No snow yet. Snow depth and the seven-day outlook appear once snow is on the ground or forecast.
Typical snowfall
206cm
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
1,624 m
Across
0.6 km
Elevation of the ski area’s centre point, taken from a digital elevation model. It is not the base-to-summit range.
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.
Val Pelens is a ski area in France, at about 1,624 m. Its mapped area is about 0.6 km across.
Over the last twelve winters the ERA5 weather model gives it 206 cm of snowfall a season, 1,092nd (tied) of 3,069 worldwide and 145th in France. It swings a lot from year to year: the biggest winter, 2017/18 (374 cm), brought more than 3 times as much as the leanest, 2018/19 (94 cm). December brings as much snow as January here (48 and 45 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
206cm
per season
Worst of 12 winters
94cm
The middle winter of the 12: 185 cm. The best: 374 cm.
World rank
1092
of 3,069 worldwide
Rank in country
145
of 244 in France
Elevation rank
102
Highest to lowest, of 244 in France. The centre point sits at 1,624 m, 87 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.
Counted from the marked runs and lifts on the map, within 2.5 km of the centre of the ski area. These are not the resort’s own published figures.
Marked runs
0
Lifts
2
Lift types
Platter2
Source: OpenStreetMap (ODbL 1.0). How finely ski areas are drawn varies by region, so treat the counts as indicative. Difficulty uses the European grades, which do not map onto North American green / blue / black.
When it falls, and how winters differ
Month by month
The most snow falls in March. March brings as much as January, or more. In amount, March brings 62 cm, about the same as the median of 55 cm.
48cmDec
45cmJan
52cmFeb
62cmMar
Average snowfall by month, last 12 winters
Winter by winter
Across the 12 winters measured, the average is 206 cm, and 8 of them fell short of it. The leanest was 2018/19 with 94 cm; the biggest was 2017/18 with 374 cm (4.0 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.