Weather Data

Opening Days, Powder Days, Bluebird Days, Groomer Days, and Closing Days are all vocabularly conditioned into skier's and snowboarder's minds. These words describe the starting, closing, and type of day one would expect given time of year and conditions on a mountain. Needless to say, these are synonymous with the weather on a given day or sequence of days. Although resort goers are most interested in new snow and total snow depth, variables like wind speed, visibility, and UV Index are important considerations when planning a trip. Additionally, factors like temperature, humidity, and pressure are important for the presence of snow. In summary, the following variables were considered when finding a dataset:

• Temperature
• Precipitation
• Snowfall
• Snowdepth
• Humidity
• Pressure
• Wind Speed
• Solar Relevance

Ideally, a source providing this information on a daily basis across the majority of a given list of resorts would satisfy requirements.

Fortunately, [visualcrossing] offers API access to decades of weather data, and is robust enough to provide daily records at practically any coordinate location.

The API aggregates information across thousands of weather stations to provide these records. Subsequently, not only weather data can be returned, but also information about the stations.

Aquiring the Data

See [Source - Weather] for the Python code used to access the API.