Spin the globe, zoom in, then click on a mountain or a ski resort to see whether there's snow today, how deep it is and how much is on the way.
The Snow Cover Globe shows snow on the ground, day after day, across the whole Northern Hemisphere: the Rockies, the Sierra Nevada, New England, the Alps, Scandinavia, Japan… Spin the globe, zoom in on a mountain range, then click to see whether there is snow at that spot, its estimated depth and the snowfall expected over the next few days.
It's a snow cover map updated every day: handy to check whether a ski resort already has snow, follow the first snow of the winter or see how low the snow line goes.
A satellite photo of the Earth can't see snow at night or under clouds. The map used here doesn't have that problem: it's NOAA's daily snow analysis (IMS), which combines several satellites, including microwave sensors that see through clouds and into the polar night, with ground observations and the work of analysts. Over France and the whole Alps, as far as Austria, it uses squares of about half a mile (1 km); elsewhere, about 2.5 miles (4 km).
Click on a spot to get:
Depths are shown in inches (with centimeters) and elevations in feet. Snow depth is an estimate: on the slopes, snow is often groomed, wind-blown or topped up with man-made snow.
The search box at the top of the screen finds any town, ski resort or mountain. Click it without typing anything to see popular ski resorts in North America, the Alps and Japan, from Whistler, Vail and Park City to Zermatt and Niseko.
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