About Powder Scope

Powder Scope answers one question fast: which resort gets the most snow this week — and will it actually be snow where you ski?

It's built for skiers, snowboarders and mountain enthusiasts who want a quick, honest read on conditions without digging through weather charts. One page ranks ski areas across Japan, New Zealand and Australia by the coming week's snowfall; one tap opens a resort's full outlook — daily snowfall, snow quality, freezing level, temps and wind.

The point of difference is the qualitycall. Raw snowfall totals flatter storms that land wet or turn to rain halfway up the hill, so every day gets a powder / snow / mixed / rain badge for the elevation you actually ride, and the ranking discounts the days that won't ski well.

Free accounts & favourites

Accounts are free: tap the ★ on any resort to pin it to your own favourites list, so each visit starts with the mountains you actually ride.

The powder score

Resorts are ranked by one number: how much of the next 7 days' snow should actually be good to ski. Wet or rainy days count for less, so a big dump that lands as rain won't top the list. The plain 7-day total is shown alongside it.

The badges

Each day gets a call on what the snow will be like where you actually ski:

• PowderCold, dry snow — the stuff powder-hounds chase.
• SnowAll snow, but falling near freezing — denser and wetter. Great cover, not champagne.
• MixedRain mixes into the snowfall — snow up high, ice or rain lower down.
• RainMostly rain. Rain days show orange throughout the app.

Quiet weeks get No snow during the ski season — a dry spell, not closed lifts — and Off-season in summer.

Reading the chart

Bars are each day's snowfall. The amber line is the freezing level — the altitude where 0 °C sits — plotted against the resort's dashed base and summit lines. It's context, not a verdict: snow survives a few hundred metres below the freezing level, so a line near the summit doesn't mean rain to the top.

Days past the first week are drawn dimmed — forecast skill drops off, so read them as a trend, not a promise. The last 7 days figure is what the weather model says already fell, not a resort report.

The data

Forecasts come from Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0), refreshed several times a day. Japan is covered by a high-resolution local model; New Zealand and Australia use global models, so treat amounts there as indicative rather than precise. Resort locations and elevations come from OpenSkiMap / OpenStreetMap (ODbL).

No lift status or resort-reported conditions — check the resort's own snow report for measured base depth.