No snow yet. Snow depth and the seven-day outlook appear once snow is on the ground or forecast.
Typical snowfall
55cm
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
2,646–3,133 m
Across
2.6 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.
Sandia Peak Ski Area, in United States, runs from 2,646 m at the base to 3,133 m at the top. Its mapped area is about 2.6 km across, with 66 marked runs and 6 lifts (about 25 km of piste in all).
Over the last twelve winters the ERA5 weather model gives it 55 cm of snowfall a season, 2,789th (tied) of 3,069 worldwide and 509th in the United States. It swings a lot from year to year: the biggest winter, 2022/23 (92 cm), brought more than 3 times as much as the leanest, 2015/16 (24 cm). January is usually the snowiest month, with about 18 cm.
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
55cm
per season
Worst of 12 winters
24cm
The middle winter of the 12: 52 cm. The best: 92 cm.
World rank
2789
of 3,069 worldwide
Rank in country
509
of 534 in United States
Elevation rank
34
Highest to lowest, of 534 in United States. The centre point sits at 2,877 m, 2,349 m above 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
66
Run length
25km
Lifts
6
Vertical
487m
Top 3,133 m · base 2,646 m
Run map
NoviceEasyIntermediateAdvancedLift
North is up. Runs are coloured by difficulty; black lines are lifts.Lifts that run far beyond the ski area are cut at the edge of the map.Slope shape, difficulty and lift types
The shape of the mountain
Longest run on the map1.8 km
Steepest pitch32°measured over at least 30 m
Average gradient of the runs11.1°
Which way the slopes face
North22%
East77%
South1%
West1%
99% of the vertical on the runs descends to the north or east. Those slopes get the least sun, so the snow lasts longer.
The most snow falls in January. March brings 67% of January’s snowfall. That is a steeper fall than the median for ski areas in the United States (85%): the snow here is concentrated early in the season. In amount, March brings 12 cm, less than the median of 30 cm.
10cmDec
18cmJan
15cmFeb
12cmMar
Average snowfall by month, last 12 winters
Winter by winter
Across the 12 winters measured, the average is 55 cm, and 7 of them fell short of it. The leanest was 2015/16 with 24 cm; the biggest was 2022/23 with 92 cm (3.8 times as much).
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.