Explainer
What does snow-sure mean?
How Cirque decides whether a resort has reliable natural snow on your dates, and why it counts winters rather than averaging them.
Thirty centimetres, nine winters in eleven
Cirque calls a day skiable on natural snow when the modelled snowpack is 30 cm deep or more. Thirty centimetres is a common threshold for a skiable base in research on snow reliability: enough to cover grass and rocks on a groomed run, though not deep enough for off-piste.
A winter counts as snow-sure for a fortnight or month when at least 90% of its days had that 30 cm at mid-mountain. A resort is snow-sure for those dates when that happened in at least 9 of the last 11 winters (2014/15 to 2024/25).
Why count winters, not average them
An average hides the bad years. A resort that is deep in snow in eight winters and bare in three averages out as fairly good, but if your trip lands in one of the three it is not. Counting winters tells you the odds directly: 9 of 11 means roughly one trip in five or six will find thin natural snow.
For scale: in February, the heart of the northern season, 27 of the 29 northern-hemisphere resorts Cirque models were snow-sure.
Village, mid-mountain and summit
Snow depth changes a lot with height, so Cirque models each resort at three heights: the village, mid-mountain and the top of the lifts. The headline figure is mid-mountain, where most skiing happens. The village figure tells you whether you can ski back to town on natural snow.
What it leaves out
These are modelled figures from ERA5 weather data, not measurements at the resort. They ignore snowmaking, grooming, wind and avalanche closures, and they describe the last eleven winters, not a long-term trend. Use them to compare places, dates and heights.
Questions
What does snow-sure mean on Cirque?
Mid-mountain had 30 cm or more of modelled natural snow on at least 90% of the days in question, in at least 9 of the last 11 winters.
Why 30 cm?
It is a common threshold for a skiable base in research on snow reliability: enough to cover a groomed run, not enough for off-piste.
Does this include snowmaking?
No. These are modelled natural snow figures only, from ERA5 weather. Groomed pistes with snowmaking often ski better than this.