Major Australian alpine resorts are closing their ski operations up to a month early after a winter that broke multiple records for heat with limited snow falls being washed away by rain.
Predictions in June that a building El Niño could combine with global heating for a challenging ski season came to pass, with seven resorts either already closed or announcing ski lifts will stop operating this weekend.
This week the Victorian resorts of Mount Buller, Mount Hotham and Falls Creek, together with Charlotte Pass in New South Wales, all announced ski operations would end this weekend.
The Victorian resort of Mount Baw Baw, the NSW resort at Selwyn and Tasmania’s Ben Lomond have already closed. Resorts typically aim to stay open until the first weekend of October.
Resorts blamed “challenging” weather conditions and lack of snowfall. Two other major NSW resorts at Perisher and Thredbo remain open.
“The season was frankly a shocker. This was the fourth disappointing season since ۲۰۲۰,” said Dr Andrew Watkins, a climate scientist and adjunct professor at the Monash University and a science adviser to the campaign group Protect our Winters.
“The problems were El Niño and climate change. It was not that dry this year, but the problem was the warmth. The heat just did us in.”
Watkins, who is also a keen skier, said winter temperatures had been too high and precipitation that might have fallen as snow, had instead fallen as rain.
“Rain is the natural enemy of a snowpack. It melts it and then washes it away,” he said.
Data from the Bureau of Meteorology show Falls Creek and Mount Hotham had their wettest winters in more than ۳۰ years but, together with Mount Buller, they also had their warmest winters on record for average maximum and minimum temperatures.
Watkins said data from weather observations at Cabramurra in Kosciuszko national park suggested alpine winters had warmed by about ۲C since the ۱۹۶۰s.
He said that temperature rise would have been the difference between precipitation falling as rain instead of snow. “It would have been a bumper season if it had been ۵۰ years ago,” he said.
The El Niño currently in place in the Pacific Ocean can promote hotter and drier temperatures in Australia’s south-east in winter and spring.
This week the bureau forecast the current El Niño would be the strongest on record and Australian scientists said climate change had made the strength of the event six times more likely.
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A bureau spokesperson said this winter’s heat was consistent “with a developing strong El Niño” and the season had seen long periods of high pressure in the Tasman Sea that directed warmer air from the north over alpine regions.
“But winter ۲۰۲۶ also experienced relatively warm nights, with cloud cover and moist soils resulting in less overnight cooling,” the spokesperson said.
“This is in contrast with historical El Niño events. This is all occurring against the background of a globally warmer climate, with daily global surface air temperatures since June close to or above the record levels in ۲۰۲۴.”
New South Wales, Tasmania and Victoria all recorded their hottest winters on record this year.
In July, many ski resorts broke all-time heat records for the month with temperatures during one hot spell up to ۱۲C above average.
Climate scientists have been warning for decades that global heating will create a challenging future for Australia’s ski resorts and alpine habitats.
Josh Elliott, chief executive at the representative body Snow Resorts Australia, said there was “no question it has been a challenging season for natural snowfall”.
“This winter was shaped by a combination of abnormally warm weather and climatic variability, but it’s important to remember that in any outdoor environment, that variability can result in some seasons being better than others.
“This is an abnormal season and shouldn’t be considered in isolation as a reflection of what future seasons will look like.”
He said skiing, snowboarding and snow play had still been available in NSW, Victoria and the ACT “since the June long weekend, with all resorts across Australia operating through the July school holidays and beyond”.
“What this season has shown is the importance and value of the investment resorts have made in snow making, with underlying demand for snow holidays remaining strong through July and August.”
