The East Coast Had a Historically Turbulent Ski Season. What Happened?

The East Coast’s 2023-2024 ski season can only be described as a roller coaster. In certain parts of the season, storm after storm dumped massive amounts of snow, leading to periods of near-record high snow depths. However, for each massive snowstorm that hit the East Coast this season, there was a seemingly equally powerful washout, which for many resorts repeatedly set their base back to zero. While some resorts looked like they were going to have to throw in the towel back in February, as of the first week of May, some of those same resorts are still open — and might even extend their seasons through a good chunk of the month.

So what happened this year, and was the 2023-24 season a good time to be an East Coast skier? In this article, we’ll go through exactly how the East Coast’s ski season panned out from winter start to winter end, and we’ll highlight some of the biggest factors that made it both one of the best — and worst — ski seasons in recent memory. Let’s jump in.

Especially in Northern Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, the East Coast saw one of the best early-season starts in the past ten years.

Part 1: Record-Breaking Early Season

Let’s start with the beginning of the season, and even in the first few weeks of resort operations, the East Coast’s turbulence was already on display.

November of 2023 was one of the best early starts on record — at least if you happened to be in Northern Vermont. The earliest mountains to open in this region began operations around Thanksgiving weekend, as they do in a typical year, and this opening featured the usual early-season coverage with most resorts having just a few trails open on purely snowmaking coverage. However, only a week later a massive storm swept through the region, blanketing the Green and White Mountains in snow reaching over a foot at many northern resorts. That said, this storm was feast or famine depending very heavily on geography, with resorts in the northern Greens reaching almost two feet of snowfall while areas just a few hours south received far more mixed accumulations, with rain washing out a lot of their gains. Although most resorts in the Poconos did not have their opening dates set until well into December in many cases, this storm cycle was not a good start to their snow base. Where precipitation did occur in November in the Catskills, Berkshire, and further south, it fell only as rain. 

Come December, the disparity between the northern Northeast and everywhere else on the East Coast became even more pronounced — but only for a short period of time. The snowiest resorts of the Greens, particularly Jay Peak and Stowe, had one of the best seasons for early December skiing in the last decade. With almost three feet of snow falling between the last week of November and the first week of December, resorts such as Stowe and Sugarbush were able to open expert terrain that’s typically sporadically open even in the core season — and hardly ever open before late January in a typical year. A similar story occurred for many of the mountains in the northern Greens and Quebec’s Laurentian and Sutton mountains, with unseasonably early terrain openings a regular occurrence. For a period of a few weeks from late November through the middle of December, the resorts of northern Vermont had some of the best snow coverage in the entire country, outmatched only by the resorts of the Cottonwoods.

At least initially, the further south you went, the less of these storms’ precipitation came down as snow. For the resorts of southern Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, many areas saw mixed rain and snow from these storms, leading to less-than-ideal conditions. And in the Catskills, Poconos, and Mid-Atlantic, conditions for the most part were not all that great for the opening days that were scattered throughout early December. However, some pretty significant natural snow did occur in these lower parts of the Northeast around the second week of the month, making for actually pretty good conditions for a time — and in some cases, unseasonably so. Around mid-December, the ski season looked to be on the up and up just about everywhere in the Northeast.

A freak rainstorm wreaked havoc on the Northeast in mid-December, resetting many resorts’ snow bases back to near-zero just before the crucial holiday period.

Part 2: December Disaster

However, after an unprecedented great start to the ski season for the East Coast, disaster struck suddenly. And when we say suddenly, it’s no exaggeration.

Coming just a week before the holiday season, a massive, abnormally warm stormfront brought torrential rainfall over the entire East Coast. While just about everywhere was affected, the resorts of northern Vermont and Maine saw multiple inches of rain from this storm, washing away almost all of the snow that had blanketed these resorts earlier in the month. For many, if not most areas, this was a reset to absolute zero, leaving few trails open and causing some resorts to close down entirely for days as they rebuilt their snowpack. 

This storm was disastrous for many ski areas outside of its devastating effects on the snowpack as well. In Vermont, this was the second generational-level flood event in just 2023, with a storm only six months prior having already caused major damage to the state’s infrastructure. Given hardly any time to recover, many parts of Vermont were left economically devastated by this storm, with many smaller independent resorts struggling to cover their expenses. In Maine, flood waters swept away the access road to Sunday River entirely, leaving the resort cut off and forcing them to shut their doors until the rain stopped and repairs could be made.

And if this catastrophic flooding wasn’t bad enough, it couldn’t have come at a worse time. Taking place hardly a week before the December holidays, resorts were left scrambling to meet demand for the holiday period — especially after the earlier weeks had been so promising. Typically, the week from Christmas to New Years is one of the highest, if not the highest weeks for visitation at most major ski resorts, particularly for those within driving range of cities. In December 2023 after the flooding, resorts across the region were struggling to even make enough snow to open at all, and matching the demand of the holiday crowds just a week later was a nearly insurmountable task, leaving many areas high and dry on what is usually one of their most profitable weeks of the season. 

East Coast ski resorts struggled to rebuild their snow bases following the massive December washout.

