About

North Winds Weather

In 1975, when Tony Vazzano was a junior at Lyndon State College in Vermont, his forecasting mentor and professor joined a couple of other students to provide weather broadcasts for a radio station in northern Vermont. It wasn’t long before they had several radio clients in Vermont and needed someone to fill in on a couple of shifts. Tony stepped in at that point, and little time had passed before Sugarbush Ski Resort called to say that what they were hearing on the radio was more helpful than the private forecast they were paying a weather service for. They began forecasting for Sugarbush, and shortly after another ski area contacted them for service. Soon they formed a weather forecasting company, Sentry Weather.

Following graduation, a year later, Tony decided there were enough clients try to make a full-time business of the radio and ski forecasting, while his counterparts went into television broadcasting. He soon was off to Burlington, Vermont to open an office for Sentry Weather Services, Inc. Joe D’Aleo, the professor from Lyndon, was still very much involved and a couple of students from the college helped fill in radio shifts. Radio stations and ski areas comprised most of the clientele, and within a couple of seasons Tony was forecasting for a dozen mountains and several radio stations across northern New England and eastern New York.

With teletypes and thermal facsimile machines soon to be replaced by computers, Tony looked to merge the business with a similar one that a former professor had started in his home. In 1979 he joined New England Weather in Center Harbor, New Hampshire. Ski areas and radio stations were still the core of the business. A few years later, Tony left with most of his original clients, and launched North Winds Weather in 1983 from his home in Sandwich, New Hampshire. 

Over time, the number of radio stations decreased while the number of ski areas he worked with increased. Within 15 years, 90% of his clients were ski areas. During Tony’s forecasting tenure of 42 years, he worked with 40 mountains in New England and New York at one time or another. Some of the mountains, including Stowe, Killington, Stratton, Mount Snow and Sugarloaf, used his forecasts for 40 consecutive winters through the 2017-2018 season until his retirement later in 2018. An interesting side note is that since North Winds Weather’s inception in 1983, the only two winter days Tony ever took off were in November of 2012 when he had a stent put in his heart!

Tony was introduced to Mallory in 2014 by Bob Hoyt of King Pine Ski Area/Purity Spring Resort. During Tony’s last four winters, he mentored Mallory Brooke to get her accustomed to mountain weather forecasting. This insured a smooth transition for Mallory and clients from North Winds Weather to Nor’easter Weather Consulting. Tony still fills in from time to time and continues to mentor Mallory through New England’s dynamic winters.