Global Weekly Snow Roundup #338

• Japan's 2026 season gets started with machine-made snow, but fresh snowfalls are reported.
• Southern hemisphere’s 2026 season continues into November.
• More than a dozen ski areas open in Europe, with Adelboden opening thanks to snow farming.
• North America's season gets underway with Colorado's Arapahoe Basin opening for its 26-27 season.

The ski season is edging closer in the northern hemisphere with more promising signs of fresh snowfall on mountains across Asia, Europe and North America and more ski areas firing up their snowmaking systems. Inevitably though, we’ve also seen unwelcome ‘above average’ warm spells at times again this week. All this means, as we approach the final month of meteorological autumn/fall, that we’re not yet clear on how good, or bad, the start of the season is going to be anywhere really.  

November is, though, due to bring the peak of the so-called Super El Niño, which may bring snowy abundance to some and a drier, warmer start to winter than we'd like to other ski regions.

As it is, most already open ski areas in the north are in Europe, where the total of skiable centres is now approaching 20 across six countries in the Alps and Scandinavia. Several more centres including Switzerland's Adelboden opened last weekend thanks to either glacier slope or snow farming techniques, and those already open have been increasing on the (rather limited) terrain most started with. Mürren and Italy's Sulden are set to start their seasons this weekend.

In North America Colorado's Arapahoe Basin opened for it's 26-27 season on Wednesday, the first in the US and the North American continent to get its lifts spinning. Its move followed more snowfall and slightly lower than average temperatures in the west. Multiple storms have piled through over the past week, with West Coast mountains doing about the best; snowmaking systems have also fired up where they can.  It's been a little warmer than average and drier in the east, but some limited snowmaking has been possible. The first scheduled season starts at Breckenridge and Copper in Colorado, and Sunshine and Lake Louise in Canada are now just a week away.

Japan has reported some more snowfall on higher terrain, with a decent covering for resorts in Hokkaido, where the season will start in about a month's time. However, the first turns on outdoor snow in the country have been made already as the small Yeti ski area beneath Mt Fuji created a snow run with all-weather snowmaking for its usual late-October opening last week, despite challenges from rain and warm temperatures. The first autumn snowfalls were reported in parts on Honshu including in Nozawa Onsen pictured below and top) and the Hakuba Valley on Wednesday.

In the southern hemisphere, remarkably, the 2026 ski season is continuing, even as we enter the final month of meteorological summertime. Four resorts in Chile and New Zealand were open last weekend, with New Zealand's Tūroa – Mt. Ruapehu (0/110cm / 0/44") reporting about 10% of its terrain on its upper mountain still skiable.

In the Andes, Chile's Valle Nevado (90/180cm / 36/72"), which has previously announced it will stay open through the first week of November, still has about a quarter of its runs open. Its neighbour, El Colorado (40/120cm / 16/48"), reopened for a final weekend (pictured below), still reporting 50km (31 miles) of slopes, still the most in the world even with northern hemisphere resorts reopening. Finally, La Parva (20/60cm / 8/24") also reopened to complete the set for the '3 Valleys of the Andes' East of Santiago. It still had about half its runs open and plans to reopen for a probably final weekend of 2026 this coming Saturday and Sunday. All four areas reported more fresh snowfall this week.