Up to 1m Of Snow Overnight in the Alps

There have been the biggest snowfalls of the 2016-17 ski season yet overnight in the Western Alps and the snow has kept falling in many other regions too.

Overnight snowfall totals from hundreds of ski areas including Verbier, St Anton, Chamonix and many other top resorts are in the 20-50cm bracket.

However the biggest snowfall reported as been 1m at Flaine (50cm at lower Grand Massif villages), pictured above.

Flaine has now had 1.4m of snow in the last 48 hours, nearly five feet of snow. It, along with resorts like Morzine and Villars, are amongst the ski areas that had had the least snow during the drought that ran from mid November until early January, but conditions have now been dramatically transformed at all these areas.

The timing is not good for transfer day and French resorts in particularly have been stressing that it is a legal requirement as well as a safety essential for cars to use chains ascending to the resorts.

Although the fresh snow means off piste skiing in the Alps will be possible and enjoyable for the first time in two months, the avalanche danger level is very high – level 4 - and skiing off piste is currently very dangerous.

J2SkiNews wrote:
50m at lower Grand Massif villages

Crikey !!!!
That is over 150 feet of snow :)

ha ha, thanks Andy, look I said there was A LOT ...sure you saw the 'snow cataclysm in the Alps' news headlines, they're still digging people out... But now corrected to slightly more boring correct number

We received about 80 cm I would guess. Friends skied on Friday and in trees they were still falling through knee-deep powder towards the (absent) base, but on Saturday and Sunday when I skied, I had snow under my skis all the way. Very light snow and it has been blown around by wind quite a lot. Unfortunately, this week is the Verbier Freeride week, so by Wednesday there will be nothing resembling powder left anywhere within a 30 min hike from lifts. However, to put things in perspective, all this snow still wasn't enough to bring the total depths to what they normally are in an average to good snow season, probably only half-way there or a little more. I can tell just by seeing all the bushes off-piste where in an average season you can only see very tops and in a good season in many areas you cannot even guess they are there. At the moment they are big enough to ski around them, not through them. Yesterday it was very odd as it snowed mainly mid-mountain: heavy snow in the village was getting lighter as we were going up with nothing and clear skies about 2500m and also getting lighter below 1500, with nothing in the valley. Anyway, let's hope January delivers some more snow.

Skied Flaine today. It was amazing.(but very cold!) Samoens, Les Carroz and Morillon are also great. 3 bluebird days in a row.

Skied today and by the way it looked you wouldn't guess it snowed quite a bit only a week ago :( Strong winds that followed the snowfall moved it around a fair bit. off-piste mostly unskiable unless you like "extreme" stuff like hopping over rocks and dropping cliffs with rather hard landings. I couldn't spot a single uninterrupted line. Side-pistes covered in huge moguls, itineraries are very rocky and bumpy. Some bumps are size of a car. They were blunt girl snow so that it could come down and cover some rocks so it would have been even worse. In couple places I was quite scared and the main excitement was getting down in one piece. Spoke to guides and they say Rosablanche is nice, still good powder there, but at 3+ hours climb. Or hidden valley, but traverse is windblown and sketchy exit. Pistes are very good, especially in the morning. I think until it snows again I will stick to pistes for now. Snow is not expected any time soon. The same guides said maybe February 10-12. Which will be half-way towards the end of the season, and there won't be any base. We poked around today and all the way under the snow there is nothing. The snow that has fallen didn't stick to the ground :(

Looking at friends photos today seems Chamonix is similar. Onpiste looks great but for off-piste to be good it needs something like 1m to bury the rocks.