Welcome again to the www.Snow-Forecast.com weekly weather round up.
We've brought the schedule for these forward a day so that people in New Zealand and Australia get to receive our editorials before the weekend.
The southern winter of 2007 continues to prove itself a very different beast to the 2006 El Nino year. Looking at mid Pacific Ocean temperature anomalies, we are not in a La Nina pattern yet and you would still describe things as neutral, but in terms of Pacific weather patterns, it is as if La Nina is well underway already. In all likelihood a full blown La Nina, as defined by water temperatures, will emerge during the winter.
As far as the prospects for the Southern ski season goes, that's very good news for Australia and South America, less good for New Zealand and probably irrelevant to South Africa. South Africa? Surely we’re joking? Not at all – there’s skiing in the Drakensburg at two small resorts and there were several days in 2006 when the tiny resort of Tiffindell at 3000m had better conditions than most in Australia! It's looking good so far this year too and looking at the cam on snow-forecast.com the resort is open right now. A sunny and fairly mild prospect for the next week, but cold enough for snowmaking at night.
Australia
======
The 2007 season has got off to a great start in Australia and last week saw more of the same with new snow about once again, especially at Perisher Blue where the snow base has topped 1.5m - the deepest in Australasia; it's only marginally less at Thredbo and Mount Hotham. These are fantastic conditions for early July. Expect a few cold but fairly settled days before another system brings more snow in the middle of the week. That's so far out that the only thing we can be certain of is that things won't go according to plan, but if by some miracle the weather does follow the forecast, a deep depression will form just off the NSW coast on Wednesday bringing a major dump, especially to the easternmost resorts like Thredbo. I'm more hopeful
than confident.
New Zealand
=========
Across the ditch, New Zealand continues to have a winter of extremes and the latest weather news came from an intense low that crossed the far North of North Island a few days ago. That came up against a characteristic La Nina anticyclone over the South Island and between the two, the isobars were packed and a band of 150km/h easterly winds battered Northland and Coromandel and locally dumped up to 30cm of rain. Affected towns have barely finished mopping up since a similar flood 6 months ago and no doubt they will now be even less comforted by meteorologists assuring them not to worry because these are “every 1000 year events”... This forecaster was especially worried by that storm because if it had tracked just 200km south, Ruhapehu would have received an incredible snowfall and I would have had egg on my face for forecasting a fairly settled week there. Although that didn't
happen, way ahead of the main front, an unexpected little band of snow parked itself over the Mountains of NW Nelson for 24hrs but since there are no ski resorts there, who cares? Well me actually, because that's my back yard! Elsewhere in NZ, it was cold and frosty with easterly snow showers from Canterbury to Ruhapehu (11cm of fresh snow at Mt Hutt was typical).
There are no similar storms in this weeks forecast. It will start off very cold and frosty but pressure is forecast to fall and snow is expected to develop by around Tuesday on a strengthening SE wind, with places like Mt. Hutt, Mt Olympus, Porters and Mt Lyford best placed to catch most. If (big if) the deep low materialises in the Tasman as forecast, then New Zealand can expect it to arrive right at the end of the week in 8 or 9 days, but given the lack of observations in the Southern Ocean, this is mere speculation.
The Andes
=======
South America is a huge place and even the mighty Southern Alps of New Zealand would be mere foothills next to the Andes, but for all it's vast potential, there are not very many ski resorts and they span such a vast area it is difficult to give a quick synopsis. This is a shame because if Australia is having a great season, then the Andes are having a superb one. Last week was exceptionally cold as Antarctic air made its way north, even reaching Buenos Aires where it caused the first snowfall since 1918! The snow mainly settled on the roofs of cars, so that's where the kids built their snowmen. Further afield, temperatures fell as low as -22C in Rio Negro province of Argentina and -18C in parts of Araucania region in the south of
Chile.
Up in the resorts, the cold air did not bring any big dumps of snow, but with well over 2m of snow already in places like Chapelco and Catedral in Argentina and about 1.5m in most resorts in Chile, nobody is complaining. With plenty of new snow in the forecast this week, things are looking great - check our web pages for the details – and we have had several offers from ski people in this part of the world to help us update our bulletins so watch this space…
Europe
=====
Last week again saw significant new snow on most Alpine glaciers. The weather is much sunnier now and it should stay that way for the next few days, then getting slowly warmer but with an increasing risk of thunderstorms. For those of you who assume that glacier skiing in the Alps consists of a few short T bars on icy slopes, Dachstein in Austria currently has 63km of pistes open on a 4.3m base - most places in Australasia never get that good.
Best wishes - until next week,
Rob Davies - www.snow-forecast.com
No comments:
Post a Comment