The ski season has got underway in the southern hemisphere with the opening of Lesotho's Afriski ski centre this morning.
Afriski is a small centre popular with skiers from just over the South African border in Johannesburg and although it can receive good natural snowfalls, relies on snow making for reliable season-long cover. That's the case this year with low temperatures allowing the snow maki8ng teams to get started with so far a short bursary slope created.
The other southern Africa ski area, Tiffindell in South Africa itself, is hoping to open any day now, under new ownership after several years of closure. The centre received a big natural snowfall in late April (as shown in our picture above) but is now also relying on snowmaking, which was underway earlier this week.
Africa is the only continent where you can ski in winter conditions in both the northern hemisphere's winter (in Algeria or Morocco) and the southern hemisphere's.
Elsewhere in the southern hemisphere Coronet Peak in Queenstown will open in about 36 hours on Saturday morning and is reporting excellent conditions following regular snow falls.
Most Australian ski areas will officially open on Saturday too, a few hours later as the start of June 8th spreads around the world, but most have little or no natural snowfall, although the biggest, Perisher, says it has created a small ski area using machine made snow.
Most South American ski areas vin Argentina and Chile will open in a fortnight's time, good pre-season snow is being reported there across the region.