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Winter Pays a Spring Visit to the High Country with a Weekend of Snow

Beech Mountain Sunday morning at 10:00 am

By Harley Nefe

The first day of spring was March 20, but that doesn’t mean winter weather was ready to go! Folks across the High Country were able to experience some April flurries over the weekend, with different areas receiving various amounts of snow.

According to Ray’s Weather Center, between Friday and Saturday, Boone received trace amounts of snow at night totaling about .5 inches. However, in areas of higher elevations such as Sugar Mountain, the amounts totaled more like 5 inches. 

Fred Pfohl of Fred’s General Mercantile reported that the top of Beech Mountain received almost 8 inches. 

“It was an interesting weekend,” Pfohl said. “Everybody said we were going to get snow.”

It seems like a lot of people were looking forward to the weather including two chief meteorologists, Van Denton of channel 8 in High Point and Eric Thomas of channel 3 in Charlotte. Eric Thomas recently retired after 33 years at WBTV on January 1st. 

“Van Denton called me on Wednesday, and he said, ‘Fred, you’re going to get a heck of a lot of snow this weekend,’” Pfohl recalled. “He was looking at the weather models and everything, and he’s good friends with Eric Thomas. So, they got together and came up for the weekend because they wanted to see the snow and enjoy it.”

Van Denton and Eric Thomas both shared pictures and videos of their weekend on each of their Facebook pages. One of the videos posted is of Eric Thomas attempting the sledding hill on Beech Mountain. He captioned the video, “What you did not see is some other children challenged me to a race, and I lost every time!”

Fred Pfohl said that Van Denton and Eric Thomas have been in the area for two days enjoying the snow. Many residents and visitors throughout the area had that same idea in mind as well.

“It was great,” Pfohl said. “Everyone was in good spirits. In fact, we sold a bunch more sleds. We put our sleds in the warehouse this past week, and we had to bring them out again. It was nice! Even though they didn’t make any snow on the sledding hill, they didn’t need to.”

The 8 inches of snow Beech Mountain received added to the total snow report for the winter 2021-2022 season.

“We had over 50-60 inches for the season now, thanks to this last one especially,” Pfohl said. 

According to Ray’s Weather Center, Sugar Mountain has received 56.7″ of ice and snow throughout the season, whereas Boone totaled 22.5”. 

This isn’t the first time the High Country has experienced snow in April. Last year, the area received some trace amounts of flurries on April 1, April 21 and even on May 7 on Beech Mountain. 

When asked if there will be any more snow this season, Fred Pfohl responded with, “Well, I don’t know. You never can tell, but I’ve told people this is the last big one, so they better enjoy it while it’s here. We didn’t have many times this whole winter where we had this much snow, but it was a great winter all together for us. Now it’s time to turn the page to spring and summer now, and we’re anxious to!”

Photos taken Sunday Morning by Ken Ketchie

Outside of Boone
Back road near Boone
Flowers a little beat up with the snow
App State Campus
Boone area off Poplar Grove Road

Invershield near Banner Elk

Sugar Mountain ski slopes covered in snow again
Wind blowing on the top of Beech Mountain
View from Beech Mountain
Top of Beech Mountain
Morning driving on Beech Mountain
Quite a bit of snow on Beech Mountain
Snow drifts on Beech a number of feet deep
Fred Pfohl on his way to Church for Palm Sunday Services

View looking down from Beech Mountain Parkway

Beech Mountain from the Food Lion parking lot