Ridder Snow Climate:

If you are booking a normal ski holiday between January and early March, take the third week of February. Across twenty seasons it produced 30 cm or more of new snow in nearly half of all years, and almost nothing in only three years out of twenty. It also comes late enough in the season that close to five metres have already fallen by then, so the undergrowth and rocks are well buried.

The snowiest week of the whole winter is the last week of December, between Christmas and New Year. Almost nobody can take a ski holiday then, which is exactly why it stays empty. Worth a thought if you have a group of friends who would rather spend Christmas in deep snow than round a dinner table.

The powder season runs from the middle of November to about 20 March. Within it, December is the snowiest month and January the coldest. February holds the single most reliable week, and the first half of March gives one last strong push before the thaw.

Monthly averages over twenty seasons, 2006-07 through 2025-26. Temperatures are forecasted at 1860m, the top of the terrain, while the rain and snow split is calculated for 1200 m, which is the lowest skiing elevation in Ridder. Snowfall is estimated from precipitation and carries the 1.5 orographic factor.

December through March comes to about 530 cm. Counting from the first settled snow in November, a typical Ridder season delivers a little over seven metres before the spring thaw.

One thing in that table surprised us. The snow season is ‘front-loaded’. December is the snowiest month of the winter by some way, and January and February the leanest, each carrying about a quarter less snow than December. But cold changes the arithmetic. January turns its 65 mm of snow water into more centimetres than March manages from 75 mm, because at -13 °C the same water builds a deeper and lighter layer!

Between December and March, a typical Ridder season delivers:

You do not only ski a storm on the day it stops. Counting every day that falls on, or within 48 hours of, a fall of 15 cm or more, a typical season has 28 such days between December and March. That is roughly a month of the winter on snow that is fresh or close to it.

Snow here arrives in cycles that run for days, and what you ski is the whole cycle rather than one day of it – especially when ski touring in areas untracked for days or weeks.

The biggest storm on record ran 16 days from 28 December 2023 to 12 January 2024 and delivered close to three metres. Ten days over Christmas 2015 produced almost as much. That is the shape of the winter: long quiet cold spells, then several days of continuous snowfall that change the mountain.

For every week of the season, what actually happened across twenty years. The last column is the one people forget to ask about: how much snow has already fallen by the time that week comes round.

The third week of February is the strongest week in the normal booking window. Nearly half of the last twenty years delivered 30 cm or more, and only three years in twenty produced almost nothing. It also arrives with close to five metres of snowfall already down since the start of the season.

The second week of March matches it and comes with longer days and more sun, at the cost of a snowpack that is starting to feel spring.

The third week of January is the pick of the January weeks, and the coldest of the three months. Snow already on the ground is in the best condition it will be in all winter.

Three weeks to avoid if you have a choice. The first week of March and the last week of March are the two weakest in the table, quiet in half of all years.

The last full week of December, 22 to 28 December, is the most dependable week of the Ridder winter. Thirty centimetres is typical, half of all years reached that or more, and only two years in twenty gave nothing worth skiing.

It is also the week almost nobody takes a ski holiday, which is why we run no scheduled departure then. If you can get away between Christmas and New Year, and you have four or five friends who can too, we will run it as a private trip. The best week of the season, and the mountain to yourselves.

One condition, and we would rather say it now than on the first morning. December is the snowiest month but it is also the earliest, and the base is still building. A typical season has a good depth down by Christmas, but the spread between seasons is wider in December than at any other point in the winter. In a lean year you will find the odd branch, patch of undergrowth or stump showing through, particularly lower down. That calls for skiers who can pick a line and absorb a surprise, so we run the December week for advanced and expert skiers only. If you want the deepest, most forgiving cover, February is the month.

No, but it is a different month.

January and February carry the least snow of the winter and there is almost nothing between them, 65 mm of snow water against 63. But in centimetres January actually comes second only to December, because at -12.9 °C average and -17.2 °C average overnight low it is the coldest month of the year, and cold water builds deep snow.

Cold also removes the risk of it turning to rain. Over twenty years every millimetre of January precipitation fell as snow at skiing elevation. Not one January in the record produced rain on the mountain.

