Patrick Thorne
Heavy snowfall is expected to arrive in the Western Alps from Sunday with temperatures set to drop to below freezing in Alpine valleys.
The forecast for higher resorts in France is for up to two feet (60cm) of snowfall by Tuesday, with smaller falls at lower elevations and further East in the Alps.
The snow should bring some respite from the current deluge of media stories focusing on low-level ski areas, mostly little-known outside their region, which have been badly hit by warm weather and rain rather than snow, forcing some of close completely until conditions improve, others to severely limit what skiing they can offer.
However most of these reports fail to mention that most large destinations resorts in the Alps have lots of skiing above 1800-2000m where conditions have, thankfully, not been so hard hit. The French Met office reports snow cover above 2,200m is at the seasonal average.
The resorts have been attempting to counter the media reports pointing out that they are typically 60-80% open with some like Val Gardena, Val Thorens and Solden close to 100% open. There are 444km of slopes open in the 3 Valleys and 200km or more in many big areas including the Skiwelt, 4 Valleys, Milky Way, Ischgl and Saalbach Hinterglemm.
Many have been posting images showing snow cover on their mountains, such as the one from Les 2 Alpes, top, to counter the snowless low lying slopes being used in mainstream media stories.
