What a season we have had at Hotham with Mother Nature throwing her usual circus of tricks at us…
With a solid snowmaking base on the ground at the end of July, keen skiers and boarders prayed for Mother Nature to behave and bring us some of the powder we all longed for… and that she did in August! An epic 47cm of fresh snowflakes fell overnight on the 26 August – the biggest single snow dump we have seen at Hotham since 2003. Many locals and well travels skiers described this as the best quality snow they had ever seen in Australia.
The huge August snowfalls brought a total of 227cm of natural snow falling over the month. This was not only the snowiest August, but the snowiest single month we have seen since 1992!
Great natural snowfalls set us up for a fabulous spring with Blue Ribbon running through until September 14 and Gotcha, Keogh’s and Orchard until September 24 – a fantastic result for areas which rely solely on natural snow coverage.
Hotham’s snowmaking team had 22 brand new Techno Alpin snowguns to play with in 2010 bringing our total to 77, and they worked hard throughout the season to produce a huge 424,417 cubic metres of snow (the equivalent of 42,442 truckloads of snow). For those of you who were watching Saturdays Grand Final, that’s enough to bury the surface of the MCG 21 metres deep in snow. There would be no goal posts to be seen at this depth – and a lot of cold spectators!
The new guns created 40% greater snowmaking capacity and allowed our snowmakers to produce a massive 114% more snow than in 2009. This was also aided by record cold temperatures. Hotham’s coldest temperature recorded for the season was -7.6 degrees on both 25 August and 8 September.
This season was significantly colder than last season with the average minimum temperature at -3.6 degrees and average maximum temperature at only 0.6 degrees, compared to -2.9 and 1.2 degrees respectively for 2009. This season’s average minimum temperature is lower than both the 5 and 20 year averages.
Hotham closed lift operations for the 2010 season yesterday afternoon with a total of 6 lifts operating for keen skiers and boarders to enjoy final spring turns. Heavenly Valley Chairlift was operating right through until the end of the season offering access to some of Hotham’s signature terrain areas.
Thank you to all who came to visit us this year. We hope you enjoyed your holiday and hope to see you on the slopes again in 2011.
Happy turns!
03 October 2010
RSS Feed
