The LISTEX Summer Exchange on 2 May at The Snow Centre saw Snow-Forecast.com take us through the snow conditions for season 2017/18. The highs of the season and the ski resorts making snowfall history.

1. The World’s most popular ski / snow website
domain…. “be where the snow is, be first!”
The LISTEX ‘snow’down’ 2017/18

2. Weather – what’s it to me?
"Travel Audience, as part of Amadeus group, commissioned a study in early
2017 using 1st, 2nd and 3rd party data across the majority of it's 100's of millions of
English language & European users, the purpose to better understand the online user
journey towards a successful travel product sale.
One of the key findings was the importance of weather related keyword searches
within the travel product buying cycle. A few regional variations exist, however the bulk
of the data supports the logic that weather related keywords are one of the few key
touchpoint influences on decision making and purchasing behaviour within the
online buying journey.
Most successful online travel sales began their journey with weather related
terminology as one of the first searches, then again visiting a weather related
information website as one of the last 3 websites visited prior to making the final
purchase"
Tiago MORAIS DE RELVAO, Head of Inventory & Supply at Travel Audience GmbH - An Amadeus Company
 Snow-forecast has 12.5+ million unique users a year searching for snow history / forecasts… Be part of it.

3. Guess the date? (Mid November)
And the Place? (Niseko, Japan- 2nd largest snowfall on earth)

4. Where to ? (Credit: Lauren Vanat)

5. UK relevance? (Credit: Lauren Vanat)

6. UK relevance? (Credit: Lauren Vanat)

7. Breckenridge in late December:
Spot the low snow levels at the base

8. Western North America
Not such a good season, (especially south western)
Snow came very late and too late for many areas
after largely warm/dry Nov – Feb.
Claims of the worst winter there for 30 years BUT big
snow in March/April

9. Western North America
Winter Park in Colorado has extended season 2
weeks to May 6th on back of late snow.
Better winter further north
one of world’s snowiest resorts Mt Baker in
Washington State reported third snowiest winter this
century.

10. Antarctic? No – Portugal
(yes, that’s a roof…)

11. Portugal goes off in December!

12. Portugal record snowfall – open indefinitely!

13. ALPS - photos
Chamonix: Now where did I leave
those keys…..?

14. Courchevel in January

15. La Rosiere in January:
fake news ?!

16. La Rosiere - January:
May have to skip the 2 hour lunch
Pierre?

17. Les Saisies: Annual ugly jacket
competition finalists…

18. Leysin: wow!

19. Saas Fee January:
Speechless..

20. Val D’Isere:
A sea of snow…

21. Zermatt

22. Alps:
Huge snowfalls in January - too much too soon?
Out of season with deep bases BUT only a few
extended seasons despite 3-4m snow depths.
Val d’Isere, Zermatt poor guest experiences locked
in hotel rooms, unable to go out due to snow danger
after painful 24 hour transfers in/out.

23. Alps:
Dolomites marketing dept state a lot of snow was bad
news for them as put people off driving up for prepped
slopes and sunshine – numbers down!!
Engelberg claimed to have more than a 7 metre base on
its Titlis glacier (which is open through May) until recently
(saying 6.9 metres now). We don’t remember seeing a
7m snow depth in Alps/Europe except at Norwegian
summer ski areas for years/ever? A number of French
resorts say their snowfall through season was most ever
recorded.

24. Alps:
(Kitzbuhel breaking records)
Kitzbuhel has clocked up a 6.5 month season, record
long season there and one of longest seasons of a
non-glacier resort in the world (as few others like
Arapahoe Basin in Colorado and maybe Ruka in
Finland slightly longer
The first ‘non glacier’ resort to open in the alps in
early October – its earliest ever opening. It does this
by snow farming, saving snow from last year, an
increasingly popular option.

25. Alps: (Kitzbuhel contd)
It spreads the snow out in October to make a 2km
run on the green hillside (Thousands of people turn
out paying 30 Euros for a day pass).
Snow hopefully lasts/topped up by nightime
snowmaking until cold enough anyway. It is one of
Europe’s lowest altitude ski areas for a major resort
and I think it trying to make point it can be ‘climate
change proof’ by using these techniques.

26. Alps: Y on Y Comparison
Andermatt, Switzerland: example (1436 – 2963m)
* Climbing blue dots - days since a snow dump. The
higher it climbs, the older the snow is getting.
* Yellow dots - snow events.
* Red dots - temperature events.

27. (Credit: SkiClubGB)

28. Italian dolomites - ordinary season. Cortina:
(Credit: SkiClubGB)

29. Cortina: average

30. Tarentaise similar to 1995 (colder): Meribel
(Credit: SKiClubGB)

31. Pyrenees: Best since 2011/12. Arinsal:
(Credit: SKiClubGB)

32. Scotland:
A good season with most centres consistently open.
Unusual as usually stormy weather or thaws mean East
and West ski centres closed whilst others open.
Unusual all centres all open for so long. Not a huge
amount of snow though except Glencoe bucked the trend
(which is still open and open to May 6th).
Comparisons with previous years shows no exceptional
statistics

33. Scotland better than average: not amazing
(Credit: SkiCLubGB)

34. Japan:
 Japan had an exceptionally good early to mid-season, with record breaking cold
and snow, especially in Honshu (Gifu).
 They spent an absolute fortune on keeping roads open along the sea of Japan
Coast east of Tokyo, and it even snowed heavily in Tokyo at times.
 Onset of spring was about 2-3 weeks early...coinciding with the snow-forecast.com
annual general meeting at Niskeo in early March (5 degress and raining, where
our snow-history models showed a 4% chance of rain!).
 See 1st slide: March 11 year average week 2: 0.3 days rainfall
 See 2nd slide: March 17/18 week 2: 1.7 days rainfall

