Forecasts for heavy snow in the Alps over the weekend appear to be firming up as the days draw near. The most optimistic are looking at the snow starting to fall on Friday night and 50-60cm of new snow on higher slopes by Monday morning.
A number of already-open ski areas including Tignes and St Moritz have published powder forecasts with 50-60cm for the weekend, but the snowfall looks likely to be widespread.
Too early to get excited that this means a snowy start to winter 16-17? Probably, alas, but still November snow of any kind was a rarity in most of the recent poor winters, so it's a minor positive that hopefully we can built on.
Meanwhile low temperatures mean European ski resorts have snowmaking systems working at full pelt, which many resorts now claim is almost more important than natural snowfall for early season base building.
Hemsedal in Norway say they are currently producing the equivalent of 10,000 truck loads of snow each day (pictured above), whilst the Dolomiti Superski which had a particularly poor first half of the season last winter has said it is now making snow in the daytime as well as at night (pictured below).
Across the Atlantic where Sunshine mountain near Banff becomes the first ski area to open in Canada for the season today, with a base of more than 60cm of natural snow, BC resort Revelstoke says it has had one its snowiest starts to autumn so far, with the start of its season still a month way it has measured 237cm (an inch under eight feet) of snowfall so far.
It's not all good news though. In Colorado Keystone has become the first resort to delay opening for the season – it had planned to tomorrow but now says it will wait another week due to 'unseasonably warm weather'. Shortly after it made its announcement the temperatures dropped, a few inches of snow fell and they fired up the snow cannons.