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Live conditions at Big Powderhorn

What this page is reading

Everything on this page comes from a weather station on the hill itself, not from an airport thirty miles away. It reports air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, gusts, barometric pressure and precipitation, and it refreshes every few minutes. The embedded panel shows the current values along with the last day or so of history, so you can see whether it is warming through the morning or holding cold.

That distinction matters more here than it does in most places. Big Powderhorn sits a few miles from Lake Superior's south shore in what the region calls Big Snow Country, and lake-effect bands can be dumping on the mountain while the valley towns stay dry. A regional forecast smooths that out. A station on the hill does not.

The coloured status bar

The bar near the top of the page is a snowmaking readout, and it is the single most useful number on the site in early season. It takes the current temperature and humidity, calculates the wet-bulb temperature, and colours itself accordingly:

Green — Good: wet-bulb at or below 22 °F. Guns can run efficiently and lay down dry, durable snow.
Orange — Marginal: wet-bulb between 22 and 28 °F. Making snow is possible but slower and wetter.
Red — No Snowmaking: wet-bulb above 28 °F. Too warm; water would land as water.

Wet-bulb, not air temperature, is what governs snowmaking, because dry air lets water cool itself by evaporation as it flies. It can be 30 °F out and still perfectly good snowmaking weather if the air is dry enough. The wet-bulb page forecasts those windows hours ahead rather than reporting the current minute.

Reading the wind number

Wind direction here is given as the direction the wind is coming from, which is the convention every weather service uses. A northwest wind is blowing out of the northwest, which at Big Powderhorn means straight off Lake Superior — the direction that brings the lake-effect snow, and also the coldest wind chills on the exposed upper runs.

Big Powderhorn's lifts are nine Riblet double chairs, which are open to the weather in a way that a modern bubble six-pack is not. On a windy day the ride up is the coldest part of your run. The wind map shows how the next 48 hours are shaping up across the whole hill rather than at the single point this station sits on.

What a single station cannot tell you

One sensor is one spot. The summit runs colder and windier than the base village, tree-lined runs hold snow differently from open ones, and a squall can cross half the hill and miss the other half. Treat this page as ground truth for right now at one location, and use the National Weather Service forecast for the days ahead and the average-winter view for what a normal season looks like from November through April.

Common questions

How often does the Big Powderhorn weather station update?

Every few minutes. The embedded panel pulls current values plus recent history directly from the station on the mountain, so a page refresh gives you the latest reading rather than a cached regional summary.

Why does the page show a wet-bulb temperature instead of just the temperature?

Because wet-bulb is what decides whether the resort can make snow. Dry air lets water cool itself as it sprays, so snowmaking can run at air temperatures well above freezing when humidity is low. Wet-bulb captures temperature and humidity in one number.

Is this the temperature at the summit or the base?

It is one station on the mountain, not a summit-and-base pair. The summit generally runs colder and windier than the base village, so treat the reading as a reliable anchor rather than an exact figure for every point on the hill.

Big Powderhorn Weather Service: Now · Forecast · Wind · Wetbulb · Lake Effect · Average Winter · Live Cams · AFD Marquette · AFD Duluth

Part of Big Powderhorn Mountain Resort, N11375 Powderhorn Rd, Bessemer, Michigan. Forecasts are informational; confirm against on-mountain observations and official National Weather Service products before making safety decisions.