Australia Weather News

Perisher's Front Valley snow cam captures conditions from June 27 to July 7.

Supplied

Five years ago the ski lifts at Tasmania's Ben Lomond resort operated for 17 days of the year.

In 2023, that number increased to 60 days and last year it was 104. 

The resort's managing director, Ben Mock, who bought the business in 2021, said the change in fortune came down to a key ingredient — snow machines. 

"When we started to make snow it turned the business around massively," he said. "We had increases on our first year of around 280 per cent in sales and the following year we saw more of a growth on that of about 150 per cent."

Man-made snow machines greet skiers at Perisher during school holidays.

ABC News: Toby Hemmings

Almost $1 million has been invested in six snow guns at Ben Lomond.

 Without them, Mr Mock said the business would not be viable. 

"It gives us a guaranteed product on the ground," he said.

Snow-making is an insurance policy for not only us, but all ski resorts.

"We don't know when Mother Nature is going to deliver the goods, but by having the cold weather that we normally get … when there might not be much precipitation or snow in the air, we can compensate that by making snow."

As snow depth decreases amid warming temperatures, snow-making has become crucial to safeguard ski seasons and the viability of resorts around the world. 

Snow falls after poor start to season

Snow cameras painted a bleak picture across Australia's ski fields in late June during one of the worst-ever starts to the snow season.

Visitors took advantage of thin strips of man-made snow on the main runs at Victoria's Mount Buller as well as Thredbo and Perisher in New South Wales.

A snow dump during the first weekend of July helped the resorts resemble a winter wonderland once again.

Barney Davis has spent most of his life working at Perisher, starting as a lift operator almost 50 years ago. He said the improved conditions had lifted spirits.

"We were doing it tough, we had a bit of man-made [snow] and people were still playing and learning and being out on all these snow patches," he said. 

"Then along comes this snow and people have come from far and wide and it's terrific."

Mr Davis said conditions at the start of winter were often unpredictable.

"You don't have June the same every year and there's been many years where we haven't had snow until July," he said. 

Snow depth declines

While Australia's snow season is notoriously difficult to forecast, data shows natural snow depth is declining.

The latest State of the Climate report found that snow depth, snow cover and the number of snow days had decreased in alpine regions since the late 1950s.

In 2024, the Australian Mountain Research Facility and ANU found snow cover between 1954 and 2012 had reduced by 30 per cent.

The report, commissioned by climate advocacy group Protect our Winters, found the length of the ski season had contracted by almost 30 per cent across most Australian alpine resorts.

While there are natural variations and there will still be good seasons, years with persistent deep snow cover have become rare.

Snowy Hydro has collected snow depth data since 1954 in three locations throughout Kosciuszko National Park to forecast water inflows for the Snowy Scheme.

Its Spencers Creek site, located near Thredbo and Perisher, showed snow depth reached at least 220cm last year, which was a good season. 

But 2023 and 2024 had the shortest seasons and lowest snow depths in over 15 years.

Aside from a recording of 14cm in early June, 2026 depths were at zero until July 7 when 35cm was recorded in Spencers Creek, just in time for school holidays in New South Wales.

Forecasts suggest potential snowfall in the coming weeks. 

Risk Frontiers chief climate scientist Stuart Browning, whose organisation delivers climate risk analysis, said climate change was influencing snowfall.

"Late starts to the season and poor seasons have been happening as long as we've had snow up there, but all of the evidence points to climate change giving us more warm precipitation events," he said.

"It leads us to have a shorter season. It tends to start a little bit later, but what we've seen recently is it's finishing a fair bit earlier as well.

"It can only be a couple of degrees difference between good snowfall or rain and so as temperatures warm, we're getting more of our storms come through and we're getting rain instead of snow."

Warmer temperatures impact snowfall

The Bureau of Meteorology has declared an El Niño in Australia this year, which can result in lower peak snow depths. But reduced rainfall and cooler night-time temperatures can also help retain snowfall on the ground. 

