How the Powder Score works
Every day of the 10-day forecast at 202 resorts gets one number from 0 to 100: the Powder Mission Powder Score. It exists to answer a single question — is this a day worth travelling for? — and it is built from three things a powder chaser actually cares about: how much snow falls, whether that snow is any good, and whether you'll be able to ride it.
1. Fresh snowfall — the headline
Forecast fresh snow for the day, in centimetres, at the resort's summit. The scale saturates: the difference between 5 cm and 15 cm is enormous, the difference between 60 cm and 90 cm is not — you can only ski so much fresh in a day.
| Fresh snow | Subscore | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| 5 cm | 30 | A dusting. Freshens the top, changes nothing. |
| 10 cm | 51 | Worth chasing if it lands cold and calm. |
| 15 cm | 66 | A proper refill — soft turns all day. |
| 25 cm | 83 | Deep. Faceshots on the steeps. |
| 40 cm | 94 | Epic. The kind of day you plan a season around. |
| 60 cm+ | 99 | All-time. Beyond this, more snow can't make it better. |
2. Snow quality — cold and dry, or cement
The day's maximum air temperature at summit elevation drives snow density. Cold air means light, dry, low-density powder; air near freezing means heavy "cement"; air a couple of degrees above freezing means the "snowfall" on the model is really rain at the elevation you're skiing. A big number of forecast centimetres is worthless if it arrives warm.
| Max temp at summit | Subscore | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| −7°C and below | 100 | Cold smoke — light, dry, low-density blower. |
| −4°C | 88 | Classic dry powder. |
| 0°C | 55 | Denser, but still fun. |
| +1°C | 38 | Heavy and wet; mixed precipitation risk. |
| +3°C | 12 | Slush, rain likely at this elevation. |
| +5°C and above | 5 | Rain. The day is a write-off. |
3. Wind — can you actually ride it?
Two things kill a powder day even while it's dumping: lifts on wind-hold, and wind stripping fresh snow off exposed aspects and loading it into slabs. We score the day's maximum sustained wind, with an extra penalty when gusts run well above the average.
| Max sustained wind | Subscore | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| 15 km/h and below | 100 | Calm — everything spins, snow stays where it fell. |
| 30 km/h | 78 | Noticeable transport on exposed aspects. |
| 45 km/h | 52 | Upper lifts start going on hold. |
| 60 km/h | 30 | Significant wind-hold; fresh snow slabbing in. |
| 80 km/h | 10 | Upper mountain likely shut. |
| 95 km/h+ | 0 | Storm riding only, if the resort opens at all. |
Putting it together
Fresh snowfall sets the ceiling; quality and wind gate it multiplicatively. A 40 cm "dump" that is actually wet rain, or that arrives in a 90 km/h gale, must not read as all-time — but quality and wind can only cap the score, never zero out a genuine storm. Any liquid rain at summit applies a further hard knock. Finally, the top of the scale is tapered so 90+ stays genuinely rare: an excellent day reads "Firing", not "All-Time", unless every axis is near-perfect at once.
| Score | Category | Read it as |
|---|---|---|
| 82–100 | All-Time | Everything lined up: deep, cold, calm. A handful of days a season, anywhere. |
| 65–81 | Firing | Book-a-flight territory. A real storm delivering quality snow. |
| 45–64 | Good | A fun day you'd be happy to be on the hill for. |
| 25–44 | OK | Leftovers, a dusting, or compromised conditions. |
| 0–24 | Lean | Not a powder day. |
From days to destinations
A resort's overall 10-day score is not an average, because powder chasing is not about averages — it's about the best window in the outlook. One all-time day beats a week of dustings. The rollup leans on the single best forecast day, lifted by how much total snow and how many quality days back it up, and we surface the best contiguous storm window (start date, length, total centimetres) so you know when to fly, not just where.
Data, refresh, and honest limits
Forecasts come from Open-Meteo, queried at each resort's summit elevation and refreshed every 6 hours. Resort pages also show each day's maximum freezing level with a warning when it sits well above the base — a summit dump can still be valley rain, and the score alone won't tell you that. Things the score does not model, so you don't have to wonder: lift and road status, avalanche danger, aspect-by-aspect wind loading, and crowd pressure. The score tells you where the storm is delivering; it is not a substitute for the resort's own operations page or the local avalanche bulletin.
Common questions
What is a good powder score?+
Anything 65+ ("Firing") is a day worth travelling for: a real refill with quality snow you can actually ride. 82+ ("All-Time") is deliberately rare — deep fresh snow, cold dry quality, and calm winds all at once. 45–64 ("Good") is a fun resort day; below that you are riding leftovers.
Why does a resort with more forecast snow sometimes score lower?+
Because centimetres alone don't make a powder day. A 40 cm dump arriving at +2°C is wet cement or rain, and a 40 cm dump in a 90 km/h gale is a closed upper mountain. Quality and wind multiply the snowfall score down, so a smaller, colder, calmer storm can out-score a bigger, warmer, windier one. That is by design.
How accurate is a 10-day snow forecast?+
Good enough to book around, not good enough to promise. Days 1–3 are reliable; days 4–7 usually get the storm pattern right but move totals around; days 8–10 tell you a system exists. The product logic follows from this: use the back half of the window to spot the setup and the front half to commit.
Where does the forecast data come from?+
Open-Meteo, queried at each resort's summit elevation and refreshed every 6 hours. Summit is the honest reference point for powder: it is where the snow you are chasing actually falls — though on warm storms the base can be rain when the summit is filling in.
See it live.
Every resort on Earth that matters, ranked by the next 10 days.
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