SHARE
COPY LINK

SKIING

Do Swiss ski resorts have enough snow for the February holidays?

As many families, as well as foreign tourists, head to the Swiss Alps in the coming days, they may be wondering whether there is enough snow on the slopes.

Do Swiss ski resorts have enough snow for the February holidays?
Zermatt-Matterhorn slopes. Photo by Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP)

The concern is not baseless, as the unseasonably warm weather at the end of December and beginning of January meant that medium and low altitude resorts had practically no snow.

A number of them had to close, putting their future into question.

READ MORE: ‘Bike instead of skiing’: Switzerland’s snowless ski slopes forced to close

But fortunately for winter sports enthusiasts as well as mountain communities that depend on tourism to survive, there is now plenty of snow in major ski resorts.

These are the current weather conditions in some of the most popular Swiss destinations (the minimum show coverage for good skiing is about 50 cm): 

  • Zermatt-Matterhorn (Valais): 75 cm on the slopes
  • Verbier (Valais): 85 cm
  • Engadin – St. Moritz (Graubünden) : 65 cm
  • Thyon – 4 Valées: 90 cm
  • Glacier 3000 – Les Diablerets (Vaud) : 180 cm
  • Crans-Montana (Valais) : 150 cm
  • Arosa-Lenzerheide (Graubünden) : 60 cm
  • Adelboden (Bern) : 68 cm

You can find out conditions in other Swiss resorts here, or use this map.

In case you haven’t yet decided where you should go to ski, these articles could help you make up your mind:

Skiing in Switzerland: Three ski resorts within easy reach of Lausanne

Three top ski resorts within easy access of Zurich 

Skiing near Bern: The top 3 ski resorts within easy reach of Swiss capital

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

SKIING

LATEST: US teenager among three killed in Swiss avalanche

One of the three people killed by an avalanche at the luxury Swiss ski resort of Zermatt was a 15-year-old boy from the United States, police said Tuesday.

LATEST: US teenager among three killed in Swiss avalanche

The two others killed in Monday’s avalanche were “a man and a woman who are still being identified”, the Wallis regional police said in a statement.

“Regarding the female victim, we so far have no information allowing us to identify her.”

The large avalanche happened in an out-of-bounds area at Zermatt in southern Switzerland shortly after 2:00 pm (1200 GMT), and an extensive search
was immediately carried out despite bad weather.

Of the four people pulled out of the snow, only one was still alive, a 20-year-old Swiss man who was seriously injured and airlifted to hospital.

The authorities had warned of a significant avalanche risk in the Alpine regions of southern Switzerland in recent days because of heavy snowfall and
high winds.

Around 17 people have lost their lives in avalanches in Switzerland since October 1 last year, according to statistics from the WSL Institute for Snow
and Avalanche Research.

A total of 147 avalanche-related accidents have occurred during the period, involving 197 people.

SHOW COMMENTS