Decline in the country's overall snow depth is more closely aligned with global warming trends. The average global temperature now sits about 1.2 to 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial levels and is set to move beyond 1.5C within the next decade. 

This year's start to the ski season coincided with the warmest June in 59 years for some alpine regions. 

"We're seeing increased temperatures, reduced snow, snow melt more quickly and as a result, we're seeing ski season lengths contract," ANU alpine researcher Ruby Ollson said. 

She said warmer temperatures were also threatening the ability to make snow. 

"That requires certain temperatures and humidity … and what we're seeing with climate change is we're having warmer nights and we're seeing those conditions reduce," she said. 

"The more that we can reduce our emissions and stay within that lower or mid-emission scenario, the greater chance that all of the Australian resorts, particularly those lower [elevation] ones, will have to adapt.

Mr Browning said Thredbo and Perisher had a fairly high elevation overall, but a lot of the other resorts that were lower had been affected.

"That's because temperatures drop as you go higher in altitude," he said. "So the higher the resort, the more likely you are to get snow instead of rain."

Mr Browning said cold and dry nights were ideal for snow-making, but those conditions were threatened by climate change.

"Under a best-case scenario where we get global warming under control and cap warming levels at below around 2 degrees above pre-industrial, it's not going to be too bad," he said.

"We're still looking at getting around 60 days each winter for snow-making, which is enough for the resorts to be viable right through to the end of the century.

"But if we follow that worst case scenario, then that drops to, you know, around 20 to 30 days per winter by the end of the century."

Similar challenges faced overseas

Earlier this year, NASA declared that the western United States was facing a snow drought, with snow blanketing 369,000 square kilometres on January 15, the lowest since satellite records began in 2001. 

While most regions received average or above-average precipitation in autumn and early winter, much of it fell as rain due to warmer temperatures.

It has also become unviable to have resorts in some small European towns at lower elevations, resulting in closures. 

Japan, on the other hand, is still experiencing good snowfall in winter and has more consistent seasons than Australia.

In New Zealand, a slower start to the season resulted in resorts delaying their opening, but more runs have since opened, largely due to snow-making.

NZSki chief executive Paul Anderson, whose organisation operates several resorts, said snow-making was "critical" to start the season and without it they would not be operating right now.

He said NZSki was investing $150 million in its Remarkables resort, which demonstrated the operator's confidence in the industry's longevity.

"What we're seeing is a lot of variability in the weather, so we know that during any normal winter you get warm spells and you get cold spells," he said.

"This year we had a warm spell in about late May to early June, which is just when we need to start our snow-making. So it took us a little bit longer to get going but with modern technology we're confident we can secure that."

Industry's future

A report released 20 years ago by Sharon Bicknell and Phil McManus from the University of Sydney identified the Australian ski industry as a "canary in the coal mine". 

It said the industry was one of the first and most visibly impacted by the risk of climate change.

It was mainly due to the location of Australia's snowfields. Most are quite close together in Victoria's High Country and the New South Wales Snowy Mountains, apart from Corin Forest in the ACT as well as Ben Lomond and Mount Mawson in Tasmania.

Thredbo is the country's highest ski resort, with a top altitude of 2,037m.

New Zealand has more than double the number of ski resorts, with the T?roa ski area at Mount Ruapehu the highest altitude at 2,300m.

Mr Browning said all countries were vulnerable to climate change, including New Zealand.

"They have mountains that are much higher than ours and they have good snow conditions; they're much longer, especially into the springtime," he said.

"But where the current resorts are, they're still very exposed to warming."

Mr Browning said a range of adaptation measures, including building features like jumps and half-pipes to make snow-making terrain more interesting and introducing season passes, were all aimed at working around the increasingly variable seasons.

"They have reciprocal arrangements with resorts overseas so if you buy a Perisher or a Thredbo season pass, you can then go and use that at a whole range of different resorts overseas," he said.

"If we do have a bad season here and you're able to travel, you get a second chance from your season pass to keep using it and maybe get some good days overseas."