WARREN, Vt. -- Ever hit the slopes only to find 4 inches of fresh snow instead of the 8 you were promised? That may be because ski areas have exaggerated their snowfalls on weekends to entice skiers, according to a study by two Dartmouth College economics professors.
Jonathan Zinman and Eric Zitzewitz studied snow reports from 2004 to 2008 and compared them to area government weather stations. They found that ski resorts across the U.S. and Canada reported more fresh snow -- 23 percent more, on average -- on skier-coveted weekends than during the week.
The so-called "weekend effects" in snow reporting were larger for resorts with more expert terrain and within closer driving distance to populated areas, Zinman and Zitzewitz said.
The resorts question the findings. For one thing, they say, the government's weather stations aren't necessarily in the same snowy spots as the slopes. And they say overreporting snow does them no good if visitors find less snow than expected.
"If you do overreport and make a false promise, people show up and they just become angry that you lied to them and they won't come back," said JJ Toland, spokesman for Sugarbush Resort.
And in the age of camera phones, Twitter, blogs and other social media, they couldn't lie if they wanted to, the resorts say.
David Ilsley, 51, of Lexington, Mass., has skied all over the U.S. and finds that resorts in the East tend to exaggerate more than those in the West. Neither region exaggerates enough to harm the quality of the skiing, he said.
Zitzewitz and Zinman compared new natural snowfall reported by more than 400 ski areas to snow amounts reported by government weather stations.
Ski areas complain there can be big variations between the amount of snow at the mountain and the amount at a weather station in a different spot.
But that's not the point, Zitzewitz said. The average match weather station was 26 miles away and 160 feet below the summit in the East; in the West, it was 52 miles away and 280 feet below, he said.
"What we're finding is that the difference changes with the day of the week, and so that's got to be due to something man-made."
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