Where Is The Snow? 20th Dec 2017
With the ten day snow storm having blasted out its last fluffy remnants across Europe the weather is clearing up to some pretty spectacular bluebird days. It's currently the best pre-Christmas skiing we've seen in years.
Back in London, it's that time of year where nights in are few and far between. Dashing between Winter Wonderlands hangover-inducing beer tents, Street Feast and Backyard Cinema to the cacophony of festive rooftop bars, work Christmas parties and daytime lunch dates. Christmas is well and truly upon us, whether welcomed or otherwise but with the snow on the continent I'm evil eyeing all those getting to ski before Santa comes.
How's Europe looking?
With the weather clearing up and the sun coming out, marginally warmer temperatures are hitting the slopes. But it's nowhere near warm enough to do much damage to the extensive snow cover laid down by both Jack Frost and the snow cannon teams across the Alps. Any slopes above 2,000m are likely to be completely unaffected by the warmer weather and those lower down will still have fantastic almost spring-like skiing at worst.
With almost every resort having ridiculous amounts of snow in the last two weeks, piste conditions are universally excellent. Much of Austria is getting a top up in the next few days so resorts such as St Anton could be well worth considering with 21cm due to fall in the next 3 days. Kaprun and Zell am See won't be far behind with about 10 and 14 cm respectively.
And there's more snow on the horizon. Another big storm is looking likely to cover the Alps before the New Year rolls around with over half a metre forecast almost universally once more.
Snow forecast before 29th December
- Chamonix - 98cm
- St Anton - 84cm
- Megeve - 83cm
- Les Arcs - 82cm
- Courmayeur - 77cm
- Meribel - 77cm
- Tignes - 75cm
- Verbier - 74cm
- Val Thorens - 72cm
- Morzine - 72cm
- Selva - 72cm
- Kaprun - 71cm
- Zell am See - 66cm
- Engelberg - 55cm
- St Johann - 54cm
St Anton, Austria @St. Anton am Arlberg
Meribel, France @Meribel3vallees
Chamonix, France @Chamonixmontblanc
Courmayeur, Italy @Courmayeur
Engelberg, Switzerland @engelberg.titlis
Tignes, France @Tignesofficiel
Verbier, Switzerland @Verbier
Val Thorens, France @val_thorens
Les Arcs, France @emily_chalet_host
A few video snippets of the latest conditions:
- Powder skiing in Les Arcs
- Just a bit of snow coming down in Tignes
- 360 video from the top of Avoriaz
- A video from Brevent ski area uploaded live to Facebook earlier today
In summary:
If you're looking at the best current conditions Engelberg is looking hard to beat with powder reported both on and off the piste right now and nearly a metre of snow down in town. But, in all honesty, it's looking good wherever you fancy going. If you are still looking to get away for Christmas, we still have a couple of rooms in our brand new Chalet des Cascades in Les Arcs right in the middle of the piste. With a large terrace, indoor pool and sauna as well as a roaring fire in the middle of the open plan lounge/dining area - there wouldn't be many places better suited for Christmas.