As much as Mike McKay pretends how "unusual" it is when we had snow in the forecast
for June, May, April, even March last year.. Or this past September, or THIS WEEKEND...
the fact is, our elevation leaves us open to off-season snow at times, unlike almost anywhere in the U.S.

Of all the major metropolitan areas in the country, just Salt Lake City and Denver stand out
as occasionally "snow prone" at "strange" times of the year. In fact, having grown up here
all your life, you may not realize just how odd it would be for let's say, normally cold Chicago to get snow in May or September. It just doesn't happen. They may keep it longer in the winter, but they can't get it off-season there!

Latest computer models are actually even more bullish towards a heavy mountain snow Friday late through Saturday evening, with some accumulation not out of the question in the valleys. It is too bad ski areas don't open this early. This will mark the 4th snow event since Sept. 23rd for the mountains.

There is an interesting reason why ski areas locally cannot and should not open too early: Unlike Eastern Resorts, OUR ski areas are used to getting so much mid winter snow, that the slopes often are rock-strewn. Not small rocks either. BOULDERS. In the East, most slopes are simply grass covered,and mainly rock-less. Since it snows less out there, they rely more heavily on man made snow, AND natural snow of a much lighter amount to cover the rockless terrain. I have to check which of our local areas has kept this in mind, I'm sure some of them thought this through as well :)  

Todd