For much of the northern hemisphere, this winter has been a veritable snowpocalypse. In North America, snowfall records have been tumbling from sea to shining sea. At the Whistler Blackcomb ski resort in British Columbia, the season got off to a dream start with 384cm of fresh snow in December – just a shade over the long-standing December record of 380cm, set all the way back in 1994. There were huge numbers recorded at resorts all the way down the Rocky Mountain chain and in the Sierra Nevada too, notably at Squaw Valley in California, which was hammered by a record-breaking 800cm of snow in February. Even the usually fickle east coast resorts have had a good year, thanks to the polar vortex conditions that paralysed much of the Midwest in late January and early February.
