Above: Santas hit the slopes at Windham on Sunday. Photo from an album of Santa Day photos on Windham Mountain's Facebook page. 

New York City has SantaCon; the Catskills have Santa Day at Windham Mountain. Both raise money for charity, and we're not about to weigh in on which one is better -- but if you're more into feats of athleticism than, say, passing out in a boozy stupor on the subway, you're probably better off upstate. 

Sunday, Dec. 15 was the fourth annual Santa Day event for Windham, in which up to 300 skiers and snowboarders decked out head to toe in Santa gear pay a $20 minimum donation to charity. In return, they get a ski pass for the day, two midweek vouchers, and the surreal experience of swooshing down the mountain with hundreds of other Saints Nicholas. (If lions come in prides, and crows in murders, what's the word for a bunch of Santa Clauses?)

Above: One of the Catskill Mountain Railroad's Alco trains, running on the Kingston end of the old Ulster & Delaware corridor. Photo from the Catskill Mountain Railroad's Facebook page. 

A rail trail deal struck last week between Ulster County and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection may be the death knell to the Catskill Mountain Railroad's long-held goal of restoring train service all the way across the county, in an unbroken route from Kingston to Shandaken. 

But CMRR chairman Harry Jameson is willing to give up the dream, if it means the railroad can keep running trains in Kingston. 

Might want to make sure your front door is shut this weekend. Photo taken in Thompsonville on March 8, 2013 by John of Catskills Photography; shared in the Watershed Post's Flickr group pool. 

It's official: We're about to get whomped. A storm moving into the area Saturday morning is predicted to dump anywhere from 6 to 12 inches on the Catskills and Hudson Valley over a 24-hour period, with even greater accumulations possible in parts of the eastern Catskills. As of late afternoon on Friday, a winter weather warning has been declared for the Catskills counties of Greene, Schoharie and Ulster, Delaware County is under a winter storm watch, and Sullivan County has a winter weather advisory.

Hudson Valley Weather is following the storm closely, and broadcasting updates on both Facebook and local radio; the volunteer-run social media site recently announced a partnership with Clear Channel of the Hudson Valley to broadcast weather updates on the group's nine radio stations.

Here at the WP, we're tracking the weather in real time, and will share weather updates in the Storify widget below as they come in. The latest updates are at the top. If you have a photo, video or eyewitness account you'd like to share with us, you can email it to us at [email protected] or tweet it to us at @watershedpost. Please let us know if you see local road closings, accidents or other dangerous conditions out there. (And send us pix of snowmen/snow women/snow aliens/etc. We want those, too.)

Happy first big storm of the year. We wish you snow forts and hot cocoa.