Fresh Snow Spotted in Canada

Fresh snow has been spotted in the Canadian Rockies over the past 24 hours, just days after the last ski area still operating its 2020-21 ski season in North America ended its operations.

Sunshine ski area near Banff and Nakiska, the closed ski area to Calgary, both posted images of a dusting of snowfall shown on higher slopes in their webcams.  It could be counted as the first snow of the 21-22 pre-ski-season period, but like all snow in summer, is unlikely to stick around.

It’s a reassuring sight as much of the news from Western North America in recent weeks and months has been of extensive forest fires, often shutting down ski areas’ summer operations – either due to proximity danger or more commonly due to poor local air quality caused by smoke.

Sunshine and Nakiska are usually among the first areas in Canada and North America to open each season, often either in the last week of October or first week of November.

Snow is also expected on high peaks in the Colorado Rockies to the south, where ski areas like Arapahoe Basin, Wolf creek and keystone are also usually among the first to open in North America each winter.

For the past few months only the Palmer permanent snowfield at timberline ski area in Oregon has been open for snowsports. It closed last Sunday though, three weeks earlier than hoped, but having stayed open longer than expected after record heat in the region in June and July.