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.
Craigieburn Valley Ski Area, in New Zealand, runs from 1,294 m at the base to 1,810 m at the top. Its mapped area is about 2.3 km across, with 24 marked runs and 3 lifts (about 12 km of piste in all).
Over the last twelve winters the ERA5 weather model gives it 156 cm of snowfall a season, 1,588th (tied) of 3,069 worldwide and 10th in New Zealand. It swings a lot from year to year: the biggest winter, 2022 (318 cm), brought more than 3 times as much as the leanest, 2018 (91 cm). Snowfall days average −2.2°C at mid-mountain, and its snow-quality score ranks 23rd of 25 in New Zealand.
Modelled from weather data the same way at all 3,069 ski areas we cover. These are not the resort’s own published figures.
The tick marks the median across every Japanese ski area we measure. All four bars run the same way — longer is better.
The quality score leaves out how much snow falls (it uses temperature, frequency, rain and wind).
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Broken River Ski Area | 1.7 km | 156 cmsame grid cell | 1588 |
| Mount Cheeseman Ski Area | 5.7 km | 150 cm | 1665 |
| Mount Olympus Ski Area | 12.0 km | 168 cm | 1438 |
| Porters Ski Area | 19.0 km | 140 cm | 1801 |
| Temple Basin Ski Area | 24.0 km | 215 cm | 995 |
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.
55% of the vertical on the runs descends to the north or east; plenty of the terrain faces the sun as well, so the lean is modest.
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 July. September brings 69% of July’s snowfall. That is a steeper fall than the median for ski areas in New Zealand (79%): the snow here is concentrated early in the season. In amount, September brings 31 cm, about the same as the median of 32 cm.
Across the 12 winters measured, the average is 156 cm, and 8 of them fell short of it. The leanest was 2018 with 91 cm; the biggest was 2022 with 318 cm (3.5 times as much). For 54% of the 26 ski areas in New Zealand the leanest winter was 2016; here it was a different one.
Snowfall each winter (June–September 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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