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Hmmm...Altitude Vs Precipitation

 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
Okay here's a question that's likely to cause a bit of debate...

Does ALTITUDE always = better chance of it snowing?

or is there a chance a lower lying resort may have better snow due to more precipitation and/or micro climate (eg surrounding Mont Blanc)

Also some higher resorts are rockier, requiring more snow cover, where as more pastureland only requires 15 centimetres or so....

what's the opinions, be keen to know.

wink
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 Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
queen_sheba wrote:
Okay here's a question that's likely to cause a bit of debate...

Does ALTITUDE always = better chance of it snowing?


Not always but there is a general trend due to the temperature reducing with altitude. Resorts that are further from the sea (more landlocked) also tend to see cooler temps. The chance of the snow remaining is also higher when the altitude is greater.


queen_sheba wrote:
or is there a chance a lower lying resort may have better snow due to more precipitation and/or micro climate (eg surrounding Mont Blanc)


There are certain resorts that seem to get more snow than other resorts at the same altitude (e.g. Tauplitz & Lofer, Austria).
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 Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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okay fair enough - but just because it's colder/higher or the snow remains - does it mean the precipitation chances are higher? EG fresh powder as opposed to it snowing once a week?

i'm assuming you want somewhere where it snows practically every day, it's cold enough for the snow to stay put, high enough to be cold but not so high it's rocky early in season?
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Does altitude not also mean higher winds - not good for powder.

Your question should really be for the same longitiude , latitude how does altitude effect snowfall.

How much is the effect of squeezing more mositure out of the air to do with relative altitude as opposed to absolute altitude?

The alps strectch a long way across Europe - weather systems coming in off the atlantic will effect the french alps differently than say the austrian alps and vise versa.

I remember being in Val d'Isere one season staying in Le Fornet. Some snow had come in from the east, across the italian border, dump probably 50cm in le fornet, 30cm on Solaise, 20cm on Bellevarde and a dusting in Tignes! The weather is so local, especially in the mountains.
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i'm assuming you want somewhere where it snows practically every day, it's cold enough for the snow to stay put, high enough to be cold but not so high it's rocky early in season?
[/quote]
That'll be Val D'Isere then, except for the snow every day, which of course you don't want because its unpleasant and tends to close lifts.

Good points waynos. The further east you go in the alps the colder and drier it gets for a given altitude. I don't know exactly what the longitudanal lapse is but 1300m in Austria has to be worth at least 1600m in France?
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Why does it rain? Isn't it because (in simple terms) damp air reaches the point where it condenses out?
Places either side of hills/mountains generally see more precipitation as the air is pushed up and over, but it needs to be cold enough to fall as snow. I know this because I'm a mancunian. When it's really cold snow falls as champagne powder. The formation of the mountains can help to protect the fallen snow from winds. (e.g. Snow is often blow away from Sölden but in St Anton the snow generally becomes trapped).

I think you will find in general that some resorts the other side of the pond have the best powder snow and not Europe (e.g. Utah, the rockies)

Quote:
The main cause of the formation of champagne powder is the arctic high pressure areas that turn up over the Pacific Ocean and transport cold air into the south. This produces the high volume of snow and powder.

The snow in the Rockies is a bit warmer when it snows, what is important for the development of the snowflakes. As a result of the cold air at an altitude of 3000 to 4000 meters the snow cools down immediately and freezes. Also, due to its altitude, the snow also remains extremely dry and doesn't get wet and heavy.

The climate in the European Alps is influenced by the Atlantic Ocean, which provides humid air but doesn't normally become cold enough. This produces a large amount of powder as well, but not quite as much as in the Rockies.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champagne_Powder


Last edited by You'll need to Register first of course. on Wed 31-10-07 13:48; edited 3 times in total
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champagne powder? sounds like a kate moss autobiography!
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 brian
brian
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From the OECD report, "Climate Change in the European Alps".

They define the "natural snow reliability line" as the altitude necessary to reliably have a minimum 100 day ski season.

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The higher you go, the snowier it gets.

The higher you go, the colder it gets.

The higher you go, the windier it gets.

The lower you go, the faster it melts.


Last edited by You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net. on Wed 31-10-07 18:37; edited 1 time in total
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brian, interesting but how reliable?

queen_sheba, IMHO...

At a first pass, higher means you are likely in the absence of any other information to have more snow.

However, there are a whole bag of squirrelling "but"s

Higher means fewer or no trees so if there's no visibility there's nowhere to duck into. I personally like to have a tree line to drop into when it's a white out.

Higher means more wind which may mean more closed lifts and more blown snow. Neither of these are good things. In Scotland you will see fences alongside the pistes. Up there they actually generally get quite a lot of snow, it just blows off.

Higher typically means less in resort atmosphere, as pre skiing, no-one in their right minds would winter up there so the resort is likely to be a '60s post-modern, pre-taste, experimental concrete jungle.

And higher doesn't guarantee snow. Morzine/Les Gets/French PDS appears to get more snow than its altitude would normally indicate. F'rinstance.

