Snow question: Europe’s most reliable ski resorts

It’s every skier’s holiday nightmare. You turn up to the slopes and, instead of fresh white powder, you’re greeted by a mass of sludge slowly liquefying into green-brown mud. 

The Alps have had a torrid season, with higher-than-average temperatures and heavy rain forcing many resorts to close, sometimes within weeks of opening. For long stretches it was too warm even to operate snow cannons, which can magic up artificial snow but require low temperatures to work. While snowfall has picked up in time to save the season in some places, in Italy alone there are now 200 fewer ski resorts than in the 1980s. 

But there are still some pockets that can offer a reliable season. The key things to look at are the altitude of the resort (higher the better), whether there’s a glacier around, and what the average temperature is when you’re travelling. 

Savills, the property company, uses these attributes and more (season length, average snowfall and general reliability) to compile an annual ranking of the most resilient ski resorts.