The best piste skiing today

Each resort is refreshed once every three hours. The catalogue runs in staggered slices, so resorts do not all share one timestamp. This board reads the latest published snapshot.

One method for every resort. We model natural and machine-made snow on each height band and slope aspect from Open-Meteo weather, including temperature and humidity through the atmosphere, sun on each slope, wind, and when snow and rain fell. Official run reports, snow stations, satellite snow cover and skier check-ins correct the model where they exist. The score answers one question, how good the skiing is for an experienced skier, by combining snow cover, the surface through the day and the weather while you ski, then allowing for how much terrain is open.

Because most resorts make snow and pack it with piste bashers, and packed snow lasts longer than loose natural snow. Where a run's snowmaking is mapped we use it; elsewhere we estimate it from each country's equipped share, most likely on home runs, beginner slopes and lower runs. Snow guns run in the model only when the air is cold and dry enough and the wind is light, mainly to build a base before opening and then overnight through midwinter. When we are not sure whether a run has snowmaking, that shows up in how much terrain we think is open, not in the quality score. An official report that a run is open overrides our estimate.

No. Once the base is deep enough to hide the ground, extra depth does not change the score: roughly half a metre of settled natural snow on a grassy piste, less on machine-made snow and more on stony ground. Below that, thin or patchy cover lowers the score sharply. Fresh snow on top is judged as a surface, not as depth. Cover is shown in words: Full cover, Thin in places, Marginal, Patchy (grass showing), Ribbon only, and Bare or closed.

We run the surface hour by hour on each aspect and height. After a clear, cold night groomed runs start firm. The sun softens east faces first, then sunny faces through the middle of the day and west faces in the afternoon, into corn and later slush, while shaded slopes stay firm and refreeze as the sun leaves them. Wet snow that freezes again turns icy. Traffic cuts up soft snow and polishes hard snow. Snow that fell before the piste bashers went out is groomed in overnight; snow that falls after they finish sits on the corduroy, the best surface there is. The daily score blends the whole lift day with the best four hours, so a great morning still counts if the afternoon turns to slush.

Because a handful of open runs gets repetitive, however good the snow. Nothing changes until a quarter of the terrain is shut. Beyond that the headline eases down, to a quarter off when three quarters or more is shut. Big areas get credit for open kilometres: 60 km or more of open pistes means no reduction, whatever the share. When a resort publishes no run or lift reports at all, the open figure is only our estimate: it is marked estimated and the reduction is halved. The figure is shown beside the score, for example "Limited terrain: 30 % open (18 km)". Crowding on the runs that are open is counted separately, in the surface.

Closed means Closed. When a resort is shut for the day or out of season, or official reports say a run is closed, we show Closed instead of a number, and closed resorts are never ranked. Run detail may show what the snow would be like if it opened, but only as secondary information. When we cannot tell whether a resort is open, we score the snow and say how sure we are.

Every score has a likely range and a confidence word. "Likely 62 to 78" means the score should land in that range about eight times in ten. "Checked against reports" means today's evidence backs it up: official reports for at least half the runs, or matching check-ins on the runs from two or more regular reporters. "Partly checked" means some evidence: resort lift status, run reports from the last three days, a snow station within 30 km or a satellite image from the last five days. "Estimated from weather models" means weather models and seasonal patterns only. Long gaps in the weather data lower the confidence. On the boards, no marker beside a score means Checked against reports, Partly checked is shown as it is, and Estimated means estimated from weather models. The score's tooltip gives the full words and the range, and each resort's forecast shows the range under every day's score. Confidence never changes the score itself: it tells you how far to trust it.

Hero Snow is 90 and above, Firing 75 to 89, Great 65 to 74, Good 50 to 64, Challenging 20 to 49 and Miserable below 20. Closed replaces the number when the resort or run is shut, and Score unavailable appears when there is not enough data to score fairly.

The piste score is about groomed and machine-made snow on open runs, including grooming and traffic. The off-piste score looks only at natural snow on the best quarter of lift-served terrain. After rain and a hard freeze the groomers can still ski well while the off-piste is a frozen crust. Bad weather while you ski lowers both scores in the same way, although trees soften flat light off-piste.

It compares today's conditions with the historical average for that resort at this time of year. A positive luck score means conditions are better than usual; negative means worse than typical. It is not shown while the resort is closed.

Weather comes from Open-Meteo, which combines national weather models. Runs and lifts come from OpenStreetMap via OpenSkiMap. Official run and lift reports are used where resorts publish them. Snow depth comes from public station networks such as SLF in Switzerland, GeoSphere Austria, Météo-France and SNOTEL in the United States, satellite snow cover from Copernicus Sentinel-2 and NASA images, and check-ins from skiers using PeakWave. The full list, with licences, is under How the score works.