Snow Report 2 September 2015 - Australia & New Zealand

Hello from Queenstown, New Zealand, where it has finally returned to winter conditions after a run of springy weather. The view from the balcony this morning, with fresh snow on The Remarkables:

The Remarkables 02.09.15

Snow has returned to the South Island after a run of sunny northerlies and northwesterlies were followed by a weird easterly storm. But despite its unusual weirdness, this storm has brought the goods with snow down to 800m across the South Island.

Snow looks to continue through the next few days and into the weekend, with the snow level dropping even lower to 400m.

Coronet Peak and Treble Cone have reported 15cm overnight, Ohau 30cm, The Remarkables 7cm, and Cardrona 10cm.

The weather system spun down from the North Island yesterday bringing easterly winds over the last few days. That's set to change over the next few days as we move back to a more traditionally westerly run.

This is the first snow for the South Island since 25th August. We were at Porters that day as the weather cleared, allowing good off-piste skiing from the top T-bar. Bluff Face opened that day, but there was not enough snow on Big Mama.

The following day saw some great conditions at Mount Hutt, with pistes groomed beautifully for a fast and sunny day on the new snow. Low cloud came in one day, but the mountain remained above them:

Mt Hutt 26.08.15

 You can see where a new blue run has been cut from the end of Virgin Mile, allowing return to the base on a groomed trail. Conditions were pretty thin at the bottom of International.

Since then, a run of sunny days has seen the lower slopes soften and off-piste begin to get solid.

We skied Mount Dobson on 27th August. There was still some nice snow around but also quite a few rocks. Stunning day though:

On 30th August we were at Ohau. It was very firm to start but softening by midday. There was quite good cover off-piste across the ski field:

Arriving in Queenstown, we checked out Coronet Peak on Monday. When the easterly clouds cleared a bit the solid snow turned softer and opened up some fun off-piste. It then became quite slushy in the warm temperatures.

The next week looks excellent with the new snow, and more to come ...