If you have been putting off a snow trip this winter, the mountains have not exactly been begging you to come. Halfway through the season, Victoria's alpine resorts have spent weeks scraping by on thin cover, and this has been one of the poorer starts in years for the fields that Melburnians drive up to escape the grey.
The numbers tell the story. In a climate analysis published in early July, Andrew Watkins, an adjunct professor at Monash University, noted that Mount Hotham was carrying just 28 centimetres of snow on 7 July, while Spencers Creek across the border in the Snowy Mountains had 35. Depths that low, he wrote, echo the notoriously poor season starts of 1957, 1967, 1982 and 1997.
Watkins put the blame on a run of unfavourable conditions: an El Niño in the Pacific, a positive Southern Annular Mode and a neutral Indian Ocean Dipole, a combination that leaves the alps warmer and drier than they want to be. "Ski resorts are battling warmer daytime temperatures, bouts of rain and warm soils, which mean snow tends to melt once it hits the ground," he wrote.
The bigger picture is not kind either. Watkins pointed out that maximum snow depths across the Australian alps have fallen by around 30 per cent since the middle of the 20th century, as the climate has warmed — a long slow squeeze on a season that was never guaranteed to begin with.
Three weeks on, the picture on the ground has not transformed. Mt Buller's official snow report had the resort sitting on 27 centimetres of cover this week — a modest base for late July, when a good season would have the village buried far deeper.
There is, finally, some better news for anyone still hoping to point a car up the Hume. Mt Buller reported nine centimetres of fresh snow overnight, with more forecast through the day and into the next, and its ski patrol describing a deepening cover on a groomed base. It is the kind of top-up the season has badly needed.
For context on just how thin things have been, the Victorian Government's daily snow-depth records, kept for Mt Buller since 1993, let anyone track this winter against decades of past seasons. The 2026 season opened on the King's Birthday long weekend in early June, and runs, in theory, into spring.
None of this means the trip is off. Buller, Falls Creek and Mount Hotham are all open and making snow where they can, and a good week of falls can change the mood on the mountain quickly. But for Melburnians weighing up the drive, 2026 has been a season to check the snow report before you pack the car — and this week, for once, it is worth checking.
