More snow is falling
Sunday March 7, 2010 - Email this article to a friend

Winter, it seems, is back in many places with some fresh snow falling across The Alps.

It follows warmer temperatures with rain at some low level resorts.  In Northern Europe though it has been a different story with cold temperatures in Scandinavia and Scotland.

Across the Atlantic there have been big snowfalls on both the East and West sides of North America. Here are the full details with some help from our friends over at skiinfo.com.

We start, once again, in the area that has recieved the most snow recently. Scotland.

Who would have thought it?

SCOTLAND: Well, what a winter it is turning out to be. 

Last week 1m fell in a 36 hour period in The Lecht.  Elsewhere there were huge falls too and Cairngorm had to use exposives for the first time to make parts of the ski area safe.

See this separate PlanetSKI story.

All Scotland's ski areas are now open after they had a few probems earlier in the week with all the snow. They had to clear the access roads and dig many of the lifts out.

Ski Scotland has also just reported that it has been the best winter in terms of skier numbers for almost a decade with the skiing and snowboarding industries bringing in £25m to the local economies. 

See the report below from the PlanetSKI content edtor, James Cove, who reports for the shores of a frozen over Loch Morlich near Aviemore.

And see this PlanetSKI interview with the Chief Executive of Cairngorm, Ian Whitaker. He's quite a happy man.

Meanwhile over in The Alps things seem to be looking up too.

FRANCE: There have been some good falls with 45- 52cm in La Clusaz, Val Thorens  and Alpe d'Huez.

Chamonix has the deepest snow in France with 4.2m.

There are also good condition in Espace Killy where Tignes welcomes the X Games next week. 

PlanetSKI will be there so keep an eye open for our reports.

Tignes hosts X Games

SWITZERLAND: 30cm fell in Nax as well as Champoussin.

There was some fresh snow a week or so ago in and around the PlanetSKI base resort of Verbier though it has also brought a number of avalanche fatalities and other accidents.

There's been less new snow in the German speaking parts of the country, but Engelberg and Lötschental are still on top of the list of biggest snow depths. 

The resorts have 2.85m and 2.72m of snow on their mountains respectively.

Engelberg under snow

AUSTRIA:  Austria got a little new snow this week with Sölden, Obertauern and the Ski Welt with Brixental, Söll and Ellmau getting 5cm each.

Some snow had already been falling in St. Anton, Hochfügen (both 5cm) and Saalbach Hinterglemm (10cm).

The biggest snow accumulations in the country in the past week has been at Zauchensee (30 cm) and Sölden (29 cm).

The snow depth in the latter has "climbed" up to 2m with some new snow falling almost every day. Flachau had 25cm of new snow in a week.

A PlanetSKI reader, Lina Einarrson, arrived in Kitzbuhel a couple of days ago and was greeted with low clouds and bare lower slopes.

Not quite the picture postcard stuff she had been hoping for.

You don't see this in the brochure

But what a difference a day makes and a drop in temperatures brought some fresh snow and a smile to Lina's face.

"The slopes are awesome! Lots of snow during the night and still snowing. -3 degrees. Gotta go!" Lina x

Looking good for Lina

ITALY:  The country had had less favorable conditions with bad weather in the last few days, especially in the north and the centre of the country with warm temperatures bringing some unwanted rainfall this afternoon and more expected.

Unusually, conditions are better for skiing in Italy's southern areas.

There have been healthy snow accumulations over the past seven days at some resorts

Courmayeur has had 75cm of new snow, Arabba Marmolada 70cm - it continues to claim the deepest snow in Europe, with 5m, La Thuile has had 55cm and Bardonecchia 40cm.

In Germany up to 10cm of new snow was reported in Bavaria earlier this week.  Oberstdorf has already had 10 cm yesterday at the mountains Fellhorn and Nebelhorn.

Mild weather has brought early spring to Eastern Europe and in particular to ski areas in Bulgaria, which are struggling to battle a rapid thaw and sticky snow as temperatures have almost reached double figures in the past week.

ANDORRA: Andorra has also not seen fresh snow for nearly two weeks, but conditions remain relatively good thanks to a healthy base build up, with most areas reporting 1.2 - 1.8m.

The best conditions are to be found in Arcalis, the highest resort with much north facing terrain.

Meanwhile Pal, which is linked to Arinsal, is holding up well.

Pal, Andorra

SPAIN: The Spanish Pyrenees are still looking very nice with more than 1.5m of snow on the top of the slopes. Baqueira Beret has 1.75cm of snow on top and 93km of  runs open, Formigal up to 2.4m of snow and 136 km of runs open

Sierra Nevada continues to have the greatest snow depth in Spain with five metres on their upper slopes, equalling Arabba in Italy for the deepest in the world.

There has been much less snow in Spain this week than last but new snow is expected over the next few days.

Cerler, Spain

In Scandinavia it seems there's nothing holding back the snow right now.

It continues to accumulate from last week causing problems for traffic and transport like buses and railways and leading to some roof collapses in the south of Sweden while at the same time adding to the great snow depths at ski resorts across the whole country.

SWEDEN: All this means there are really great conditions from the north to south of the region, right in time for the second week of Sweden's current winter holiday period.

During the last week ski resorts further up north have had some serious amounts of snow fall as well. The small resort of Nalovardo got the most with 33cm followed by Branäs 27cm, Tandådalen 17cm and Åre 10cm.

The forecast for the rest of the week looks really promising, especially in the north.

Riksgränsen, which recently re-opened for its 2010 ski season through to June up in the Arctic Circle is expecting massive snow falls starting around now.

Across the Atlantic there have been more serious snowfalls on both East and West sides of the continent.

US: On the East Coast the "snowicane" that paralyzed the region for nearly a week has set many ski areas up to be skiing well into Spring 2010.

After ending February with nearly 2.4m of natural snowfall over five days Belleayre in New York state is primed for a monumental March.

To the north Le Massif, an hour outside Quebec City in Quebec, Canada, reported 72cm.

On the western side of the continent nearly 90cm of snow has fallen at Beaver Creek and Vail, while Breckenridge received 71cm, Heavenly 64cm and Keystone was walloped with 51cm.

The heavens opened with 10 straight days of relentless snow in  Colorado resorts and Pacific storms in the west.

One from the Vail tourist office

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