Monday night I got the call from my brother-in-law letting me know that he would not be joining me for skiing Wednesday. He had heard the weather forecast and decided it would be too cold.
Tuesday morning, I watched the weather and the announcer was telling us to stay inside unless we absolutely had to go out. Just when we get the kind of temperatures that are perfect for making plenty of snow, some couch potato on TV is telling us to stay in.
Tuesday morning they even had someone on to tell us the dangers of frostbite. What do you suppose they would say if I told her in 20 years of ski patrolling I had never seen a case of frostbite? And there were some days when temperatures were far below what we saw this week.
One day in particular comes to mind. I wasn’t patrolling that day, but I was out on the mountain taking pictures of some our finest young women in a Nor-Am downhill at Sugarloaf. Chip Carey, then handling press relations, and I had positioned ourselves in the sun and out of the wind below the Snowbowl on Narrow Gauge. The actual temperature that day was minus-25. I don’t know what the wind added, but I do know that we could only shoot once as each racer went past. If we tried to advance the film quickly it would break, and motor drives just ate up the cold film.
At one point I had gone to the top and stopped by the patrol shack at the top of Spillway to get warm. As we sat there, the lift stopped.
Unlike us taking pictures sheltered from the wind, those chairs were totally exposed and the girls were in their downhill suits without warm-ups. When the lift started after more than 20 minutes the girls came crowding into that lift shack. They had been exposed to high winds for more than 20 minutes at 25 below zero and we checked any exposed skin for signs of frostbite. Some had white spots, a sign of frost nip and impending frostbite, but none suffered anything that couldn’t be fixed by simply getting in out of the cold and warming up. Sugarloaf’s own Gail Blackburn, who won that race, later told me she had two full sets of long johns and tops under her downhill suit.
It was cold, but we all survived, even the girls in their downhill suits.
If the Tuesday morning newscast was right, we should have all suffered from frostbite and hypothermia. So, who should we believe, the weather doom guys or our own experience?
Let’s start by putting the wind chill in perspective. First it is a measure of the effects of the wind and cold on exposed flesh. How much of that do we see on skiers in heavy parkas and warm ups with helmets and facemasks? Virtually none.
One well known mountain climber summed it up: “There is no bad weather, only poor clothing.”
Apparently our local TV weather folks are unaware that the famous wind chill chart was totally revised in 2001 because the original methodology was unrealistic. The effects of the wind at low temperatures were measured on a plastic jug of water suspended 30 feet in the air. Going into the new methodology isn’t important, but the results are.
Where the old chart mentioned frostbite occurring in seconds, the quickest time on the new chart is five minutes, and that is warned about only when actual temperatures are at least minus 10 and the wind is hitting 60 mph producing wind chills of minus 48 or lower. At the temperatures and wind speeds we had this past week it would take 30 minutes to experience frostbite. Even a novice skier can find shelter on most of Maine’s ski mountains in a matter of 10-15 minutes.
I ignored my brother in law’s fears and headed for Shawnee Peak on Wednesday. The temperature was 15 degrees, the sun was out and the wind almost nonexistent. It was a perfect day to ski and the snow coming from the tower guns along the trails was so dry it didn’t stick to the goggles or parka when skiing through it.
I talked with GM Ed Rock and learned that some of the schools that were scheduled for the afternoon had called and canceled due to the forecasts. The kids missed a great day as did anyone like my brother-in-law who stayed in because of the forecast. I also learned that the night before, when it was considerably colder, 170 young women racers were on the mountain for a race. They started at 5 p.m. and Ed watched as they spent two or three hours on the course, riding the lift or waiting their turn.
Those girls in 5th, 6th and 7th grades handled the cold just fine, but the forecasters are telling us to stay in unless it’s absolutely necessary that we go out.
That day at Shawnee Peak, as Ed and I sat in Blizzard’s having lunch, there was just one other couple there. It should have been at least half full on such a perfect day to ski. The same was true of the rest of the lodge. The crowd simply wasn’t there.
It’s winter in Maine and here’s nothing unusual about temperatures in the teens and even single digits. I wonder if it occurs to the doom-and-gloom weather folks that there many businesses in Maine that count on snow and every time they scare potential customers away, those businesses hurt. It’s time they lightened up and stopped sensationalizing the weather forecast.
See you on the slopes, no matter how cold it gets.
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