Of course, almost all the lift served skiing near us is above 2,000m... Happy
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Quote:

Morzine/Les Gets/French PDS appears to get more snow than its altitude would normally indicate. F'rinstance.

ha! - i knew it! people keep telling me - you musn't got low, you musn't go low - you'll only get snow higher up - although les gets was rated to have an excellent snow record by the ski club of great britain!

Quote:

no-one in their right minds would winter up there so the resort is likely to be a '60s post-modern, pre-taste, experimental concrete jungle.

hmmm - Avoriaz springs to mind!

thanks
wink
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queen_sheba, precisement!
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Quote:

i'm assuming you want somewhere where it snows practically every day

You're joking? What a horrendous idea. Unless it also melted practically every day you soon wouldn't be able to move.
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 You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
Lattitude has a part to play as well!
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and longitude
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 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
queen_sheba wrote:
Quote:

Morzine/Les Gets/French PDS appears to get more snow than its altitude would normally indicate. F'rinstance.

ha! - i knew it! people keep telling me - you musn't got low, you musn't go low - you'll only get snow higher up - although les gets was rated to have an excellent snow record by the ski club of great britain!




The flight to height is not about snowfall.

It is primarily about temperature.

The lower you go, the faster it melts.

Killington in the US gets almost as much snowfall as it ever did. But because temps are skyrocketing, it has seen its ski season chopped short by around 2 months in under a decade. They used to open for 5 - 6 months. Now they struggle to make 4.

Hot snow = water.
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 Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Altitude, latitude, aspect, proximity to nearest ocean, prevailing wind speeds and directions, local topography and microclimate; all these play a role.
That's why it's so hard to predict where the snow will fall. The best way is to do what Dave McCoy did...
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 Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Austrian resorts at 600 - 700m are currently snow covered, with anything between 50 and 95 cms of snow forecast in the next 6 days.

Tignes at 2100m is currently very brown, with 7cm of snow forecast in the next 6 days.

A really unusual state of affairs that makes the altitude debate very interesting......
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mountainaddict wrote:
Austrian resorts at 600 - 700m are currently snow covered, with anything between 50 and 95 cms of snow forecast in the next 6 days.

Tignes at 2100m is currently very brown, with 7cm of snow forecast in the next 6 days.

A really unusual state of affairs that makes the altitude debate very interesting......



See above.

Height is not about snowfall.

It is about temperature.

Tignes (2100m) will be going well into May, long after Mayrhofen (600m) has melted away.

The higher you go, the more skidays you will get.

You can ski the 3800m summit in Zermatt 365 days a year.

You can ski to the 600m Mayrhofen village only about 30 days a year.

Every extra 100m in height is worth roughly an extra 10 days of skiing.
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pam w wrote:
Quote:

i''m assuming you want somewhere where it snows practically every day, it's cold enough for the snow to stay put, high enough to be cold but not so high it's rocky early in season?

You're joking? What a horrendous idea. Unless it also melted practically every day you soon wouldn't be able to move.


Niseko United on the island of Hokkaido, Japan ticks all the boxes.
http://www.niseko.ne.jp/en/index.html

300m to 1,308m
13.5 m average annual snowfall
Season from mid-November to mid-May

Although Hokkaido has a maritime climate, the influence of cold air from Siberia results in featherlight powder.

And while it snows practically every day, the low moisture content of the snow results in a very condensed and stable snowpack. So you can still get around town Pam Little Angel
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mountainaddict wrote:
Austrian resorts at 600 - 700m are currently snow covered, with anything between 50 and 95 cms of snow forecast in the next 6 days.

Tignes at 2100m is currently very brown, with 7cm of snow forecast in the next 6 days.

A really unusual state of affairs that makes the altitude debate very interesting......


Surely not that unusual? I seem to recall the situation was very similar a couple of years ago and that was an excellent season IIRC
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Whitegold wrote:
Every extra 100m in height is worth roughly an extra 10 days of skiing.


Where did you get this info from?

Cheers
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Yes that's right you can ski over 700 days a year on Everest. Wink
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Whitegold wrote:

You can ski to the 600m Mayrhofen village only about 30 days a year.


Very simplistic way of looking at things. How about the amount of vertical available, Mayrhofen goes from 600 to 2500, Tignes 2100 to 3500 (well Tignes Breviere 1300m?). So how many ski days does Mayrhofen give between lets say 1000 and 2500? 1500m is a very decent amount of vertical.

How many days can you ski back to the chamonix valley from the various hills?

I agree with the general point that resort such as Tignes offer great late season conditions, I've enjoyed fresh pow into May at Val in previous seasons, equally enjoyed similar conditions at St Anton until closing in late April. Many resorts shut due to lack of business, not lack of snow.

And where did u get the stats for Mayrhofen of 30days?
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Quote:

You can ski to the 600m Mayrhofen village only about 30 days a year.


There is only 1 run down to Mayrhofen Village and that's off the Ahorn and not off the main area. I've skiied that in Jan, Feb, Mar and April over the years.
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I keep reading this as "Attitude Vs Perception"
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