Lech, Austria, got their season started last weekend - with 2 metres of snow on the mountain!
Hundreds more ski areas open across the northern hemisphere, with snow levels and conditions excellent across most of the Alps.
The Snow Headlines - December 7th
- Chamonix opens for 23-24 season posting deepest snow in the world at 3.3 metres.
- Andorra's ski season is underway.
- Dolomiti Superski fully opens Friday with 500 miles (800km) of slopes.
- Eastern Europe's season underway with centres opening in multiple countries.
- Utah resort closes briefly for avalanche danger as heavy snowfall arrives in the Rockies.
- French ski resort Risoul damaged by a flash flood.
More heavy snow forecast for Europe, and decent amounts for America and Japan.
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World Overview
The start of December has brought more active weather systems across the northern hemisphere.
The good news from that is more snowfall, particularly welcome in North America where there hasn't been much to date. The downside has been yoyo-ing temperatures bringing rain at high elevations at times, high avalanche danger in both the Rockies and the Alps and gale force winds or fog at times.
Between these normal winter weather systems, which brought temporary closures to ski areas in both Europe and North America, there have been some glorious blue skies and fresh snow days.
In other positives, hundreds more ski areas have opened including the first for 23-24 in Andorra and several Eastern European nations.
Europe
Austria
Austria's dominance of the table for the resorts with the most terrain open in the world thus far this season may be about to be relinquished with bigger areas in France and Italy opening up much more terrain from this weekend, but conditions still look great, especially when compared to this time a year ago.
Kitzbuhel, for example, is reporting the snow lying deep on its village streets just like in the olden days last century. Austria still has three of the five biggest areas open in the world; with Ischgl (OK, an area shared with Samnaun over the border in Switzerland) still in the top spot and the first to pass 200km of lopes open this season, now up to 210km. St Anton and Solden are the other two.
France
Into every Alp a little rain must fall it seems and sadly Risoul (which has not yet opened for the season) got an awful lot of rain last Friday/Saturday during a brief temperature spike up to high elevations which caused flash flooding and severe base area damage - cutting the resort off for several days.
Outside that extreme though, conditions for the start of the season are very good and certainly much better than they were 12 months ago.
La Plagne is the latest French area to announce that it's opening a week early, this weekend, for a preview opening, after Avoriaz, 3 Valleys and Val Thorens did so last weekend.
Les 2 Alpes, Chamonix, Val d'Isere, Montgenevre and Alpe d'Huez are among the areas that opened last weekend joining Tignes and Val Thorens. Much more snow is forecast for the coming week.
Italy
Italy's big ski areas have been opening up over the past few days, with the Milky Way on the French border starting to open terrain around Sestriere from Thursday and the vast Dolomiti Superski beginning its full opening from Friday, when it says it will have about 320 lifts and 800km of slopes operational across all 12 sectors of its huge domain.
So in other words a positive start to the season. In common with other parts of the Alps, there's been a good start to 23-24 for most of the country with more powder alarms this last week and Bormio posting images of snow lying metres deep up at 3000m.
Switzerland
Swiss slopes are in good shape too after a whole lot more fresh snowfall.
Europe's highest slopes on the Swiss-Italian border shared by Zermatt and Cervinia often have the most terrain open in Europe at the end of November or early December and although they've not quite managed that in 2023 they are in second spot with about 140km of runs open already.
They have been overtaken for the country's deepest snow by Glacier 3000 near Gstaad, posting 220cm lying up top.
Pyrenees
Ski areas in the Pyrenees appear to have had a bit of a battle to open this week – which resorts on the Spanish side of the range have been keen to do, mostly as there are no less than three bank holidays this week.
The biggest area, Grandvalira, delayed a planned opening last weekend to Monday when it finally opened with about 40km of slopes around Pas de la Casa and a thin base reported.
Baqueira Beret on the Spanish side has already opened and seems to be faring slightly better so far, with up to 65km of slopes open now.
After some good November snowfalls, recent weeks have been too warm and too dry. A good snowfall is expected over the next 48 hours though.
Scotland
Scottish ski centres were forced to deny a newspaper report that the cold (and slightly snowy) weather meant they were opening early at the end of last week.
It has indeed been very cold, hardly getting above freezing much of the past week and reaching double-digits below zero (C) overnight on the hills most nights too. But it has been mostly clear weather with light snowfall and The Lecht was first to say they haven't got enough snow yet. It is one of those that might open early if it does snow enough.
Cairngorm and Glenshee are both talking about the week before Christmas, while Glencoe say that they have their access chair running up to high terrain for ski tourers but no in-bounds runs ready yet.
Scandinavia
Another cold and snowy week in Scandinavia with northerly centres again seeing lows down as far as -25C and although no big snowfalls were reported in the last seven days, the weightless light powder has been giving a nice refresh for slopes most mornings.
Most of Finland, Norway and Sweden's resorts already opened in November and of course, most have their slopes under floodlights at this time of year too.
Norway's Hafjell is currently posting the most terrain open – about half of its 50km of slopes, while Kåbdalis in Northern Sweden, which has already been open a month, is the first in the region to reach a 1m base depth.
Eastern Europe
The main news this week is that Jasna, one of the region's bigger ski areas, has opened with lots of snow lying already. It has about half of its 45km of runs open, which it says makes this one of the best season starts in years.
It has been a mostly cold and snowy week in the region.
Further south in Bulgaria, there's nowhere open yet but there has been snowfall reported down to resort level at ski areas like Bansko, which plans to open for the season the weekend after next.
North America
Canada
Canada hasn't got off to the best of starts to winter 23-24, with no huge snowfalls so far and warm temperatures in the East and on the BC coast for periods too. The past week has seen a marked improvement in all areas with resorts in the west reporting about a foot of snowfall in the last few days, and colder temperatures for snowmaking plus snowfall in the east as well.
Generally, the open ski areas only have about 10% of their terrain open so far, but the biggest, Whistler Blackcomb, is up to 20% or about 1,700 acres so far, already the most in the country.
USA
There's been snow falling across the US this last week and with a lot of the past month staying dry, many regions have seen some of their biggest snowfalls of the early season so far (and for some it's the first significant snow).
Most leading US resorts are now open with many reporting at least a foot of new snowfall, some as much as two feet over the last seven days. Terrain open remains limited as the snow is still not yet that deep and it's still early season, but the percentages open are creeping up.