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The ski industry's effort to spin the weather has been around for years. In December of 1980, a season of dismal snowfall, I visited some friends in Breckenridge. On the radio I heard there was a 32-inch base.
Their hillside home on the east side of town provided a fine view of some ski runs, and on the valley floor I could see sagebrush -- most of each plant, and sagebrush are about a yard high. I's have been surprised if there was more than a foot of snow on the ground.
"How can they claim they've got 32 inches?" I asked my friend, who worked at the ski area (he had been the Silverthorne police chief until he got fired for using too many big words in his reports).
"It's easy," he said. "They lie."
Another industry weather spin works like this: The powder is falling abundantly on the slopes, but miraculously, the highways to the high country are clear.
Leadville writer Steve Voynick explored this angle years ago in a hilarious piece that appeared in the Denver Post; it was later reprinted in the little magazine I then published, Colorado Central.
It's available on-line at: link
So I don't have a bit of trouble believing Bob's account of events. He did some free-lance work for our magazine, and I found him to be an honest and conscientious writer.
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