Exaggerated snow reports a thing of the past?

Just noticed this article in msnbc...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35146100/ns/travel-active/

Some areas are not regularly updated on SkiReport.com, especially some smaller European locations, so not that much value?

I wouldn't share their optimism that people with iPhones are going to make this better not worse though :D You see some howlingly inaccurate reports if you read around.

I'd think the ski stations quoted in the article have it about right, there's little incentive for them to exaggerate repeatedly, as economists the two guys ought to have explained what incentives they thought existed to repeatedly over-estimate snow. It's presumably a longer paper so I would imagine they must have done that.

I can't say in Europe I've ever noticed official snow reports being consistently inaccurate, I have noticed snow reports from practically every other source being wrong though. Some years back I was on a ski bus while someone phoned in a snow report, he neither overstated nor understated the snow systematically but it was just the report was wrong in every other detail.

There is a problem that the people writing reports use language, I means terms and phrasing, that mean something specific which is then misunderstood by the average skier; they could try a bit harder there.

You also have to feel for the ski stations, the reports posted for Alpe d'huez on J2SKI recently were a case in point, the official reports were absolutely fantastic, the best I've seen in France if not anywhere in the world and then along came a spamvertising website who scraped the content off and butchered it beyond all recognition. If you're just someone going on holiday I'm not sure how you're supposed to tell the difference unless you can just look at it and know it's wrong, it's not a lot better than than phishing emails really, in fact it's the same in many ways.

ise wrote:


You also have to feel for the ski stations, the reports posted for Alpe d'huez on J2SKI recently were a case in point, the official reports were absolutely fantastic, the best I've seen in France if not anywhere in the world and then along came a spamvertising website who scraped the content off and butchered it beyond all recognition. If you're just someone going on holiday I'm not sure how you're supposed to tell the difference unless you can just look at it and know it's wrong, it's not a lot better than than phishing emails really, in fact it's the same in many ways.

The above para reads as though you consider J2ski to be a "spamvertising website" whatever that is. If that is not the case I really believe you should make early clarification to avoid offence.

Clearly I don't mean this site and I'm not going to promote the other site any further by linking to it.

ise wrote:Clearly I don't mean this site and I'm not going to promote the other site any further by linking to it.

Thanks for clarifying that ise. :D