No snow yet. Snow depth and the seven-day outlook appear once snow is on the ground or forecast.
A weather-model figure, worked out the same way for every ski area, and lower than what actually falls. Use it to compare ski areas, not against the resort’s own totals. How we measure →
We do not show a snow depth here. The weather model we use reports snow lying on the ground — it knows nothing about grooming or snowmaking, and it is not the base depth a ski area publishes. In Japan we can check our figures against 234 weather stations. Outside Japan there is nothing to check them against, so we do not print a number we have not verified.
Col de Plainpalais, in France, runs from 1,171 m at the base to 1,449 m at the top. Its mapped area is about 1.7 km across, with 3 marked runs and 1 lift (about 3.1 km of piste in all).
Over the last twelve winters the ERA5 weather model gives it 207 cm of snowfall a season, 1,081st (tied) of 3,069 worldwide and 141st in France. It swings a lot from year to year: the biggest winter, 2017/18 (352 cm), brought more than twice as much as the leanest, 2015/16 (123 cm). January is usually the snowiest month, with about 63 cm.
Modelled from weather data the same way at all 3,069 ski areas we cover. These are not the resort’s own published figures.
Within 50 km in a straight line. Ski areas in the same weather-model cell (about 30 km across) get the same figure.
| Ski area | Distance | Seasonal snowfall | World rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aillon-Margériaz | 1.9 km | 207 cmsame grid cell | 1081 |
| La Féclaz | 2.9 km | 207 cmsame grid cell | 1081 |
| Le Revard | 3.7 km | 207 cmsame grid cell | 1081 |
| Aillon-le-Jeune | 8.2 km | 214 cm | 1008 |
| Le Semnoz | 18.0 km | 192 cm | 1230 |
Counted from the runs and lifts drawn on OpenStreetMap, within the boundary of the ski area. These are not the resort’s own published figures.
Only 41% of the vertical on the runs descends to the north or east. The most common direction is west (56%).
Source: OpenSkiMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0). How finely ski areas are drawn varies by region, so treat the counts as indicative. Vertical is the difference between the highest and lowest points of the mapped runs and lifts.
The most snow falls in January. March brings 71% of January’s snowfall. That is in line with the median for ski areas in France (77%). In amount, March brings 45 cm, less than the median of 55 cm.
Across the 12 winters measured, the average is 207 cm, and 7 of them fell short of it. The leanest was 2015/16 with 123 cm; the biggest was 2017/18 with 352 cm (2.9 times as much). For 26% of the 244 ski areas in France the leanest winter was 2016/17; here it was a different one.
Snowfall each winter (December–March total). The dashed line is the average; the numbers mark the leanest and the biggest winter.
The weather map, and where it sits among nearby ski areas.
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