The 2025 season is underway with ski areas in Australia the first to open this year.
Most Australian ski centres opened today, Saturday 7th June, with this weekend extending into Monday, a public holiday ion most of the country’s states to celebrate King Charles 3rd’s birthday.
Their opening coincides with what’s expected to be the country’s biggest snowstorm in three years, with 2-3 feet of snowfall expected by Tuesday. So far there’s been 15-20cm.
“We’ve woken up in blizzard mode at Mount Hotham for opening day,” said Alex Pankiw, Hotham’s Marketing Coordinator. “The storm rolled in at 10 o’clock last night and it’s been dumping since. The start of the snow could not have been timed better, with all the snow there will be lifts and terrain open soon. This is just the start of the storm; we’re expecting at least another half metre by Tuesday evening. This is just what the doctor ordered, bring on the snow!”
Perisher, Australia’s largest ski area, is pictured above, Corin Forest, the smallest, below.
Elsewhere in the southern hemisphere ski areas in the Andes of South America and New Zealand say they’ll start opening for the season from next weekend (14th June). Lesotho’s Afriski, the only ski area known to be still operating in Africa, has begun its winter season already but has not yet opened a ski run.
New Zealand ski areas saw huge snowfalls a month ago leading to Mt Hutt announcing it would open a fortnight early on May 31st, last weekend. However thawing later in May led to it postponing to this weekend and then announcing a major storm hitting this weekend meant it would go back to its original planned opening date, next weekend. It reports its had 90cm (three feet) of snowfall overnight (below).
About a dozen ski areas are open in the northern hemisphere in Austria, France, Italy, Norway, Japan, Switzerland and the USA. This weekend also sees that scheduled start of the summer ski season at Val-d’Isère in France.
