![\"car](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/car-makes-way-vittoria-towards-new-south.jpg\")
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A car makes its way from Vittoria towards the New South Wales central west town of Orange during heavy early morning snowfall on July 16, 2015.
\nSAEED KHAN\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
A cold front arriving late Sunday, August 9, is forecast to deliver the most significant snowfall of the 2026 Australian ski season \u2014 with potential accumulations of more than 19 inches (50 centimeters) at high elevations \u2014 arriving at a moment when the Alps have spent the winter clawing back from what nearly became the worst snowpack on record.<\/p>\n
The system could bring at least 12 inches (30 centimeters) to resort elevations, with even heavier totals possible on the highest terrain between 5,905 feet (1,800 meters) and the 7,310-foot (2,228-meter) summit of Mt Kosciuszko, according to Weatherzone’s August 6 forecast<\/a>. A second system is possible Tuesday and Wednesday, though forecast models diverge sharply on how much that second phase might add. Brett Dutschke, a meteorologist at Weatherzone, wrote Wednesday that combined, the next ten days or so could bring as much fresh snow as had fallen across the previous two months<\/a>.<\/p>\n For the millions of Australians who ski, snowboard, or simply follow the snow stakes \u2014 and for the resort operators and seasonal workers whose livelihoods depend on a viable season \u2014 that forecast matters enormously. But the science behind why this single weekend event feels so consequential reveals something more unsettling than the mountain conditions bulletin suggests.<\/p>\n How the Double Driver Choked the 2026 Season<\/p>\n The 2026 ski season arrived under the double burden of two atmospheric mechanisms working simultaneously against it.<\/p>\n The first is El Ni\u00f1o, the well-understood Pacific climate cycle in which warming sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific weaken and eventually reverse the trade winds. Under normal conditions, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology explains, easterly trade winds pile warm, moist air over the Indonesian and Australian western Pacific region, feeding moisture southward toward the Alps. When El Ni\u00f1o disrupts that system \u2014 the warming was formally confirmed by the Bureau on June 16 \u2014 rainfall falls below average across eastern Australia, daytime temperatures rise, and cold fronts become weaker and less frequent. The Bureau’s official El Ni\u00f1o explainer<\/a> describes the mechanism in full. The statistical penalty at Spencers Creek, the 72-year benchmark snow course in the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales, is approximately 14 inches (35 centimeters) off the season-average peak depth in El Ni\u00f1o years, and roughly two weeks shaved from the season’s productive length, per Weatherzone’s May 2026 analysis<\/a>.<\/p>\n The second driver is the Southern Annular Mode, or SAM \u2014 the north-south oscillation of the powerful westerly wind belt that circles the Southern Ocean. When SAM runs positive, those westerlies tighten and deflect southward, toward Antarctica, pulling the cold fronts that normally sweep snowfall into the Alps away from the continent. A negative SAM reverses that geometry, nudging the westerlies north and funneling snow-bearing systems into southeastern Australia. In 2026, SAM has been persistently positive throughout the ski season, consistently pushing the storm track away from the high country, a pattern the Bureau of Meteorology’s SAM page<\/a> documents in full. A Weatherzone analysis from July confirmed the SAM had reached a three-year high<\/a> before beginning to trend back toward neutral.<\/p>\n What makes 2026 significant beyond the immediate season is that the SAM’s positive trend is no longer primarily cyclical. A peer-reviewed synthesis published in December 2025 in Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, led by Dr. Ariaan Purich of Monash University and co-authored by scientists from across Australia’s climate research community, found that the SAM is at its most positive<\/a> in more than 1,000 years \u2014 a shift driven by ozone depletion and rising greenhouse gas concentrations. The implication is structural: El Ni\u00f1o is superimposed on an atmospheric baseline that is already trending away from Australian snowfall, and will continue doing so regardless of whether El Ni\u00f1o ends. The Purich team’s full SAM review findings<\/a> details these projections.<\/p>\n What the Spencers Creek Record Actually Shows<\/p>\n Buried between Perisher and Thredbo at 6,004 feet (1,830 meters), the Spencers Creek snow course is Australia’s most important climate data point for alpine conditions. Snowy Hydro, the hydroelectric operator, has taken regular measurements there since 1954 \u2014 a 72-year dataset that researchers at the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO, and multiple universities rely on to track climate change’s fingerprint on the Australian snowpack. The Protect Our Winters Spencers Creek history<\/a> and the Snowy Hydro snow depth data portal<\/a> are the primary public record for this dataset.<\/p>\n At the worst point of this season, the depth at Spencers Creek was tracking at levels not seen since 2015 for that point in the calendar. As of the Snowy Hydro measurement released Wednesday, August 5, the depth stood at 34.3 inches (87.1 centimeters). That number looks unimpressive against the long-term average season peak of roughly 77 inches (196 centimeters). But it crossed a meaningful threshold: in 2006, the worst season in the entire 72-year record, the peak depth reached just 33.5 inches (85.1 centimeters). The 2026 season has cleared that bar. The all-time record low will not be broken this year.