World Snow News 4: 26th July 2007

Welcome to another roundup of global snow conditions and prospects for the next seven days from www.snow-forecast.com.

July is almost over, and any Southern Hemisphere resorts that do not yet have a decent base get anxious about now. This year, all resorts in Australia and South America are in the clear with deep bases that will last through the season, but a few resorts in New Zealand still need more snow before they can open and many other resorts have limited or zero off-piste because the cover is too thin. Of course, if you are an off piste junkie there are always options if you don't mind putting in some leg-work - from the upper slopes of Ruapehu to Mt Brewster above Haast Pass and at several great Heli-operations in between, even in a mediocre season, New Zealand has fine snow beyond the confines of the resorts.

European Alps

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This week, for a change, I'll start with the European Alps where a mixed week of weather included a cold snap that caused fatalities on Mt. Blanc. While much of Europe suffers record heat, it is easy to forget that the higher peaks of The Alps (typically 1000m above the glaciers) are very rarely below the freezing level and this makes them subject to summer blizzards.

In France Tignes and Les Deux Alpes are skiing really well with sunshine and low summer temperatures. It is a similar story in Switzerland on the glaciers at Saas Fee and Zermatt. Cervinia in Italy is holding up well while the conditions at Val Senales are not great. The week ahead looks like it will bring scattered rain and snow showers at first, then mostly fine days and freezing levels between 3500 and 4000m with light to moderate westerly breezes- cold enough for the snow to freeze at night but with heavy conditions by late-morning. Several glacier resorts have closed for the summer - most recently, the summer ski season on the Pissaillas Glacier at Val d'Isere ended on Saturday 21st July and this is the last week of summer skiing at Blackcomb glacier in Whistler.

Apart from the Mt Blanc tragedy, The Alps were in the news for another reason last week. Pretty much everyone knows that last winter (06/07) was a poor one in Europe, but was it really as bad as all that? Nobody can dispute that around Christmas and New Year, snow conditions were desperate. I images of grassy slopes and idle snow cannons made the news around the globe, as if they provided certain evidence of Global Warming. However, it wasn't long before the snow arrived and although it was rarely deep at low altitudes, higher resorts did pretty well and snow depths above 2000m were average or better than average. Apart from a late start, the season was typical of the prevailing North Atlantic Oscillation that brought a lot of warm and moist air off the Atlantic. If you are in any doubt, just take a look at the record of snow-depths at a resort like Tignes (http://www.snow-forecast.com/c/resorts/Tignes/history) over the past 15 years and the NAO pattern is obvious.

Lately, several tour operators have been blaming the media for sensationalist and inaccurate reporting. Nothing new there, you may think, but what’s unusual is that most of the anger is directed towards the BBC who have been accused of running images of green slopes in news reports long after they were covered in snow and of course this probably led to cancellations and falling bookings even after snow had fallen.

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Of course most snow reports tend to be biased the other way - resort managers are prone to a bit of positive spin when it comes to reporting and who can blame them. Thankfully, the advent of webcams has made it difficult to stray too far from reality. As far as possible, we try and use reports from the Ski Club of Great Britain because these are independent. However, they only cover about 300 resorts worldwide and our website covers 1920 at the last count, so we rely greatly on users who provide snow reports in return for free membership. We also allow resort managers to update information on our site to provide them with a chance to say don't believe the forecast, we are above the cloud! Indeed, the reason we provide links to every resort page that we can find is so that users can quickly check what is really happening - predicting mountain weather is incredibly difficult and it can vary enormously over short distances and small changes in altitude.

