Meteorologist Tim Kelley didn’t discover skiing until he was an adult (“I mostly wanted to chase snowstorms to the top of mountains. And then discovered how fun it was to Ski,” he shared).

Now, as an avid, dedicated skier, his twitter account @SurfSkiWeather is worth following for any skier/rider who wants to not just keep up with but also understand the weather.

While the recent weather has been a downer, he said, better times are ahead – and not too far away.

“Canada is going to be wall to wall cold in about 10 days, with a direct dispatch from the North Pole to Canada; similar to what we saw around Halloween.”

The season, from that Halloween time until just days ago, he said, was tracking like the snowy winter of 2018. Using the UVM snow stake at Stowe, he said, up until Dec. 17, all looked on track to be a super snowy early season, setting us up for a great holiday week.

“And then on Monday the 18th, the world ended,” he said. That catastrophic storm caused massive flooding and damage at spots like Stowe, Sunday River, Jackson New Hampshire and more places.

Then last week, Kelley said, he witnessed what he believes may be “one of the warmest Nor’easters I remember in late December.”

But, he said, “there’s no such thing as average weather. Weather is about extremes,” and usually, things even out as the winter progresses. That’s what he sees happening here.

“Winter hasn’t disappeared,” he said, “It’s just not everywhere – yet. Greenland is crazy cold and China is too.”

That, he said, paired with the Canadian forecast of cold, could spell good things ahead. While the huge storms in the Pacific have come across the country quite warm (even high altitude western resorts are struggling), that one-two punch of moisture and energy, when it meets cold, means snow – and often lots of it.

Plus, he said, his long range does not look to include any crazy warm rain storms.

“We’re turning a corner and after this, it does not look like there’s a thaw or rain in the coming weeks,” he said.

Even if those weeks don’t include blizzards, ski resorts are well equipped to make snow – even in marginal weather.

They also know how to best maintain what the rain doesn’t take away.

“When temperatures don’t allow for snowmaking, we preserve our snowpack with altered grooming patterns, among other things, to manage conditions while we wait out the moderate weather. Once cool temps return, the team wastes no time in touching up existing trails while expanding to new terrain. Two solid nights of snowmaking is enough to add more trails to the mix,” explained Ed Kinney, director of mountain operations at Okemo Mountain Resort.

It’s also important, Kelley said, to remember we’ve seen worse and still recovered. Like that winter in 2015 when Mad River Glen produced that “Ski the patch” video.

“There was only two inches of snow on the top of Mount Washington at that point,” Kelley said. “So this now? It’s not that bad.”

Kelley looks forward to cold and snow – manmade or natural, particularly at his home mountain of Jay Peak, Vermont.

“When I ski there people yell off the lifts ‘Hey TK!’ So I guess they know me,” he said.