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. Snow report on the official site ↗
Saas-Balen, in Switzerland, runs from 1,473 m at the base to 1,521 m at the top. Its mapped area is about 0.4 km across, with 3 marked runs and 1 lift (about 2.5 km of piste in all).
Over the last twelve winters the ERA5 weather model gives it 314 cm of snowfall a season, 430th (tied) of 3,069 worldwide and 72nd in Switzerland. It swings a lot from year to year: the biggest winter, 2017/18 (538 cm), brought more than twice as much as the leanest, 2016/17 (203 cm). March still brings 85 cm on average, close to January, its snowiest month.
The nearest city of any size is Bern, about 92 km away in a straight line.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Saas-Grund | 3.5 km | 303 cm | 466 |
| Grächen | 6.7 km | 316 cm | 423 |
| Staldenried - Gspon | 7.8 km | 314 cmsame grid cell | 430 |
| Saas Fee | 8.1 km | 294 cm | 503 |
| Saas-Almagell | 8.2 km | 294 cm | 503 |
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.
72% 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 January. March brings 96% of January’s snowfall. That is a gentler fall than the median for ski areas in Switzerland (76%). In amount, March brings 85 cm, more than the median of 60 cm.
Across the 12 winters measured, the average is 314 cm, and 8 of them fell short of it. The leanest was 2016/17 with 203 cm; the biggest was 2017/18 with 538 cm (2.7 times as much).
Snowfall each winter (December–March total). The dashed line is the average; the numbers mark the leanest and the biggest winter.
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