Andes

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In a word – stunning! Last weeks’ forecast seems to have been fairly accurate, with widespread and heavy new snow falling last weekend and into the week, followed by a several fine days. Las Lenas is much improved, and Portillo just gets better and better with 70cm of fresh snow both here and at Chapa Verde. An amazing weekend to be heading to the Three Valleys in ChileColorado (170/295cm) providing excellent riding conditions. With a sunny weekend in prospect everywhere, the next heavy snowfall looks set to arrive early next week, and more especially further south. This should clear away mid-week as another anticyclone edges in off the Pacific. Sadly the unusually cold winter elsewhere in South America has been responsible for many deaths. In high altitude Peruvian villages, temperatures have fallen to -20C and many adults and children have died as a result of cold, pneumonia and other respiratory infections. Even in nearby rain forests, temperatures have fallen below 10C. thanks to the amount of snow falling over the last week. La Parva (240/290cm) is reporting 134cm of snow arriving in the last seven days alone. The sun is now shining and this will continue into the weekend. 70cm of fresh snow has fallen at El

New Zealand

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The past week brought a change in the weather with a fresh westerly wind blowing away the cold and frosty air from Inland Otago and for the first week this winter, nowhere seems to have been subjected to a Biblical deluge (apologies to any Kiwis who left for Britain last week - bad call…). The weather progressed much as forecast with bits and pieces of fresh snow about, but locals are still waiting for a big dump to kick-start the season at several club fields. It's not that these places don't have snow, they just don't have enough. The greywacke rock that erodes down to make the characteristic gullies that the eastern slopes of the Southern Alps are famous for really need about a metre of snow to cover the rocks. Places like Mt Olympus have half this depth and are still waiting, however closer to the divide, westerly winds have brought enough snow to greatly improve the upper slopes at Temple Basin and also enough to at least freshen up the pistes at Rainbow, Mt Lyford.

The Southern Lakes have typically benefited from 10-15cm of fresh wind blown snow and although this isn't enough to open up the off-piste options, it is very welcome - not least because it arrived much earlier than we had expected in last Thursday's forecast. The weather models didn't predict very much of the NW moisture getting over the Southern Alps and into central Otago which makes a change because they often predict more snow than actually falls by not modelling the rain shadow effect well enough. Let's hope that continues to be the case because for the week ahead, the same models suggest modest falls - a few centimetres now and again, but no big dumps. Mount Dobson is another casualty of the dry winter weather while at nearby Fox Peak (open at weekends) they suggest you only use old skis. Being located even further east of the Main Divide than places like Cardrona, these resorts are very sheltered from Westerly moisture. Hopefully a brief spell of NE wind forecast for Monday will deliver much needed snow.

Ruapehu managed about 25cm out of last weekend's depression, the best in NZ and it already had the deepest base too. However, the freezing level has drifted high enough at times to make the upper pistes icy and the lower runs soft whilst off piste is best avoided with a dangerous mix of ice and exposed rocks. Prospects are for a fairly similar week ahead and while there will be fresh snow about, and some sun too. Winds will be from a mild NW direction and freezing levels will be mostly above 2000m. Timing will be everything if you want to catch fresh snow and fine weather on the mountain. Meanwhile, over on Taranaki, the same system also brought snow last Friday but the warm westerlies that followed it have melted most of the new snow. There is not enough depth to open for skiing at Manganui and I’m sorry to say that the week ahead holds little grounds for optimism with yet more rain at resort level and no prospect of the kind of SW flow that gets things moving in this corner of NZ.

Australia

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Australia was once again was the right side of the Tasman to be with some superb conditions on offer last week. The next few days look like delivering more of the same. High freezing levels right now (Thursday night) are close to the tops and a front crossing the area is giving a mix of rain and sleet with snow above about 2000m and westerly gales on the summits. Temperatures however are falling, and before the front clears away, we should see widespread new snow at most levels over the next couple of days though staying breezy. Apart from a risk of a rather warm NW airstream doing some damage to snow cover mid-week, it returns to business as usual with a snowy end to the week expected.

Finally, thanks to those users of snow-forecast.com for their positive feedback on our weekly editorials. This has prompted us to publish them and maintain an archive at http://snow-forecast.blogspot.com/

Best wishes,

Rob

www.snow-forecast.com team