Issued: 27 January 2021 By Patrick "Snowhunter" Thorne European Roundup North American Roundup Asia Roundup EUROPE INTRODUCTION It has been one of those weeks when Europe’s ski areas have seen a bit of everything or perhaps that should be, different parts of Europe have seen different bits of weather covering almost every type of winter conditions possible. The Alps saw warm weather at the start of the weekend in the north of the region although it remained cold in the south, in some cases 10 or 20 degrees colder than further north. There was plenty of fresh snowfall, which has continued this week, but also amongst those warmer temperatures periods of rain or sleet at time. Thrown into the mix were some gale

Last Updated: 26 January 2021 at 17.15 GMT (Updates so far since 5 May: 453) The web's most comprehensive guide of ski resorts opening around the world during the pandemic. An estimated 3000+ Ski Areas Are Currently Open Worldwide in at least 39 Countries on 3 Continents including: Asia: Azerbaijan, China, India, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, South Korea, Turkey. Europe: Andorra, Armenia, Austria, Belarus, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Greece, Iceland, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine. North America: Canada (except Ontario), USA Ski areas in Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Mongolia, Morocco, Scotland, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia as well as the province of Ontario in Canada want to open

The Finnish city of Lahti is rolling out the world’s first urban ski-sharing program. Lahti, the reigning European Green Capital, wants to encourage people to reduce their transport-related carbon emissions. Finns are no strangers to snow, but when the roads get icy and the snow is knee-deep, skiing might just be the fastest way to get around. That’s why the city of Lahti in Southern Finland has decided to roll-out a public ski-sharing scheme, the first city in the world to do so.  “City Skis work the same as city bikes: the skis can be borrowed from a ski point, where they should be returned to after use,” says Saara Vauramo, the programme director of Lahti European Green Capital. There

A number of music festivals which were forced to cancel at short notice in March 2020 as the first wave of the pandemic began are beginning to abandon hope that their return this spring can happen. Although no national governments have a yet announced ski areas will stay closed into March, when the festivals are due to take place, any hope of being able to organise events is fast diminishing. Tomorrowland Winter 2020 (above and top) which had been due to be staged in Alpe d’Huez last March was one of the biggest casualties of the fast-moving end to the 2019-20 season. Attracting around 20,000 festival-goers it was already to go with a vast stage built when lockdown was announced.

Although much of the skiing world has been seeing some fairly dry, often cold weather over the past few weeks, ski areas in Japan and in Washington State, USA, on either side of the Pacific have been seeing a succession of huge storms to start 2021. In Japan storms coming in off the sea of Japan have been dumping metres of snow on Japanese ski areas, causing some logistical problems but also widely welcomed after threw poor snowfall stats last season. Summit at Snoqualmie, Washington State In Washington State Mt Baker, which holds a two-decades old record for the most ever snowfall at a ski resort in a season and is often one of the snowiest resorts on the planet,