Australia set for ski season 'turnaround' in 2025 with constant snowfall over long weekend making way for 'blue-sky days', tapering off by end of June

Sky News AU

8 hours ago

The opening weekend of the Australian ski season is upon us – and this time there's an abundance of snow.
Keen skiers and snow boarders can get excited, but don't take this as certainty of a bumper winter ahead.
The year 2025 is likely to be yet another season bringing both the good and the bad for the ski resorts. Snow season starter
For the past two years, Australia's snow-lovers have marked the opening of the Aussie ski season on grass due to poor snowmaking conditions and a lack of natural snowfall in the lead up to mid-June.
It promises to be quite the turnaround this year with snow falling on every day of the long weekend – and beyond.
This is the best start to the ski season since heavy snow enveloped the slopes for the opening weekend of 2022.
A low-pressure system is pushing across southeast Australia providing four days of almost constant snowfall.
This will set a great base for the rest of the season. Follow-up snow?
The rest of June doesn't look as promising.
Forecast models that make predictions over the course of a few weeks are suggesting higher than usual pressure in southeast Australia.
This essentially means the chances of seeing strong cold fronts – or low pressure systems like we're currently seeing – are reduced.
Therefore, I'd expect plenty of blue-sky days, and some chilly nights good for snow making, but less fresh snow than usual at this time of year.
By the end of June it's likely that snow depths will be below normal for that time of year – but at least people should be able to ski each day. Why is the Australian ski season so hard to predict?
The answer lies in these facts: Cold fronts are our main snowmakers – their strength and position are usually determined by a short-term polar climate driver called the Southern Annular Mode - which can't be predicted with any certainty long-term. A positive SAM can limit cold fronts, while a prolonged period under a negative SAM can bring week after week with many powder days. A temperature difference of 1C on any day could be the difference between one metre of snow and 100mm of rain – it's difficult to pinpoint outside of a week ahead of time. Autumn snowfalls have no correlation with winter snow depth. A handful of heavy snow events can make a season, even if the overall precipitation was well below average.
For all these reasons, I'm not going to give you a hard and certain outlook for the 2025 ski season.
It simply isn't possible!
But I have gleaned some clues from the oceans and historical precedent. Climate Change
It's hard to talk about Australia's ski fields without addressing the elephant in the room: climate change.
On the whole, Australia's snow season is getting shorter with less frequent and plentiful snow.
In the first 39 years of snow data at Spencers Creek (1,820m above sea level) in the NSW Snowy Mountains we had five seasons exceed three metres of natural snow.
The most recent was in 1992.
Here is a list of the peak snow depth in the last five years:
2024: 125cm
2023: 131cm
2022: 232cm
2021: 184cm
2020: 168cm
Only 2022 was above the long-term average of 195cm.
The problem gets worse at lower elevations.
Nearby in the Snowies Deep Creek (1,620m asl) and three Mile Dam (1,460m asl) are seeing even faster reductions of peak snow depth of approximately 5cm every 10 years.
This means that the lower lying ski resorts are seeing the impacts of climate change even faster. Help from the Indian Ocean
Earlier in the article I flagged that the greatest driver of seasonal snow depth was the SAM, but other climate drivers do play a role.
The most likely secondary contributor to the forecast mix is the Indian Ocean.
This year it is likely to move into a negative, or wet, phase.
This means that more tropical moisture is expected to feed across Australia from the Indian Ocean (off the WA coastline) during the second half of winter and into spring.
This means that when it rains and snows in the alpine regions through the next five months the totals of both rain and snow are likely to be larger than in an average year.
The tricky thing here is the temperature.
If it's too warm it's likely to rain and wash away the snow, but if it's cold enough we could see huge snow dumps. Good end to season likely
We are almost certain to finish the season stronger than in 2024 and 2023.
The last two years had the lowest early September snow depths on record as warm temperatures and rain swept across the Alps.
This year's climate mix means this is unlikely to be repeated for a third year running.
Historically, during Negative Indian Ocean Dipole (-IOD) years (as this year is likely to be) we've seen a stronger end to the season.
This is for two reasons: The extra moisture feeding into the mountains in the coldest time of the year. The extra cloud and rain brought through by -IOD events often helps to cool Australia and prevent some of the rapid early spring warming we've seen in recent years.
Therefore, I'm expecting many more days with snow on the ground this year.
There should be quite a few rainy days that spoil the slopes for a time, but that should be counteracted by some handy snowfall through July, August and probably even September.
For the latest weather outlooks and climate forecasts be sure to tune into Sky News Weather Channel 601 on Foxtel