Global Snow Conditions -- Sun 10 Dec 2006.

A snowHead

The early season across the Northern Hemisphere is gathering speed.

North America has above-average conditions. Europe is below-average. Asia is average.

Here is a summary of global snow conditions, from West to East...

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Canada: Western Canada remains topnotch. Plenty of new snow. Whistler is almost 100% open. East Canada has improved slightly. Mont Tremblant is roughly 30% operational.

USA: The Midwest has great coverage. Alta (Utah), Keystone (Colorado) and Beaver Creek (Colorado) are all more than 80% open. California, in the West, is limited. Mammoth is running 10%, mostly on manmade. Conditions in the East are better. A modest dump has allowed Killington to operate 12 of its 31 lifts.

Scotland: Conditions are volatile. Good snow up top allowed Cairngorm to run 3 tows on Sat. By Sun, rain and wind had wiped out most of it and the resort was closed.

Scandinavia: A good pre-season in Norway, Finland and Sweden has faded. A number of stations have shut back down, due to thin cover. Geilo in Norway is doing ok and has almost half its uplift running.

Andorra: Modest snowcover. A handful of resorts open, with limited runs. Worst start for a few years. Adverts for £99, fully-catered, 1-week chalet vacations have been spotted on the Web.

Spain: Limited snow. Sierra Nevada, in the South, has a handful of runs on the go. High winds still a problem.

Mediterranean: Resorts in Portugal, Corsica and Cyprus are closed. Temps are high. Unlikely to offer much before Jan.

France: Coverage has improved markedly above 1500m. La Plagne is self-reporting 55cm of fresh neige at its mid-station (2700m). Val d'Isere has 32% of all its slopes available, up from 5% just two weeks ago. The snowline in France is down to perhaps 500m, but depths are low.

Switzerland: The outlook is much healthier above 1500m. Zermatt has pistage down to the mid-station. St Moritz offers some top-to-bottom skiing. Saas Fee claims 70cm of pow-pow at resort-level. Like France, the Swiss snowline is down to about 700m, but depths are thin.

Italy: The situation is far better, particularly at higher elevations. Cervinia (2000m) has slopes down to the resort. Roughly 30% of its tows are fired up.

Germany: Reasonable snowcover. Still modest at lower altitudes. Garmisch is roughly 15% operational.

Austria: Austria is gaining ground. Ischgl, Obergurgl, Obertauern, Hintertux and Soelden seem to have the most available terrain. The big one, St Anton, continues to struggle, at around 5% open. Saalbach-Hinterglemm (1000m) opened a tiny number of lifts up top. The Austrian snowline is down to perhaps 700m, but heights are limited.

Alps: The United Nations' World Meteorological Organization (UN WMO) indicated on Thurs that snowcover in the Alps was as much as two-thirds below-average for the first week of Dec 2006. This weekend's snow is, therefore, most welcome. The Southern and Western Alps received the most, overall.

CE Europe: Moderate snow across Poland, Czech Rep, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Slovakia, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia and Turkey. No major stations are believed to be operating.

North Africa & Middle East: Few stations, in places such as Lebanon and Morocco, are likely to be open much before the end of Dec.

India: Major snowfalls have hit the north of the country. Some upper villages claimed up to 7ft (2.1m) in just a few days. Gulmarg, the number one station, appears to have a handful of tows running.

China: Modest snow has fallen in the last couple weeks. No big stations known to be open yet. Yabuli (1400m), one of the top destinations, still seems shut.

South Korea: The season has just kicked off, with modest coverage. High 1, the number three resort, fired up this weekend.

Japan: A growing number of skitowns are ready for business. Temps are very cold. Kiroro Snow World (600m) in Hokkaido, which traditionally runs from Nov to May, already has a claimed 170cm on its peak. Nayoro Piyashiri (200m) received 40cm of freshies this week.

FORECAST: The 2-week weather forecasts indicate mixed conditions. Healthy temps and snowfalls across Midwest North America. Warming up slightly in Eastern USA. Asia looks to be less cold, but still snowy, particularly in Japan. The Alps will see higher temps, sunny skies and limited snowfalls. Lower slopes, below perhaps 1800m, may suffer for the next week.

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Please remember, this summary is a helicopter view. I have almost certainly missed something. Feel free to fill in the gaps.

A snowHead

With regards Cairngorm it is misleading to say "By Sun[day], rain and wind had wiped out most of it " - there was still snow on the hill and little if any rain as far as I know (and was in Aviemore having been on the hill on Saturday). Certainly a lot of snow had been wind blown but that is natural up there and it tends to fill the corries and snow fenced areas leaving other areas of the mountain with less cover - that was what seemed to happen over night Saturday/Sunday. The slopes where there was skiing on Saturday are not seen well from Aviemore but from the web cams today there seems to be plenty of snow up there, perhaps a little more on the lower slopes (which are still not usable for snowsports) and I believe cover is still good higher up with a good base built up over the last few weeks.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Thanks for the feedback. Please remember this report is only a snapshot in time. When I looked at the Cairngorm webcams on Sun, there was more brown than white, it was raining up top, and all the lifts were not running.

You need to Login to know who's really who.

^ no worries Whitegold - the web cams are not all that good for writing snow reports from, partly due to the way in which snow consolidates on the mountain, which is verydifferent from elsewhere. There have been times when I've been looking up at the hill from Loch Morlich (very near the slopes) and you'd swear there was not enough snow for sport but there had been because I was up on the slopes beforehand. What happens is that snow naturally consolidates in gullies after the wind has done it's job, a fall of snow rarely settles and stays where it is, as you'd expect in say the Alps, it invariably gets blown from all very exposed sufaces and collects in natural snowfields and/or by snowfences (that's one of the reasons part of the art of maintaining a Scottish ski area is building and maintaining extensive snowfences). Add to this the 'odd' location of the top most webcam on Cairngorm, which points at an area that's exposed so until very heavy snow has fallen won't be covered even if there are complete runs just round the corner (which there often are in the Ptarmigan bowl) and it's very difficult to guage.

If you want a better picture of the ever shifting state of the hill your best bet is to check Winter Highland and Highland Instinct where, even when lifts aren't running, there are brave souls who'll skin up the hill and post reports on what the situation is. The Ski Scotland site is worse than useless on the whole and even the Cairngorm website itself is often not as accurate as it might be, altough it'll tell you what uplift is running - same with the other Scottish centres and their sites.

It is true to say that there's been a lot of snow washed away today though, with temperatures rising significantly this morning before falling back again. The lower slopes are now heather with little if any snow, but their covering at the weekend was only cosmetic anyway. However temperatures have now dropped again and a new dusting of snow can be seen on the upper webcam. from that though it's impossible to tell what the situation is on the main upper slopes at the moment - if the base has been further consolidated, which is quite likely, it could be no bad thing that we've had some warmer weather. The only way of telling though is to wait for someone to venture up (or for Cairngorm mountain to install another webcam or move the existing one to show the slopes properly, I believe they are looking into covering the hill better).

It is hellishly difficult to guage what's going on in the Scottish ski areas unless you have firsthand reports so I do sympathise but I'd advise not relying too much on the webcams.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Thanks Roga. I did double-check with Winter Highland (good website). That is how I discovered the lifts were running Sat, but not Sun. Almost all the countries in the list have been based on at least two sources, so hopefully they should be reasonably reliable as an overview.

Anyway, useful ontheground feedback from Scotland. Thanks for the inputs. I will word future reports accordingly.

Help!!

Global Snow Conditions -- Sun 10 Dec 2006.

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