<\/p>\n Whatever accumulates this weekend will push the depth comfortably above 39 inches (one meter) for the first time in 2026, forecasters say \u2014 a threshold with practical significance for resort operations.<\/p>\n Phase One: Rain, Then Snow from Sunday Night<\/p>\n The cold front is expected to push into southeastern Australia late Sunday afternoon, generating severe winds across Victoria, New South Wales, and the ACT. A strong pressure gradient between the outgoing high-pressure system and the incoming low west of Tasmania is forecast to produce damaging to potentially destructive gusts in alpine and exposed areas, according to Weatherzone’s forecast<\/a>.<\/p>\n Snow coverage at resort elevations is likely to begin later Sunday night as the front clears the warm air ahead of it. By Monday morning, August 10, the snow level is expected to fall to approximately 3,281 feet (1,000 meters) \u2014 well below the base elevation of every mainland ski resort. Perisher sits at roughly 5,577 feet (1,700 meters), Thredbo at 4,528 feet (1,380 meters) at the valley floor, and Mt Hotham at 5,594 feet (1,705 meters). With the snow level that low, every resort should receive natural snowfall during the event’s peak.<\/p>\n Phase One is forecast to deliver at least 12 inches (30 centimeters) at resort elevations, with the greatest confidence concentrated on this first front. Heavier totals \u2014 upward of 19 inches (50 centimeters) \u2014 are possible on the highest terrain.<\/p>\n Phase Two: Uncertainty and a Model Divergence Worth Understanding<\/p>\n The second phase \u2014 forecast to bring further snowfall on Tuesday and Wednesday \u2014 represents a good opportunity to understand how numerical weather prediction works at ranges beyond five days.<\/p>\n The two primary global forecast models currently in use disagree significantly on the Phase Two outcome. The ECMWF model, produced by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, projects as much as another 19 inches (50 centimeters) of fresh snow for the mainland high country over the 72 hours leading to Thursday evening, August 13. The GFS model, produced by the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, agrees with the ECMWF on heavy snowfalls for Tasmania but projects only around 4 inches (10 centimeters) for the mainland over the same period, as Weatherzone details<\/a>.<\/p>\n Model divergence at this range is not a sign that forecasting has failed. It is a feature of the physics: small differences in the predicted position and intensity of the low-pressure system produce large differences in snowfall totals, because Australian alpine snowfall is highly sensitive to the exact trajectory of approaching fronts. Both model scenarios are plausible given the current atmospheric state. A third system may also be possible later the following week, though confidence in that prospect is even lower.<\/p>\n A Season Rescued from History \u2014 and What Comes After<\/p>\n Thredbo earlier this week became the first Australian ski resort to operate all 15 of its lifts simultaneously in 2026 \u2014 a milestone that had seemed remote in July, when the snowpack was at its thinnest, per Weatherzone’s reporting<\/a>.<\/p>\n With the incoming front expected to push Spencers Creek above 39 inches (one meter) depth, forecasters say it is now extremely likely that conditions across the major resorts will be at their best of the season in the days following the front’s passage. The Perisher forecast captures the pattern: Monday will bring resort closures and blizzard conditions, with limited lift operations, followed by improved and potentially excellent conditions once the system clears and high pressure returns, according to Mountainwatch’s Perisher forecast<\/a>.<\/p>\n That said, it is worth keeping the season’s trajectory in perspective. The long-term average season peak at Spencers Creek is roughly 77 inches (196 centimeters). A peak of perhaps 43 to 51 inches (110 to 130 centimeters) following this weekend \u2014 a realistic outcome if Phase One delivers strongly \u2014 would still rank as a below-average season by historical standards, according to Aeris Spatial’s 2026 Australian Snow Outlook<\/a>.<\/p>\n This is the deeper climate story the 2026 season tells. Australian alpine snowfall has been declining at approximately 2.2 inches (5.5 centimeters) per decade since the 1950s, per Aeris Spatial’s snow outlook<\/a>. The structural decline is imposed by a warming atmosphere, an increasingly positive SAM, and the rising baseline temperatures that mean precipitation that would previously have fallen as snow now falls as rain at marginal elevations. A 2018 study published in Scientific Reports, drawing on a 2,000-year carbon isotope reconstruction from a speleothem in the Australian Alps, found that the current warming rate is unmatched<\/a> in two millennia \u2014 and that seasonal snow cover is at a minimum. More recent projections from Protect Our Winters Australia and the Australian National University, published in 2024, found that ski seasons could shorten 44 days<\/a> by 2050 under a mid-emissions scenario and 55 days shorter under a high-emissions scenario.<\/p>\n Those projections carry a specific economic weight. The Australian ski industry currently contributes an estimated AUD $3.33 billion (approximately $2.33 billion USD) annually to the national economy, and Victorian alpine resorts alone supported roughly 10,000 direct and indirect jobs as of 2019, according to 360info’s analysis<\/a>. A structural shortening of the viable ski season does not just mean fewer powder days \u2014 it means threatened livelihoods in mountain towns with limited economic alternatives, reduced inflows into the Murray-Darling Basin, and a cascading impact on one of Australia’s most distinctive ecosystems.