Snow continuing to fall into July on at least 5 continents
After a warm and mostly dry June in some areas of the World that need snow, the white stuff is now falling – or is about to, at the start of July – on ski slopes on both the north and south side of the equator.
In terms of areas that expect snow in what it wintertime in the southern hemisphere, Australian ski areas have had a fairly warm and dry June, with some claiming it is one of the two warmest/driest Junes there of the past two decades.
Parts of New Zealand, too, have been too warm and too dry leading to a number of ski areas that expected to open at the end of June or in early July pushing their season start dates for 2017 back further into July.
It is not universally poor across the country. Some areas have been open for three weeks and report good bases and top to bottom skiing open, such as Cardrona, pictured above yesterday. It also has around 20cm of snow forecast for the next three days.
The good news is that it is already snow in Australia and the first week of July is expected to be snowier still, and in New Zealand cold, snowy weather should also transform conditions.
North of the equator snow in what is the northern hemisphere’s summer is more of a novelty, although it does fall most months of the year at high altitudes and latitudes.
And high altitude is where the 10 currently open glacier ski areas in the Alps are located. Here, after a mostly dry May and June since some big snowfalls in the first week on May, 10-15cm of snow is expected to fall on summer ski slopes at resorts liker Tignes and Zermatt over the next 48-72 hours. The snow is already falling as pictured at Hintertux (top) this morning.
There’s been fresh snow in Southern Africa too, bolstering cover in Lesotho (where roads were temporarily impassable on Thursday morning, pictured above) and South Africa.
In the Americas, it has been snowing too in The Andes which has had a very snowy June, with snow here the deepest in the southern hemisphere by far.
In North America, though it has been very hot leading to plenty of media coverage and images of the potential to “Ski in your swimsuit on the 4th of July” at the half dozen areas still open there. Here’s Mammoth yesterday…
