Heavy Snow Revives New Zealand’s Ruapehu Resort; Banff, Alberta Reports First Snowfall Of The Season; + Low Sunspot Count

Heavy Snow Revives New Zealand’s Ruapehu Resort

New Zealand’s Ruapehu ski field has been blasted with healthy dumpings of snow. Record snow, in fact, has crowned the North Island mountain, according to 1news.co.nz: Ruapehu is boasting the world’s deepest snow base, at 2.55cm (8.4ft).

This is a stark turnaround from events last year when the resort was closed due to a severe bout of ‘global boiling’ — a closure which was effectively on course to liquidate the business until the NZ government stepped in with a $5 million “lifeline”.

Looking forward, Ruapehu Chief Operating Officer Travis Donaghue said the best days of the season are yet to come.

“We’ll keep rolling that title out [World’s Deepest Snow Base] for a while yet, we have a long season to come. It runs right through to Labour weekend so we’re not yet halfway,” said Donaghue.

“We tend to have great conditions later in the year when we don’t see as many frosts so this base will set us up perfectly.”


Skiers are also returning to the slopes.

Hotel owner Ben Tuck said he was booked up for the season: “Compared to last year, we were only a quarter full, and to now have every weekend full is just outstanding, very grateful,” he said of the swing between extremes.

TCB ski-shop owner Ben Wiggins said this past month has been a huge relief for Ohakune businesses: After four years of doing it tough with tourist numbers and weather, this was special,” said Wiggins. “Not only do we have the business relief, but we also have the relief of coming up and shredding on all this snow. We’re all up here enjoying it and the town is enjoying it as well.”

After the recent wobbles of Covid and the liquidation process, all mountain lovers are stoked to have things back in balance, concludes the reports1news.co.nz article.


Banff, Alberta Reports First Snowfall Of The Season

The memory of North America’s truly historic winter of 2022/23 is still fresh, yet already a myriad of mountains have received their first snows of the new season; the most recent addition being Sunshine Village Ski Area, in Banff, Alberta.

The Village uploaded the season’s first flakes to Instagram:


Banff is home to three world-class resorts: Sunshine VillageLake Louise, and Mount Norquay, which together are known as the “Big Three.”  The former, Sunshine Village, is known for attracting snowboarders from around the world due to the plentiful volumes of natural snow that the area receives which typically builds from early-November to late-May.

Does this early snow mean a cold and snowy winter is on the cards?

The Farmer’s Almanac seems to think so, with its calls of well-below average temperatures and significant snowfalls:

Canada’s 2023/24 Winter Outlook is a cold one [Farmers’ Almanac].


The Almanac predicts a story for south of the border, too, for the United States:

An unseasonably cold/wet forecast suggests an ‘active’ winter for many Americans.


For more:


Low Sunspot Count

Over the weekend, an M1-class solar flare near the Sun’s eastern limb hurled a coronal mass ejection (CME) toward Mars.

NASA modeling suggests the Red Planet will be hit on Friday, September 1:


The impact could spark ultraviolet auroras and erode a small amount of the Martian atmosphere, writes Dr Tony Phillips of spaceweather.com.

Looking elsewhere over the Earth-facing solar disk, other than sunspot AR3415, which posses a ‘beta-delta’ magnetic field that harbors energy for additional M-class solar flares, there really isn’t much to speak of.

Solar Cycle 25 has, at times, impressed when compared to its predecessor, the historically weak SC24. But for an approaching solar maximum, which most solar physicists have determined will arrive early, in 2024, this isn’t exactly ‘all cylinders firing’:

[SDO/HMI]


Solar Cycle 26 is where I’ve long contended the ‘chill of solar minimum’ will begin. An uneventful fizzling out of SC25 will only add support to this.


Today’s other article:

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