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.
Sapphire Valley Ski Resort, in United States, runs from 964 m at the base to 1,005 m at the top. Its mapped area is about 0.7 km across, with 2 marked runs and 3 lifts (about 0.5 km of piste in all).
Over the last twelve winters the ERA5 weather model gives it 22 cm of snowfall a season, 2,963rd (tied) of 3,069 worldwide and 534th in the United States. It swings a lot from year to year: the biggest winter, 2018/19 (42 cm), brought more than 8 times as much as the leanest, 2023/24 (5 cm). January is usually the snowiest month, with about 10 cm.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cataloochee Ski Area | 49.0 km | 51 cm | 2812 |
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.
98% of the vertical on the runs descends to the north or east. Those slopes get the least sun, so the snow lasts longer.
See past trail maps on Skimap.org ↗
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 10% 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 1 cm, less than the median of 30 cm.
Across the 12 winters measured, the average is 22 cm, and 7 of them fell short of it. The leanest was 2023/24 with 5 cm; the biggest was 2018/19 with 42 cm (8.4 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.
Snowfall each winter (December–March total). The dashed line is the average; the numbers mark the leanest and the biggest winter.
The weather map, and where it sits among nearby ski areas.
Other booking sites: Booking.com ↗ · Agoda ↗
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