Snow Report 3 August 2013 - Australia & New Zealand

AUSTRALIA

The good news everyone is that the snow has begun to fall nicely and the next few days (and indeed weeks) are looking very promising indeed. We want to see some decent cover build up across the Australian ski resorts. Most of them got around 10cms on Friday and more is forecast for today and into Tuesday.

The return to winter has been long-awaited. Today's report is a just a quick update as the snow begins to fall it should make everything white again for some nice pictures next week!

Finally, we are looking like getting a follow-up weather system to build on the snowfalls this weekend and early next week. Perhaps we're in for a fantastic late season in 2013!

Mt Hotham - Natural Snow Depth: 42cms - Good work by Hotham keeping Heavenly Valley open. Lifts not running at The Orchard, Gotcha, Blue Ribbon or The Drift.

Falls Creek - Natural Snow Depth: 53cms - Falls has done pretty well, as it does tend to do in leaner snow years, with most lifts open.

Mt Buller - Natural Snow Depth: 15cms - Buller lost most of its snow in the past few weeks but is white again today.

Perisher - Natural Snow Depth: Approx 10-60cms - 34/47 lifts at Perisher which has probably weathered the last few weeks the best.

Thredbo - Natural Snow Depth: Approx 10-70cms


NEW ZEALAND

Sunny, mild conditions in New Zealand for weeks now. Most ski areas haven't received new snow since 14/15 July. With the change in weather conditions in Australia, hopefully this will follow on in New Zealand also and return the skifields to winter.

Not a lot of snow in the next few days, but the coming weeks hold more potential.

North Canterbury and Nelson

Rainbow (40/15cms) - The T-bar is running but West Bowl is closed. Hanmer Springs (90cms). Mt Lyford - 155cms and still good cover.

Canterbury

Porters (160/40cms) has lost a lot of snow on the lower part of the mountain. Mt Hutt (320/290cms) has shipped in some tracked people-movers - Hagglunds - to shuttle people up from the bottom of the International area.

The Mackenzie

Ohau (90/55cms). Roundhill (80cms) is still looking ok considering the warm run of days, as is Mt Dobson (100cms).

Wanaka

Treble Cone (275/5cms) has been grooming some great pistes into the Saddle Basin to make it more skiable with the freeze-thaw conditions. Cardrona (115/45cms).

Queenstown

Coronet Peak (80/40cms). Solid off-piste are the go around the Queenstown area in these conditions at both CP and The Remarkables (105/65cms).