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 km 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 m
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.
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 mm near the Main Divide to about 1,000 mm just 30 km 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 m 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 m) and the summit (2086 m): 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.