No snow yet. Snow depth and the seven-day outlook appear once snow is on the ground or forecast.
Typical snowfall
269cm
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
1,231–2,219 m
Across
2.7 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.
Pelvoux-Vallouise, in France, runs from 1,231 m at the base to 2,219 m at the top. Its mapped area is about 2.7 km across, with 35 marked runs and 7 lifts (about 15 km of piste in all).
Over the last twelve winters the ERA5 weather model gives it 269 cm of snowfall a season, 627th (tied) of 3,069 worldwide and 89th in France. It swings a lot from year to year: the biggest winter, 2017/18 (485 cm), brought more than 3 times as much as the leanest, 2018/19 (161 cm). December brings as much snow as January here (70 and 70 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
269cm
per season
Worst of 12 winters
161cm
The middle winter of the 12: 258 cm. The best: 485 cm.
World rank
627
of 3,069 worldwide
Rank in country
89
of 244 in France
Elevation rank
82
Highest to lowest, of 244 in France. The centre point sits at 1,715 m, 178 m above the national median.
Compared with what is nearby
Within 50 km in a straight line. Ski areas in the same weather-model cell (about 30 km across) get the same figure.
The most snow falls in December. March brings 97% of January’s snowfall. That is a gentler fall than the median for ski areas in France (77%). In amount, March brings 68 cm, more than the median of 55 cm.
70cmDec
70cmJan
61cmFeb
68cmMar
Average snowfall by month, last 12 winters
Winter by winter
Across the 12 winters measured, the average is 269 cm, and 7 of them fell short of it. The leanest was 2018/19 with 161 cm; the biggest was 2017/18 with 485 cm (3.0 times as much). For 26% of the 244 ski areas in France the leanest winter was 2016/17; here it was a different one.
Across 2,888 ski areas: 39% of American runs are graded advanced or harder, and 9% of Austrian ones. Nobody thinks Austria is four times gentler. The grades are measuring different things.