and limited natural snowfall to get open for the season, lost a fair bit of the snow it had made, according to president Geoff Hatheway. The good news, he said, is there wasn’t any major damage to repair other than what the ski area still has remaining to fix from the July storm, and Magic will take advantage of every snowmaking window it can to rebuild the snowpack that was lost and get open as soon as possible. 

Massachusetts

In Massachusetts, Wachusett Mountain COO Carolyn Stimpson said “buckets of rain” fell, totaling about 4 inches, but damage was limited thanks to the “herculean efforts” of her team to manage runoff. 

“Sadly, we know this fire drill well by now,” she said, referencing two other major rain events the resort has endured since June. Stimpson joked that the snowmaking hose was getting as much work in reverse to pump water out and away from its lodges as it was making snow on the hill.

That, of course, is impossible, given the power and capacity of Wachusett’s snowmaking system, similar to most resorts in the Northeast that have invested heavily in snowmaking in recent years. As the weather cools down once again, snowmaking will be back online with an eye toward the busy holiday week. 

As Cranmore said on social media: “It wouldn’t be a New England winter without a few hurdles.”