<\/p>\n Dr. Lily O’Neill, a board director at Protect Our Winters Australia and senior research fellow at Melbourne Climate Futures, put the risk plainly: El Ni\u00f1o is a natural cycle, but it is now performing on a climate stage made dangerously hot<\/a> by the burning of coal, oil and gas. And as Dr. Purich’s SAM study makes clear, the atmospheric plumbing that delivers cold fronts to the Alps is itself changing in ways that will persist long after this El Ni\u00f1o ends.<\/p>\n This weekend’s snow is coming. For the skiers, the resort workers, and the mountain towns that have spent the winter watching the snowpack, it will feel like a reprieve. What comes after is the question climate science is asking with increasing urgency.<\/p>\n Frequently Asked QuestionsHow does El Ni\u00f1o suppress snowfall in the Australian Alps?<\/p>\n During El Ni\u00f1o, warming sea surface temperatures in the central equatorial Pacific weaken the Pacific trade winds, disrupting the Walker Circulation \u2014 the atmospheric loop that normally delivers moist air toward eastern Australia. The result is below-average rainfall across southeastern Australia, warmer daytime temperatures in the alpine zone, and reduced frequency of the cold fronts that carry snow. Bureau of Meteorology data shows El Ni\u00f1o years average roughly 14 inches (35 centimeters) less peak snow depth at Spencers Creek than neutral years, and the snowfall season ends approximately two weeks earlier. A coinciding positive Indian Ocean Dipole \u2014 possible this season \u2014 compounds the effect further, as the Bureau’s El Ni\u00f1o climate overview<\/a> explains.<\/p>\n What is the Southern Annular Mode, and why does its positive trend matter more than El Ni\u00f1o for Australian skiing’s long-term future?<\/p>\n The Southern Annular Mode describes the north-south position of the westerly wind belt encircling the Southern Ocean. When SAM runs positive, those westerlies shift toward Antarctica, pulling the cold fronts that generate alpine snowfall away from Australia. While El Ni\u00f1o is cyclical \u2014 it ends and reverses \u2014 a peer-reviewed study published in Nature Reviews Earth and Environment in December 2025 found the SAM has hit a 1,000-year high<\/a>, driven by ozone depletion and rising greenhouse gas concentrations. This structural shift means fewer snow-bearing cold fronts will reach the Australian Alps even in non-El Ni\u00f1o years, making individual breakthrough events like this weekend’s front increasingly important and increasingly exceptional.<\/p>\n Will Australian ski resorts still be viable in the long term?<\/p>\n Projections from Protect Our Winters Australia and the Australian National University published in 2024 show ski seasons shortening by 44 to 55 days by 2050 depending on emissions trajectories, with lower-elevation resorts facing the sharpest impacts. Under a high-emissions scenario, Mt Baw Baw in Victoria could have a season of just one to three days by 2050. The industry, which contributes an estimated AUD $3.33 billion (approximately $2.33 billion USD) annually to Australia’s economy, has responded by investing heavily in snowmaking capacity and diversifying into summer mountain tourism \u2014 but researchers caution that snowmaking cannot compensate for structural warming, and water competition from agriculture and urban use limits how aggressively snowmaking can be expanded. The prognosis is significantly better under low-emissions scenarios, as detailed in the ANU and POW 2024 projections<\/a>, where the current decade’s policy decisions will prove decisive. The economic and climate stakes are further analyzed by 360info’s ski industry assessment<\/a>.<\/p>\n What is Spencers Creek, and why is its snow depth measurement the benchmark for the entire Australian alpine season?<\/p>\n Spencers Creek is a snow course at 6,004 feet (1,830 meters) in New South Wales, located roughly halfway between the Perisher and Thredbo ski resorts. Snowy Hydro, the hydroelectric operator, has taken regular snow depth measurements there since 1954 \u2014 creating a 72-year dataset that is the primary data source for Bureau of Meteorology research, CSIRO climate analysis, and university snowpack studies. Because the site sits at mid-alpine elevation and is consistent across decades, its depth readings are used as a proxy for the overall health of the Australian snowpack, as Protect Our Winters’ Spencers Creek history<\/a> details. The 2006 record low peak of 33.5 inches (85.1 centimeters) was established at this site; the 2026 season’s August 5 reading of 34.3 inches (87.1 centimeters) cleared that record by 0.8 inches (2 centimeters).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A car makes its way from Vittoria towards the New South Wales central west town of Orange during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":112469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[16],"tags":[50,54836,54839,54840,54842,54838,39875,54841,54837],"class_list":["post-112468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-alps","tag-alps","tag-australia-snow-forecast-2026","tag-australian-alps-snowfall","tag-australian-ski-resorts-2026","tag-climate-change-australia","tag-el-nino-australia-ski-season","tag-perisher","tag-southern-annular-mode","tag-spencers-creek-snow-depth"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/117050065919767692","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}