2024 / Public

Snow Powder Forecast

A website that helps find the European resorts with the best chance of fresh powder.

Problem

A regular forecast for skiers usually just tells you whether it will snow. But I was interested in something more specific: where in Europe it makes the most sense to head out for powder, how much new snow to expect, and how well a given resort performs over the long term.

Solution

I built a website that combines the current forecast with historical snow data. The server side runs on Node.js and Express, the pages are in EJS, and I prepare the calculations over historical data in Python.

What the website can do

• Shows a 7-day, 14-day, and detailed 3-day forecast.
• Ranks resorts by country and by expected conditions.
• Works with roughly 30 years of historical data.
• Treats a powder day as a day with at least 10 cm of new snow.
• Computes probabilities by month and region.
• Helps explain why a particular resort has a chance of powder.

What I learned

The hardest part was not displaying the weather. The harder part was turning the data into a useful decision, choosing the right visualization, and clearly explaining what the snow conditions will be.