Hanmer Springs Ski Area
Hanmer Springs Ski Area is a ski area in New Zealand. It sits at about 1,608 m above sea level. The mapped ski area covers about 1.5 km². Over the last three winters the ERA5 reanalysis gives it 89 cm of snowfall a season, 2352nd (tied) of the 3,112 ski areas we measure worldwide. The model runs well below what resorts report, so the ranking is the meaningful part rather than the centimetre figure. 6 other ski areas lie within 120 km. Snow figures and the Powder Score are recalculated every day.
Elevation of the ski area’s centre point, taken from a digital elevation model. It is not the base-to-summit range.
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.
Score breakdown
Powder Score v1.0.0
7-day outlook
| Date | Snow | Temp | Wind |
|---|---|---|---|
| ⛈️ 27 Sept | 10 | -9.3 / 5 | 35.3 |
| 🌦️ 28 Sept | 0 | -6 / -0.7 | 17.6 |
| ☁️ 29 Sept | 0 | -3.2 / 7.6 | 12.1 |
| ☁️ 30 Sept | 0 | -2 / 8.4 | 13.5 |
| 🌤️ 1 Oct | 0 | -4.3 / 6.8 | 15.6 |
| ☁️ 2 Oct | 0 | 1.4 / 9.8 | 24.5 |
| 🌦️ 3 Oct | 0 | 4 / 9.8 | 11.7 |
Runs and lifts
Counted from the marked runs and lifts on the map, within 2.5 km of the centre of the ski area. These are not the resort’s own published figures.
Lift types
- Rope tow2
- Platter1
Source: OpenStreetMap (ODbL 1.0). How finely ski areas are drawn varies by region, so treat the counts as indicative. Difficulty uses the European grades, which do not map onto North American green / blue / black.
How much snow it gets
Measured by us across 3,112 ski areas by one identical method. These are not the resort’s own published figures.
The tick marks the median across the 395 Japanese ski areas. All four bars run the same way — longer is better.
The quality score deliberately excludes how much snow falls — it uses temperature, frequency, rain and wind. Snowing a lot and snowing well are different things.
Compared with what is nearby
Within 50 km straight line. Measured the same way, so the ranks compare directly. Ski areas a few kilometres apart share a weather grid cell and can return the same figure.
| Ski area | Distance | Seasonal snowfall | World rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mount Lyford Alpine Resort | 34 km | 103 cm | 2146 |
When it falls, and how winters differ
Month by month
Month by month, the most snow falls in July. September brings 73% of July’s snowfall. That is in line with the median for ski areas in New Zealand (79%). In amount, September brings 24 cm, less than the median of 32 cm.
Map
Where it sits relative to nearby resorts. For a piste map, see the official site.
More places to look
Updated: 26 Sept 2026, 23:28