STOP IT!\u00a0 Yes, you!<\/p>\n
Stop thinking about calling in sick this morning and heading off to the nearest ski slopes.\u00a0 Wait until tomorrow.\u00a0 The snow will be better this weekend.\u00a0 Honest.<\/p>\n
At least, that’s what the guys at the ski resorts want you to believe.\u00a0 A study just released by Dartmouth reveals that ski resorts consistently report greater snowfall on Saturdays and Sundays than on weekdays.\u00a0 Could this be true?\u00a0 To find out, the study compared resort-reported conditions to government weather data.\u00a0 And what was uncovered was a blizzard of lies.\u00a0 Across the industry, resorts overstate their recent snowfall depth by an average of 23% on weekends, the days most critical to their success.\u00a0 Moreover, resorts that are within easy driving distance of major metropolitan areas – that have the most to gain by a fib – tend to inflate their numbers more than remote resorts.\u00a0 And can you guess who are the most grievous offenders?\u00a0 Resorts that don’t offer a money-back guarantee. Nice.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, the research also uncovered a new wrinkle in snow-reporting that’s working in skiers’ favor.\u00a0 Snowfall can vary wildly from area to area, even from mountain to mountain, and the only way to truly gauge local snowfall is to go take a look.\u00a0 That hasn’t been feasible before.\u00a0 But now, with cell phones and twitter, folks who are on the mountain or who live and work nearby can broadcast actual snow conditions as they happen.\u00a0 And it’s keeping the resorts honest.\u00a0 While the Dartmouth research was taking place, iPhone released an application that allows users to instantly report conditions on the ground.\u00a0 Immediately following the app’s release, the number of overstated snowfall reports fell significantly.\u00a0 And they fell differently at different ski resorts:\u00a0 those resorts with good iPhone signals were more truthful about snowfall than those with poor iPhone signals.\u00a0 Imagine that.\u00a0 Snow jobs, meet Steve Jobs.<\/p>\n
So OK, forget what we said at the beginning. Check your iPhone. If today’s a powder day, by all means blow off work. Go have a good time. But be warned: that technology can make for a great day playing hooky, but your boss can call you on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STOP IT!\u00a0 Yes, you! Stop thinking about calling in sick this morning and heading off to the nearest ski slopes.\u00a0 Wait until tomorrow.\u00a0 The snow will be better this weekend.\u00a0 Honest. At least, that’s what the guys at the ski resorts want you to believe.\u00a0 A study just released by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[320,622,1122,1133,1171],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-5","tag-dartmouth","tag-iphone","tag-ski","tag-snow-report","tag-steve-jobs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}