35. Niseko 11 year average (see rain in March)

36. Niseko 2017/18 season (see rain in March)

37. New “Snow-History” tool..
3 graphs, lots of info…. Industry first features…
Compare bluebird powder days weekly, Y on Y
Add layers: wind / freezing level / temp…
Compare resorts, choose ski holidays wisely!
Averages for any no. of years, as you want..
Hindcast logs/ Historic Daily reports / Deep detail
Built using “nowcast” (the last 3 hour accuracy)
Improved GUI and User interface coming soon…

41. Global roundup:
 Post year 2000 snow levels at low altitude ski resorts in the Alps caused much
concern. Austria looked especially vulnerable due to many low altitude resorts.
 The change was pinned on global warming but more recently we have admitted
global warming is better called climate change. There is more to it than merely
‘warming everywhere’.
 Global warming models, where climatologists predicted circa 1 to 2 degree
temperature increase over a century in the Alps, it equates to an increase in freezing
level of circa 200m - 300m. Causing minimal disruption in resorts typically between
1500m to 3000m above sea level.
 All things considered the problem ski seasons at the start of the millennium were
much more to do with dry weather, especially before Christmas and New Year
holidays.

42. Global roundup:
 Dry ski seasons happen when the Azores High Pressure drifts onto Europe, gets
stuck there for several weeks. The Azores high was accompanied by light winds,
clear skies, high daytime freezing levels with valley cloud and freezing fog at
night. It tends to deliver good snow to places like Bulgaria, Greece and Lebannon:
down the eastern flank of the anticyclone where cold northerly winds picked up
moisture from the Baltic sea. Great for Bansko, but terrible in Meribel.
 What has actually happened since those bad ski seasons? Reliable snowfalls
returned, culminating in 2017-18, the best overall ski season in 20 years or more.
Certainly the best ski season overall since snow-forecast.com began in 1998.
 The 2017/18 season was especially good in Europe; not because it was unusually
cold but mostly because moist westerly winds prevailed with regular heavy
snowfalls.

43. Global roundup:
 Why did this happen? We have always seen a weak correlation between La Nina in
the Pacific and good ski seasons in Europe BUT, primarily last season was driven by
very warm sea temperatures in the north Atlantic and Baltic through Autumn and early
winter. Warmer water makes for more evaporation and more cloud and resulting
snowfall.
 While some wet winters in Europe are dominated by SW winds, the last one was a
mix of westerly or north westerly winds and a few easterly cold spells (coined the
beast from the east in Britain) but almost no warm south westerly or south winds.
Cold easterlies have been driven by low pressure forming over Greenland and some
climatologists think that may even be due to global warming and snowmelt in places
like Baffin Island, leading to a decline in the Gulf Stream and the Guld Stream is the
reason why Europe seems very warm in winter for its latitude.
 In summary, we are plainly seeing climate change but so far the effect on the Alps
especially seems to be positive with longer and snowier ski seasons. Glaciers are
vanishing because of the warming but ski seasons are ok for now because of
increased precipitation in winter.

44. To come:
About 50 ski areas remain open in the Northern
Hemisphere as we enter May, although half of those will
be closed by 13th May.
Southern hem ski season and European glaciers
opening at start of June
Val d'Isère to offer summer skiing on winter slopes For
First Time (in it’s 83yr history)
Summer ski season starts in Norway
Kitzbuhel To complete October to May ski season
Mt.Baker - one of three snowiest seasons this century

45. To come:
 NZ - 3 significant snow events. Snow fell as far north as the
900m high hills just south of Auckland. Despite the warmest
summer and highest sea temperatures ever & with glaciers
retreating rapidly.
 Warmer water leading to wetter & snowier weather = good
skiing conditions despite global warming.
 At low elevations, NZ winter has got 1 month shorter in the
last 100 years.
 La Nina is turning neutral and forecast neutral for next
season. La Nina and El Nino are the major drivers of the N
American ski season.
 Eg, when Vancouver held the Olympics in 2010, it was warm.
That’s because a strong El Niño was running then. In theory
Whistler would have had a far better season in the La Nina
season just gone.

46. To come:
 What does the snow/lack of snow means for next season, my
personal opinion (with no scientific angle) is absolutely none –
could be good/could be terrible.
 Observations from following snow reports since mid 1980s is
(1) previous winter has no bearing at all on next winter (2) on
average usually at least one world region has a pretty terrible
/ almost no snow season. Again this varies apparently
randomly.
 snow-forecast.com popularity seems to do best when ski
season are poor as we had big spikes in traffic in the poorer
snow seasons more than a decade ago. Skiers get anxious
about where to go. Even so, the last 12 months were our
largest visitor numbers yet, nearing 13 million globally.

47. Snow-Forecast.com features:
- Fully responsive website - 3,100 resorts worldwide
- NEW app for IOS, live snow, maps and alerts.
- up to 20,000 snow alerts a day globally
- Whiteroom launched in 2017
- Snowfinder tool to help users find the best Snow
- Up to 15 years snowfall history for many resorts
- Extensive visitor ratings, reviews and photographs..

48. Credits
Patrick Thorne – SnowHunter
Rob Davies – Snow-Forecast: Chief Meteorologist
Ski Club GB snow-report
Laurent Vanat