Mt Hutt snow report
A treeless south-facing basin, which is exactly what holds the snow, on a mountain its own area manager reckons loses 15 to 20 days a season to wind. Nobody sleeps on the hill: everyone drives the 14 km8.7 mi unsealed road up from Methven or Christchurch each morning. Ignoring a chain call has cost NZ$800 since July 2026.
New Zealand · Southern Hemisphere · live from the weather model at 1597–2086 m5240–6844 ft
Imperial when your device is on a US time zone, metric otherwise, until you choose.
Conditions right now
Read at summit elevation the moment you opened this page.
Hourly windows, accumulation ranges, confidence and travel flags, or the transparent 0–100 Ski Meter score.
Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), adapted for display. Elevations are approximate published figures; forecasts are model estimates, not guarantees.
The mountain right now
The live freezing level drawn on the elevation profile. Above the snow line, precipitation falls and stays as snow.
Terrain shape is schematic; elevations are the resort's approximate published figures.
Ten seasons of snow at Mt Hutt
Daily snow depth at this destination's model grid cell, read as ten complete seasons to 31 August 2026. Natural snow only.
Only one of the ten seasons reached 30 cm12 in and held it for at least a fortnight, which is not enough to give a typical start date. The curve below is the whole record.
The band spans the shallowest and the deepest of the ten seasons on each day, and the line runs through the median. It reaches 47 cm19 in, the deepest single day in the record. The dashed line is the 30 cm12 in threshold, and the shaded column is the week Mt Hutt traditionally opens, 11 to 17 June.
The index asks a different question of the same ten seasons: in the week this mountain traditionally opens, had 30 cm12 in arrived? All 53 destinations are scored side by side, on one rule.
How the start date is found. For each season this takes the longest unbroken run of days at 30 cm (12 in) or more, and counts it only when that run lasted at least 14 days, because a week of early snow that melts out is not a season starting.
What the model cell is. The reanalysis gives this destination one grid square of roughly 9 km5.6 mi and one elevation for it, being the average of all the terrain inside it. Here that is 1979 m6493 ft, against a resort base of 1597 m5240 ft and a summit of 2086 m6844 ft. Compare the cell against those two before you read any number here as a verdict on the mountain. A reanalysis is a model, not a measurement: it can be too smooth over complex terrain, and it can miss a local storm.
Natural snow only. The model knows about weather. It does not know about snow cannons, and no snowmaking is modelled anywhere. The opening week is traditional, not contractual: it is the window this mountain has historically opened in, not a promise. Daily values run to 31 August 2026.
Take the data. Both tables are free to use and free to republish under CC BY 4.0: one row per destination, and one row per destination per season. Both are in centimetres and metres, whichever units this page shows.
Why it snows here
Mt Hutt stands on the eastern, lee flank of the Southern Alps rather than at the precipitation maximum: rainfall drops from around 15,000 mm591 in near the Main Divide to about 1,000 mm39 in just 30 km19 mi east of it. The prevailing nor'wester arrives as a föhn, warm and dry, and strips the pack rather than building it. What delivers here is a southerly outbreak off the Antarctic, and the operator publishes 3.8 m150 in a year before snowmaking.
Reading Mt Hutt like a forecaster
The number that matters most at Mt Hutt is the difference between the base (1597 m5240 ft) and the summit (2086 m6844 ft): when the freezing level sits between the two, the mountain is split into rain or wet snow below and dry snow above. The Ski Meter reads the model at both elevations and scores the day with every point accounted for; the full report adds hourly timing, accumulation ranges and confidence tags so you can decide when to travel, not just whether.