Part 3: January and February Slump

Following the massive washout of December, expectations were fairly tempered across the East Coast moving into January and February. But unfortunately, broadly below average snow patterns did nothing to up the stoke. In the northern Northeast, snow did not come again until late into January, with many forecasted storms trending warmer and further south. When the snow did come, it was often followed by an almost cruel stretch of unseasonably warm periods which degraded snow surfaces and significantly melted the snowpack, especially in lower elevation areas. These variable temperatures also made snowmaking difficult for the resorts reliant upon it, leading to variable openings in what would usually be the most consistent periods for many resorts. Even at the typically snowy mountains of the northern Green Mountains, many resorts saw terrain never or rarely open that had been entirely covered before the washout.

For the resorts south of Vermont, particularly in the Poconos, things remained dire throughout the bulk of the core season. Many of these resorts rely almost entirely on snowmaking to provide trail coverage, meaning they are reliant on consistently cold temperatures to retain their snowpack. Variable, often warm temperatures made snowmaking difficult, with frequent periods in which temperatures stayed above freezing overnight — which made snowmaking impossible and left some trails totally bare even into February. Some cold stretches finally came in February, but at that point much of the season had been lost. 

One notable exception for the southeast was in parts of West Virginia. Resorts such as Timberline and Snowshoe, which regularly see exceptional snow totals for the Southeast region due to high elevation and a unique geographical position, saw a few major snow events during their core season that either came too far south to benefit the resorts of the Poconos or fell there as rain. If you lived in the Philadelphia or Washington D.C areas this season, these mountains were probably your only bet for natural snow skiing.

Late March and early April brought a significant reversal of fortunes for the resorts that held out.

Part 4: March Miracle (For Resorts That Survived)

For most resorts across the northeast, the month of March began as a similar story to January and February. Sporadic snowfall and variable temperatures defined the first half of March for most of the region, and for the resorts of the Poconos and Mid-Atlantic — which were already suffering from a difficult season — this meant closing their doors for the year. This was a particularly tough time almost everywhere on the East Coast, and many resorts, even in Vermont, Maine, and Quebec, were left wondering whether they would be in true skiable condition past mid-March. 

However, if you happened to live in the northernmost parts of the Northeast, suddenly, waiting through a lackluster core season started to pay off. Starting in mid-March and continuing through the first week of April, storm after storm dropped multiple feet of snow on the northeast, bringing the snow bases across the region to their highest points of the entire season by far, dramatically outcompeting the usually snowy months of January and February. At some resorts, the snow stake read base totals up to two feet higher in the first week of April than they had at any time in the core season. Skiing the late season in the Northeast was about as good as it gets east of the Mississippi River, especially for those who found themselves able to make it to the snowiest mountains of the region. These storms came so strong and so late that some resorts pushed their tentative closing dates back from late March to nearly the end of April, with a few resorts such as Jay Peak and Killington likely to continue well into May and beyond. 

And we can’t close out a 2023-2024 East Coast analysis without mentioning the April 8 solar eclipse. The region’s late-season storms decidedly saved the one-of-kind experience for mountains that were in the direct path of the total eclipse, allowing resorts such as Sugarloaf, Stowe, and Jay Peak to keep their slopes open — and in good condition — for this once-in-a-lifetime experience. In many ways, the eclipse marked an incredible and decidedly unorthodox end to what had been an incredible and decidedly unorthodox season.

The East Coast’s late-season storms made skiing and riding possible during the once-in-a-generation April 8, 2024 solar eclipse.

Final Thoughts

Was This Season Normal?

So was the 2023-2024 East Coast season typical of what you’d find from the region? Well, yes and no. This year exhibited some of the usual positive and negative traits of the region, but to much more extreme extents, and at decidedly irregular times.

Key Takeaways: Early and Mid-Season

In the Northeast, snow started out far earlier and more plentiful than it has in a very long time, with some resorts seeing record high snow totals for a period in late November and early December. It is safe to say that the early season experience in the Northeast was the best it's been in the last five years, falling short of only the phenomenal 2018-2019 season for base depths in the past decade.

However, December’s massive rain event was uncharacteristic both in size and in timing, to say the least. Rain is not uncommon for the East Coast even in the coldest months, and December is still usually considered early season skiing for the East, but the storm that struck the region in mid December was unusually devastating, particularly for the regions already impacted by this summer’s floods. And while temperatures are frequently variable in the mountains south of Vermont throughout a typical core season, this year saw far more frequent extended periods of above freezing temperatures throughout the entire Northeast — even up in the northern Greens. For resorts reliant on snowmaking, this made operations very difficult — and some resorts in the Mid-Atlantic almost never saw snow coverage that could be called good at any point in the season. If this repeats in the 2024-2025 season, skiing as a whole in the Catskills and below could be in for a serious crisis. 

Key Takeaways: Late Season

March and April brought welcome relief from a relatively low-snow core season — and finally allowed many resorts to fully recover from the torrential rainstorm that had happened three months ago at that point. In the past few years, it has been a regular occurrence for March to be the snowiest month in the Northeast over February, but this season was still a particular outlier. Based on the trend of the last few decades, one might gather that the best months for snowfall in the Northeast look to be shifting later. But while the beginning and late ends of the season were the best bets this year, just the opposite could be true next winter, and if there’s one thing for certain, booking an in-advance trip anywhere on the East Coast these days seems like a risky proposition.

Considering a ski trip to the East Coast this winter? Check out our ski resort rankings and reviews for the region. Additionally, you can check out our Vermont rankings in video form below.