(Some) Snow In The Alps
(Some) Snow In The Alps
Published : 17-Dec-2015 03:36
It's perhaps not enough to get excited about, but there has been some fresh snow in the Alps over the last 24 hours, the first this month in many cases.
In most resorts it is a case of 'a dusting' on higher slopes but some heave measured what they've got – the biggest 15cm/6 inches claimed by Obergurgl, slightly ahead of the Stubai with 14cm. Verbier, Ischgl and Laax have all reported 10cm a piece.
Whilst this is not enough to transform conditions and allow for skiable off-piste, it is a small step forward. In terms of groomed terrain most areas are managing to function with a mix of surviving snow from the snowfalls in late November and machine made snow whenever temperatures have been low enough.
So in most cases it's a much better picture than a year ago when resorts struggled to open any terrain with a very warm autumn until the last weekend of the year.
Resorts in the Dolomites have had very little natural snowfall but none-the-less have been able to open hundreds of kilometres of piste thank to snowmaking and will be staging World cup races over the next few weeks.
The most snow in Europe in the past week has actually been in Scandinavia where Hemsedal in Norway reported 24cm of snow this week.
But the really big snow storms are happening still in Western North America, where whistler has had three feet of snow in the last seven days, Snowbird in Utah, four feet.
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