By Juan V. Portillo, meteorologist, OnTheSnow. Updated October 26, 2026. Next update November 12, 2026.
The first snow of the season dusted the high Swiss Alps on September 10. Then again on September 23, a few centimetres above about 2,000 m that melted within a day. The Val Senales glacier in Italy reopened for skiing on September 19, mainly for race training.
Otherwise, the Alps had a summer that would not end: September was the second warmest on record in France and Switzerland, about 3 C above normal. Ski resorts favoured by the Brits got between a third and a half of their usual rain. Scotland’s hills saw rain, not snow, with about a third more than usual. But none of this tells us much about this coming winter.
On October 8, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center said El Niño has reached 2.1 C above normal in the central Pacific and has a better than 83% chance of staying strong to very strong through late winter. It puts the chance of a historic event at 83% for October to December, stronger than anything since records began in 1950.
It is a Pacific event, and its reach into Europe is weak: our own tests of El Niño and other past patterns found nothing reliable enough to forecast a European ski season from them alone.
So, for Europe we look at ECMWF’s seasonal forecast instead: a physical model of the atmosphere and ocean run specifically for this winter.
Where are the best odds for snow this winter?
The French and Italian Alps. ECMWF’s October forecast has every Alpine region wetter than normal, with more snowfall at ten of the 13 big-name French ski resorts we checked and at all eight Italian ones.
The winter looks about as mild as the last ten. The snow line (the height where rain turns to snow through the winter) stays around 1,400 m in the French and Italian resorts, and rises about 50 m in Switzerland, to around 1,350 m, so Swiss valley runs are a little more likely to get rain.
Snow cover is where the forecast holds back. In the French Alps (Chamonix, Morzine, Val d’Isère, Tignes, Courchevel, Val Thorens, Alpe d’Huez) it comes out mixed, with the high Tarentaise resorts doing best.
Switzerland (Zermatt, Verbier, Saas-Fee, Wengen, St. Moritz, Davos) is mixed for both snowfall and cover.
In Italy (Cervinia, Courmayeur, La Thuile, Sauze d’Oulx, Livigno, Val Gardena, Alta Badia, Cortina) more snowfall still leaves snow cover a little below normal, because that normal is ECMWF’s long-term one, colder than recent winters.
Andorra is the weak spot. Grandvalira, Pal-Arinsal and Arcalís all get a drier forecast with less snowfall and much thinner snow cover than normal, and rain turns to snow about 60 m higher up than in recent winters.
In Scotland (Cairngorm, Glenshee, the Lecht, Glencoe, Nevis Range) this winter forecast is a touch colder than recent ones, so rain turns to snow about 40 m lower down, around 900 to 1,000 m, close to the tops of the lifts. It gives no sign of more snowfall and leans drier in the West Highlands. The forecast grid is too coarse to say how much snow will stay on Scottish slopes.
How has the forecast changed since September?
ECMWF updates its seasonal forecast every month, and its October run is a little milder than September’s. In practice, rain would now turn to snow about 90 m higher up the mountain than the September run suggested, so the lowest slopes are more likely to get rain.
In the French Alps, for example, snow would now start at about the same height as in recent winters, where September’s run had it about 80 m lower. Snowfall looks weaker too: 2 of the 4 regions now get more snow than normal, against 3 in September. Snow on the ground comes out below normal in 2 of the 4 regions where the forecast is detailed enough to tell, against 1 in September. One month’s change is small compared with how much one winter differs from the next, so we will watch whether the next runs confirm it.
Other regions
In case you are planning to travel somewhere else, here is what is happening in other regions around the world.
What else could change this forecast?
Three dials are set for the season, and seven more move from week to week. The strip below shows where each stands today and what it means for snowfall in Europe. We will keep it updated through the season, and four of the dials will show a real reading from November, once we can track them daily.
When will we know more?
NOAA updated its El Niño status on October 8 and Copernicus its seasonal outlook on October 10. The next updates come on November 12 from NOAA and around November 10 from Copernicus. A sudden stratospheric warming, possible from December to February, can bring the coldest spell of winter one to three weeks later.
How should I plan a ski trip around it?
If you book early, the forecast favours the high French and Italian resorts over Andorra. Pick altitude first: in a mild winter a resort with lifts above 2,000 m keeps its snow when a low one gets rain. For Scotland, watch the weekly forecast and go when the snow is there. Keep dates flexible where you can and use the one-to-ten day forecast for the trip itself.
Sources
- ECMWF SEAS5 seasonal forecast, October 2026 run (published October 5, 2026), through the Open-Meteo Seasonal Forecast API (licensed CC BY 4.0).
- Copernicus Climate Change Service seasonal forecasts, outlook text of October 10, 2026. Copernicus replaces the page each month.
- NOAA CPC ENSO diagnostic discussion, issued October 8, 2026. NOAA replaces the page each month.
- ERA5 reanalysis (Copernicus Climate Change Service), through Open-Meteo, licensed CC BY 4.0.
- NOAA PSL NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis 1, sea-level pressure.
- NOAA CPC North Atlantic Oscillation index, monthly values from 1950.
- NOAA CPC Arctic Oscillation index, monthly values from 1950.
- NOAA CPC/NCEP daily Arctic Oscillation index (CDAS), daily values from 1950.
- NOAA CPC ONI and RONI tables.
