Almost two feet of snow fell on Mount Hood over the weekend, allowing the Timberline ski area to open for business Tuesday.

A decision to open Mt. Hood Meadows with limited runs will be made by Wednesday. Meadows, which also has three snowmaking machines running 24 hours a day, has about 17 inches on the ground.

High pressure will build Tuesday, forecasters say, cutting off the chances for snow, and it’s supposed to be sunny for several days.

“We need to get all we can get out of this storm,” Dave Tragethon, ski resort marketing director at Meadows.

Other places did not fare as well as Mount Hood. The storm left 6 inches at Mount Bachelor near Bend, and either left a dusting or completely missed resorts in Western Washington. The storm moved into Idaho and Montana, but no resorts in Utah and just a few in Colorado are open, said Rick LaMont, who runs the Northwest ski and snowboard Web site, SkiTiger.com.

“It’s not looking that good in the rest of the West, but it’s still very early,” LaMont said.

Resort operators like to open earlier than their competitors and as close as possible to Thanksgiving, a time when skiers are eager to return to the slopes after months away.