DENVER (AP) – Forget baseball and spring flowers. The nation’s ski resorts are all about skiing and snowboarding – still.

Snow fell Monday in parts of the country, including Maine, Colorado and Vermont, capping a bountiful winter that could lead to a record-setting season for the $6 billion industry. A year ago, resorts posted a 7 percent drop in visitors nationwide because of a fickle winter.

“It’s actually been one of those rare years where it’s been winter from coast to coast,” said Michael Berry, president of the National Ski Areas Association. “It may very well be a record year.”

In the Rockies, mild weather hurt resorts in November and early December, but heavy snowfall since then has proved a boon for business. Resorts of all sizes on the West Coast, the Midwest and the Northeast area have had strong numbers, Berry said.

The industry’s record for skier visits is 58.9 million, set in 2005-2006. A skier visit is an industry measure representing the sale and use of one lift ticket per day.

A year ago, ski areas in the eastern United States had a slow start to the season as stingy snowfall hurt business on holiday weekends.

Ossola said this year was the opposite with heavy snow falling before Thanksgiving, Christmas and Martin Luther King Day. “We had all of the major holidays covered and it seems like Mother Nature was making up for what she did to us last year,” she said. “The timing of the storms was just perfect.”

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On the Net: http://www.nsaa.org