What January does have is the highest share of quiet weeks. Pick a week of January at random and there is close to a two in five chance it delivers under 10 cm of new snow, which is worse than any other month of the winter.

But – in a coastal snowpack a dry fortnight ruins the skiing. In a cold continental snowpack like Ridder, a cold dry spell preserves what is already down and often improves it. So the January trade-off is this. You are less likely to ski a storm on the day it arrives, and more likely to ski cold dry snow that has been sitting there for a week waiting for you. Which you prefer depends on whether you came for the storm or the snow.

Reliably, from the second week of November until about 20 March.

The change happens fast at both ends. In the first ten days of November, more than a third of wet days fall as rain at mid-mountain. By the second week that is under one in ten, and from 21 November rain at skiing elevation effectively stops until March. Coming the other way, nine snowfalls in ten are still snow through the first half of March, dropping to around six in ten after the 20th.

Early December is skiable in most years and very good in some, but it has the widest spread of outcomes in the season. From mid-December it is way more reliable.

Average nights per month below the stated temperature, at 1860m (note, it may be notably colder in the town on clear days because of ‘temperature inversion’):

Thanks to dry air, it feels much more gentle than the same temperatures would feel in the Alps.

Not measurably. Midwinter temperature at 1860 m has drifted up by about half a degree per decade across the record, but the swing from one year to the next is three times that, so the trend cannot be separated from ordinary variation. Splitting the twenty years in half makes the point. The 2006-15 seasons averaged -12.4 °C in midwinter. The 2016-25 seasons averaged -11.8 °C, with very slightly more snow.

Twenty seasons is a short record, and this is model output rather than a thermometer on the ridge. It tells you nothing dramatic has happened to Ridder’s winter in the past two decades. It does not promise the next two.

• Coldest reading: -34.2 °C, 19 January 2010.
• Warmest midwinter day: +4.2 °C, 26 February 2016
• Biggest storm cycle: close to three metres over 16 days, 28 December 2023 to 12 January 2024.
• Runner-up: almost as much over 11 days, 23 December 2015 to 2 January 2016.
• Biggest single day: just under 70 cm.
• Snowiest season: 2012-13, roughly twice the snowfall of the leanest.
• Longest dry spell: 32 days, 18 January to 18 February 2012, inside the leanest season on record.

A note on the figures before you start. The weather model we used works on a grid of about 30 kilometres, which is far too coarse to see a single ridge. Models like this systematically under-report snowfall in mountains, because they smooth a sharp range into a gentle bump and lose the lift that squeezes snow out of a passing weather system. Our own observation is that Ridder mountains get considerably more centimeters than forecasted.

We have therefore applied an orographic factor of 1.5 to the snowfall figures on this page (orographic: the extra snow a mountain wrings out of a storm by forcing the air up over it). That factor is our subjective judgement. Temperatures, precipitation in millimetres, the rain and snow split, the length of dry spells and the trend over twenty years are all unadjusted. So use the centimetres to compare one week against another, do not use them as a snow report.

The figures come from Meteoblue’s simulated weather archive for Prokhodnoy Belok at 1860 m, the top of our terrain, using the NEMSGLOBAL model for November to April across the twenty seasons from 2006-07 to 2025-26. That is 124 monthly charts and 3,766 individual days of temperature and precipitation.

Temperatures are given at 1860 m and not adjusted downhill, because in a continental valley like this one the usual adjustment is often backwards (inversion): under clear high pressure the cold air sits in the valley and the ridge is the warmer place to be. We apply an elevation correction in one place only, to judge whether precipitation fell as rain or snow at 1200 m, which holds up because falling snow means a mixed atmosphere and no inversion.

Snowfall in centimetres is an estimate. Converting water to snow needs a ratio that changes with temperature, from around 8:1 near freezing to 20:1 in deep cold, and we apply a temperature-dependent ratio to each day. On top of that sits the orographic factor of 1.5 described at the start. The millimetres of precipitation are the measured quantity; everything in centimetres is our interpretation of it.