Late Season Snow in Europe

An interesting BBC article on the plethora of late season snow in Europe:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1923000/1923231.stm

Thanks John. I read article; better snow in a lot of places in April than what they had in mid-winter.
During your preparation for your St Anton trip did you find a single website that gives easily digestable reports on the general state of snow conditions in the Alps? The few websites I've looked at for that sort of info give snow base numbers and other stats, but aren't as clear as I'd like about exactly how good conditions are resort-wide, region-wide, or even country-wide. Those sort of general reports only seem to pop-up in the general media, like this article.

Jim:

European snow reports are definitely harder to find and less accurate than U.S. reports. This is one of my major pet peeves regarding Europe. European website's also tend to be less informative U.S. sites. Most European resorts either report "perfect snow" or no snow. There seems to be nothing in the middle. "Perfect snow" almost always refers to the snow at the top of the mountains, not at the middle or bottom. A better guage for conditions is probably the base depth and the length of time since a snowfall. I've also never seen any weather narratives on European Web sites similar to what you see on the Snowshoe web site.

The best website I found for comparing conditions in Europe is www.ski-europe.com. Go to "quicklinks" and you get a pull down menu of resorts. Choose a resort and you will get a link to a trailmap (usually dated), a link to the resort website (where you will find a better trail map), and a snow report link. This is probably the fastest way to compare conditions. I generally compare Zermatt, 3 Valleys (Courchevel 1850), St. Anton. Those seem to be the best destination resorts for American skiers-the best snow, facilities, hotels, lifts, grooming, ski schools, etc.

If you have any other questions, feel free to e-mail me at johnfmh@yahoo.com

John