Does anyone have suggestions for the most reliable forecast for next week? We'd like to invite friends to join us at Wintergreen late next week, but from what I've seen the weather will be deteriorating. Also, would the weather be much different if we were to take a day trip up to Timberline?

How can you say night and day? Having done both mountains numerous times, and with the geography/elevation issues, I would say t-line would have whiter conditions. The NOAA site says snow on Christmas in the valley. It's pretty reliable, but check it prior to going. Also, the MOST RELIABLE site is whitegrass.com Chip does updates several times a day. The conditions there will mirror t-line's. My experience at Wintergreen is if it's wet, you ski in pea soup.

I would not go to WG next week. Even if conditions were good, it would be too crowded. I was there Wednesday 12/21 and it was already a zoo.

If you happen to run Mac OS X, you can try a free demo of my weather software which has some skier-specific features:

Wx weather software

I am able to use the longitude and latitude of WG to get a very detailed forecast and also use an elevation adjustment to compute snow quality. Next week does not look good, and it probably won't be cold enough to make snow at night even up on the mountain. I'm a bit worried. The season has been great thus far, but this warmup could set us back.

Craig