Resorts across the Alps are reporting fresh snow this morning.
Around a dozen glacier ski areas in Austria, Italy, France and Switzerland are already open, but snow has been falling to lower levels – around 1500m in some places.
Obergurgl in Austria posted pictures of snow at resort level (and at a restaurant up on the slopes, top) – it is due to open in about 5 weeks’ time. There was also fresh snow pictured by Passo Tonale in Italy (below).
The biggest reported snowfall was however at Austria’s already-open highest slopes at Pitztal, which issued a ‘powder alarm’ for more than 20cm of snow in 24 hours – 21cm to be precise.
Meanwhile in Scandinavia the resort of Ruka in Lapland which has the longest snow season of any non-glacier resort in the world has opened for the season this morning. It uses snow stockpiled from last winter and spreads it out on a ski run in order to start the season early. They issued a video about it. Geilo in Norway opened a run the same way at the end of September.
Across the Atlantic more than a foot of snow has been reported in the past week at several Western resorts. Whistler posted this picture of a snowman and snowmaking is underway at several high altitude resorts in Colorado.
