No snow yet. Snow depth and the seven-day outlook appear once snow is on the ground or forecast.
Typical snowfall
106cm
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 →
Elevation
276–512 m
Across
3.8 km
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.Snow report on the official site ↗
Lutsen Mountains, in United States, runs from 276 m at the base to 512 m at the top. Its mapped area is about 3.8 km across, with 76 marked runs and 8 lifts (about 27 km of piste in all).
Over the last twelve winters the ERA5 weather model gives it 106 cm of snowfall a season, 2,301st (tied) of 3,069 worldwide and 358th in the United States. It swings a lot from year to year: the biggest winter, 2021/22 (159 cm), brought more than twice as much as the leanest, 2020/21 (65 cm). December brings as much snow as January here (37 and 22 cm on average).
How much snow it gets
Modelled from weather data the same way at all 3,069 ski areas we cover. These are not the resort’s own published figures.
Seasonal snowfall
106cm
per season
Worst of 12 winters
65cm
The middle winter of the 12: 97 cm. The best: 159 cm.
World rank
2301
of 3,069 worldwide
Rank in country
358
of 534 in United States
Elevation rank
376
Highest to lowest, of 534 in United States. The centre point sits at 347 m, 181 m below the national median.
Runs and lifts
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.
Marked runs
76
Run length
27km
Lifts
8
Vertical
236m
Top 512 m · base 276 m
Run map
NoviceEasyIntermediateAdvancedExpertLift
North is up. Runs are coloured by difficulty; black lines are lifts.Slope shape, difficulty and lift types
The shape of the mountain
Longest run on the map1.4 km
Steepest pitch37°measured over at least 30 m
Average gradient of the runs10.3°
Which way the slopes face
North8%
East52%
South19%
West21%
60% 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.
The most snow falls in December. March brings as much as January, or more. In amount, March brings 23 cm, less than the median of 30 cm.
37cmDec
22cmJan
23cmFeb
23cmMar
Average snowfall by month, last 12 winters
Winter by winter
Across the 12 winters measured, the average is 106 cm, and 7 of them fell short of it. The leanest was 2020/21 with 65 cm; the biggest was 2021/22 with 159 cm (2.4 times as much). For 33% of the 534 ski areas in the United States the leanest winter was 2015/16; here it was a different one.
Niseko is 526th in the world for snowfall. Zermatt is 554th, Jackson Hole 924th, Aspen 1,201st. Measured identically across 3,069 ski areas, the names everyone books and the places it actually snows turn out to be two different lists.