Pre-2025-Season Snowfall in Southern Hemisphere
Ski areas on three continents across the southern hemisphere have been reporting fresh snowfall ahead of the 2025 season, which is now only a month away.
Ski areas on three continents across the southern hemisphere have been reporting fresh snowfall ahead of the 2025 season, which is now only a month away.
Afriski in Lesotho was the latest to report a fresh covering of snow this morning, Sunday 27th April. It’s usually one of the first to open in the southern hemisphere, usually in the first week of June.
More substantial falls have been reported in New Zealand in the last week with Mt Hutt amongst those reporting snowfall down to base level. It is targeting June 13th for its season start with “first on the chair” T shirts up for grabs. However these were just the latest snowfalls following snow earlier in April. Cardrona pictured below on April 8th.
There’s also been some good snowfalls in South America over the past few days with Argentina’s Cerro Catedral and Cerro Bayo (pictured top on Thursday last week) amongst those posting images of 10-20cm (4-8”) accumulations. Last May the continent’s ski areas saw huge snowfalls leading to early openings and setting them up for the entire season. It remains to be seen if we’ll see a repeat of that this year although.
However US monitoring services report that the La Niña conditions that brought big snowfalls around the Pacific over the past 12 months has ended, and the tropical Pacific Ocean is now in a neutral state, meaning it’s not showing the typical patterns of either La Niña or El Niño.
Australia’s season traditional begins on the long weekend which includes The King's Birthday national holiday on the second Monday of June in most states. For 2025 that’s Monday 9th June making Saturday the 7th the target opening date for many.
Aussie opening weekends can happen with or without snowfall, although a growing number of the country’s resorts are investing in more all-weather snowmaking machines like the TechnoAlpin Snowfactory to ensure they do have snow, with several Australian centres already firing theirs up for 2025. In fact the small Corin Forest area has already opened a snow play area for the autumn/fall and winter, initially for snow play rather than skiing.
