Skiing Yet?
The question I get almost daily is, "When are you going to start skiing?" The start of the ski season is not in sight for the Pacific Northwest. We're still having unseasonably warm temps, and what little snow is in the mountains is almost gone. Thanksgiving is usually an optimistic date to ski around Seattle. Christmas is more realistic guideline for expecting most runs to be open.
This year is predicted to be neither El Nino or La Nina which means it's unpredictable. Nice cop out, eh? One happy skiing meteorologist looked back in history to years with comparable Pacific ocean temps and found that the 5 most similar years were huge snow years that either started late or ended early.
If you live around here and you really can't wait, Whistler is still planning to open at Thanksgiving, but they'll only have a few runs at the top of the mountain open. You can also catch a few runs down in Oregon or across the Cascades at Mission Ridge.
UPDATE: Here's the full article that I reference about previous weather conditions: http://blog.traveloregon.com/2008/11/07/wheres-the-snow-drew-jacksons-got-you-covered/