Frequently asked questions

Every total counts back from now: the last 12 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours or 7 days. For Avalanche Canada stations we add up the hourly new-snow values the station reports. BC and USask stations don't report new snow, so we use how much the snow depth rose over the window.

These are raw sensor numbers, not a forecast or a verified report. Wind, settling and melt can hide snow that fell, and a sensor can misread. Always check conditions before you go.

Snow depth sensors sometimes glitch: a reading jumps from 9 cm to 284 cm for one hour and drops straight back. Real snowfall is about 2–5 cm an hour even in a heavy storm, so we flag any reading where the depth jumps 40 cm or more in an hour, up or down.

Flagged readings are left out of the totals on the home page, Locations and the map. If a station still adds up to more than 100 cm in a single day after that, we leave it out of the rankings altogether. Choose Show them in the notice to see the raw totals instead; each station's own page always shows every reading.

Three networks of automated stations in British Columbia and Alberta:

• Avalanche Canada: weather stations run by Avalanche Canada, the BC Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, Parks Canada and others.
• BC Automated Snow Weather Stations: the Province of British Columbia's snow pillow network.
• USask Centre for Hydrology: research stations in the Canadian Rockies, such as Fortress Mountain, Marmot Creek and Peyto Glacier.

Each station's page names who runs it and which network it comes from.

We collect new readings from every station once an hour, and the site updates a few minutes later. Stations report on their own schedule, so the newest reading can be an hour or two old, and some send data in batches. Each station shows when it last reported.

0 cm means the station is reporting but its snow depth didn't rise in that window.

A dash (–) means there's nothing to work it out from: the station hasn't reported in that window, it's shut down for the season, or it doesn't measure snow at all. Many highway weather stations only report temperature, wind and precipitation.

A few research stations don't publish exact coordinates. For those we place the pin at the centre of the research site, which is close but not exactly on the station. The station's elevation and data are still exact.

All the snow totals, the map and every station page are free. With a free account you can save 1 location.

Pro is coming soon. It adds more saved locations, powder alerts by email, full history and a map of your saved locations. See Pricing.