With some ski areas seeing over a metre of snowfall in the Pyrenees over the past seven days, resorts in the region are reporting transformed conditions for the final quarter of the season.
Many resorts have announced they're finally planning to open all or most of their terrain, with Formigal (pictured above), which has had only about 30% of its runs open all winter, saying it expects to have the most open in the Pyrenees, 140km, available this coming weekend. Larger areas have not yet said how much they'll open though.
Until now, the Pyrenees have unfortunately had one of their worst seasons on record with all-tine record high temperatures in December and January meant little natural snowfall and not much opportunity fir snowmaking either.
The bigger resorts with higher terrain typically managed to open 50-75% of their terrain, peaking with Baqueira Beret, Spain 's largest, reaching 130km open in January, but it had since slipped back below 100km while many other smaller, lower areas had only very limited runs open or were closed completely.
The Pyrenees biggest area, Grandvalira, encompassing all of Andorra's centres, peaked at about 65% of its terrain open. It has reported 70cm of snowfall in the last 72 hours and over a metre of snow in the past week. It says it will have 180km of slopes open this coming weekend.