By Snow Forecast in Lifestyle — Sep 1, 2018

Where's the Snow in September 2018 - Where Can You Ski or Board this Month?

There have been some exciting signs of autumn across the Northern Hemisphere in the last week of August with snowfall recorded in the Alps, Scandinavia and Northwestern North America – up to 50cm of snow in fact.

Meanwhile the southern hemisphere’s ski season is in full swing with 4-6 weeks of winter left at most resorts there. Australian areas are having what several report is their snowiest winter for 14 years and in New Zealand base depths have passed 3 metres at a number of centres, the deepest anywhere south of the equator.

The Alps

We begin the month with just six ski areas currently open in the Alps. Hintertux and Molltal in Austria were the two that posted the big snow accumulations on the last weekend of August; then there’s Saas Fee and Zermatt in Switzerland and Cervinia and Passo Stelvio in Italy.

There’s no where open in France since Les 2 Alpes closed on the last Sunday of August but Tignes will begin it’s 18-19 season on the last weekend of the month. Cervinia will close on September 9^th but another Italian area, Val Senales aims to open the following weekend.

Six more Austrian areas will probably open in September if conditions are good, doubling the number open in the Alps and meaning there’ll be more areas open in Austria than in the rest of the northern hemisphere combined at the end of the month. The Dachstein, Kaunertal, Kitzsteinhorn, Pitztal, Solden, and Stubai glaciers are all close to opening.

Scandinavia

After a hot summer only one of Norway’s glacier areas is open in to September. The Fonna ski area has a 2-3m base and reported fresh snow too in late August, it should be open to the end of the month, all being well.

North America

Things have been turning colder in North America with fresh snow at the top of the tram at Jackson Hole at the end of August. However currently only the Timberline snow field on Mt Hood in Oregon is open for the 2018-19 ski season and it may close for a week or two of annual lift maintenance this month. The season is likely to get going in October when high resorts like Arapahoe Basin in the Rockies fire up their snowmaking guns.

Australia & New Zealand

It’s a mixed picture for Australia and New Zealand, well particularly the latter. Australia in fact is having a most excellent winter 2018 with snow depths past the two metres mark at many of the leading areas, which is a very healthy figure and the deepest in some cases for 14 winters. Most are open to October 7^th with Perisher extending its season by a week to that date. In New Zealand it’s a more mixed picture with bases at South Island ski areas building more slowly and only just reaching the metre mark. However most are fully open and on the North Island the ski areas on Ruapehu are claiming the deepest bases in the southern hemisphere at present just past the 3m mark.

South America

Although the picture above from Nevados de Chillan in southern Chile in the last week of August looks (and is) very snowy, it has not really been a snowy winter in the Andes and that big snowfall was the exception. At the other extreme the famous resort of Portillo still only has a 20-45cm base. Despite the lack of the white stuff most South American areas are 60-90% open and hopes are high of some final big snow storms to round out winter 2018.