Cold weather has allowed ski areas to open in Colorado, the MidWest and New England over the past 48 hours, taking the number of ski areas open in the northern hemisphere past the 20 mark and moving the US in to second place behind Austria in terms of 'country with the most areas already open.'
Wild Mountain in Minnesota opened for Halloween last Thursday, joining Arapahoe Basin in Colorado, which has been open a fortnight and Timberline ski area on Mt Hood in Oregon which remains open more than 10 months of the year.
A second Colorado area, Loveland, which is often first to open in the state and had been snowmaking on and off throughout October finally managed to open on Saturday (Nov 1).
In New England many ski areas report starting up their snowmaking systems but Sunday River in Maine (pictured above) is believed to be the first to announce it will open in a few hours' time for a six month pus season.
It is a slightly mixed picture in the US however as Keystone in Colorado, which had planned to open last Friday, has postponed opening due to the previously warm weather hampering snowmaking. Copper Mountain also delayed opening on the same date for the same reason but hopes to open this coming weekend.
Meanwhile heavy snowfall has been reported in California and Utah and snowmaking systems have also been fired up there. California will be particularly keen to get a good start to the winter after a very lacklustre 2013-14 season.