Skiing in the Australian Winter 2009

If your reading this article your asking one of two questions

1) Those Aussies are stupid water skiing in winter
2) Is it going to snow this year...please bring me some good news!!

If you asked question 1, SnowKat thanks for coming to this awesome blog...but laughs in your general direction as you are clearly a better comedian than me.

For those people however, let me give you some background on skiing in Australia.

You can Travel to Australia and ski in Victoria at Mt Buller, Falls Creek or Mt Hotham. You can also ski at the resorts of Thredbo and Perisher Blue in New South Wales.

Skiing in Australia occurs between the months of June (yes, I here you laughing - OK, July) and October..(OK...late September)

Mt Buller
Approximately 3 hours from Melbourne, Mt Buller is the home ski resort of the SnowKat and the Skiguide team. We grew up skiing at Mt Buller and learnt from a young age how to ski in all snow and weather conditions. The major problem with all Australian ski resorts is snow reliability. With a skiable vertical of around 400 metres between 1400 metres and 1800 metres, the resort is small by world standards and suffers from borderline snow temperatures. Mt Buller has an extensive snow making system to counter the occasional lack of snow which improves the mountains snow reliability. The season runs form the first weekend of June until early October depending on snow conditions. The best time to ski in Australia is Late July to Early September and while some seasons may only see an average snow depth of 50 cms, it is not unusual for snow depths to be around the 2 metre mark....the trick with skiing in Australia is being flexible and picking the right time to go. Large dumps of snow are usually how the Australian Alps get their snow, we have been lucky enough to be there during some of these periods, where in the right conditions, Mt Buller can receive up to a metre of snow in 24 hours.

So, back to Question 2 - will it snow in 2009....well, things went off with a bang in the last weekend of APril with up to 50cms falling in most resorts with Mt Buller opening Bourke Street for skiiing in the first weekend of May...the snow has since melted however and we are back to grassland....So...when will the first snow settle and set in for the winter?