After the cold snap of 8 October, Sölden, the Stubai Glacier and the Kitzsteinhorn have started their season. Over the next two weeks Diavolezza follows (17 October), then the Mölltal Glacier (23rd), the Titlis and Cervinia (24th), and the same weekend the World Cup races in Sölden. In Adelboden the Tschentenalp snow-farming slope opens for training on 24 October, open to the public on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
We ran the European weather model again for every glacier area, in all 51 runs, up to 25 October. The result comes in two halves.
Until Friday: dry and cold
From 11 to 16 October almost no run brings snow. Only on Wednesday the 14th do 28 per cent of the runs show a few centimetres, mostly in Austria. In return it is cold enough to make snow on every day in nearly every run. For the areas that are already open or about to open, this is the best week they could wish for: anyone with snow guns can run them.
Show the figures as a table
| Entry | fresh snow of 1 cm or more | cold enough to make snow |
|---|---|---|
| 11 Oct | 5 % | 100 % |
| 12 Oct | 1 % | 100 % |
| 13 Oct | 6 % | 100 % |
| 14 Oct | 28 % | 96 % |
| 15 Oct | 0 % | 100 % |
| 16 Oct | 5 % | 100 % |
| 17 Oct | 30 % | 100 % |
| 18 Oct | 31 % | 99 % |
| 19 Oct | 24 % | 99 % |
| 20 Oct | 33 % | 99 % |
| 21 Oct | 37 % | 99 % |
| 22 Oct | 33 % | 98 % |
| 23 Oct | 35 % | 98 % |
| 24 Oct | 34 % | 100 % |
From 17 October: a chance every day, but no date
From Saturday the 17th it turns unsettled. On every day up to the 24th, about a third of the runs bring snow, between 24 and 37 per cent. No single day gets past half. In other words, snow is likely, but the runs disagree about when. Anyone reading “snow on Tuesday” in a weather app today is looking at one of 51 possible outcomes.
Added up to 25 October, the middle run brings something everywhere, but no large amounts:
Show the figures as a table
| Resort | driest tenth | middle run | wettest tenth | runs with 20 cm or more | runs with 50 cm or more |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Titlis | 2 cm | 20 cm | 58 cm | 26 of 51 | 6 of 51 |
| Hintertux | 2 cm | 20 cm | 43 cm | 26 of 51 | 3 of 51 |
| Mölltal | 3 cm | 19 cm | 56 cm | 23 of 51 | 4 of 51 |
| Sölden, Stubai | 2 cm | 17 cm | 42 cm | 22 of 51 | 1 of 51 |
| Pitztal | 2 cm | 17 cm | 35 cm | 22 of 51 | 1 of 51 |
| Kitzsteinhorn | 2 cm | 14 cm | 47 cm | 23 of 51 | 5 of 51 |
| Zermatt, Cervinia | 0 cm | 10 cm | 93 cm | 18 of 51 | 12 of 51 |
| Kaunertal, Val Senales | 0 cm | 10 cm | 35 cm | 15 of 51 | 4 of 51 |
| Saas-Fee | 1 cm | 9 cm | 113 cm | 20 of 51 | 14 of 51 |
| Diavolezza | 0 cm | 8 cm | 38 cm | 16 of 51 | n/a |
Runs with 50 cm or more for the Titlis and Mölltal up to their opening dates (24 and 23 October); for Diavolezza the opening comes before the snow, so the figure is missing.
It stays colder than normal throughout. In the American ensemble (31 runs), the only freely available one that reaches beyond two weeks, the week from 17 to 23 October at 3,000 metres is colder than the 1991 to 2020 average in 30 of 31 runs: by 3.6 degrees at the Titlis, 2.3 in Zermatt and 2.1 in Sölden. For the week after, it is still 22 to 26 of 31 runs. That is a direction, not a forecast.
The outlier in the south
Saas-Fee, Zermatt and Cervinia stand out. In the middle run they get the least, 9 and 10 centimetres. But in 14 of 51 runs Saas-Fee gets 50 centimetres or more by 25 October, Zermatt and Cervinia in 12. The wettest tenth brings Saas-Fee 113 centimetres.
Behind this is a pattern that is common in autumn: when moist air flows from the south against the main Alpine ridge, it piles up against Monte Rosa and falls there as snow, while little gets through to the north. The wet runs show the largest daily amounts on 21 and 22 October. In the other runs the pattern does not form, and then the south stays almost dry. There is little in between: only 6 runs bring Saas-Fee between 20 and 50 centimetres. For Zermatt, which starts its winter season on 1 November, it would be the best possible case.
What it means for the opening dates
| Resort | Opening | Fresh snow by opening | Runs with 20 cm or more | Cold hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Diavolezza | 17 October | 0 cm (0 to 1) | 0 of 51 | 94 |
| Mölltal | 23 October | 13 cm (3 to 42) | 20 of 51 | 251 |
| Titlis | 24 October | 20 cm (1 to 51) | 25 of 51 | 249 |
| Cervinia | 24 October | 8 cm (0 to 83) | 18 of 51 | 239 |
| Sölden, World Cup | 24/25 October | 17 cm (2 to 42) | 22 of 51 | 290 |
| Zermatt | 1 November | 10 cm by 25 October (0 to 93) | 18 of 51 | 268 |
| Kaunertal | no date | 10 cm by 25 October (0 to 35) | 15 of 51 | 252 |
Fresh snow at 3,000 metres in the middle run, in brackets the driest and wettest tenth. Cold hours: hours with a wet-bulb temperature of −2 °C or lower up to the opening date, middle run. Sölden up to 25 October.
Diavolezza opens on the Saturday before the weather turns. No run brings fresh snow by then, so skiing will be on what is already there and what is made. Until 15 November it runs only on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays; on the other days the pistes are closed for training, according to the lift company.
The Titlis has two weeks more than originally planned with its new date of 24 October, and they bring it 20 centimetres and 249 hours of snowmaking cold in the middle run. In half of the runs it gets at least 20 centimetres by then. That looks much better than 10 October, for which we wrote “unlikely” on 2 October.
For the World Cup in Sölden the cold matters more than the fresh snow: the race piste has to stay hard until race day. With 290 cold hours in the middle run and colder than normal in race week, the weather favours the race. Whether it goes ahead is decided by the FIS snow control, not by this calculation.
Kaunertal still names no new date, “as soon as snow and temperature conditions allow ski operations”. The temperature does, the snow, at 10 centimetres in the middle run, hardly.
Who is already skiing
- Pitztal since 26 September, Hintertux since 2 October, Saas-Fee since 3 October.
- Sölden since 9 October with one piste, Stubai since 9 October, according to the lift company’s info bar on 11 October with 5 of 25 lifts and one of 40 runs, Kitzsteinhorn since 10 October with a run down to the Gletscherjet 3/4 middle station.
- Val Senales in training operation, and at the Schilthorn the Pända Snowpark runs until 25 October, booking required.
All dates are kept up to date on our opening dates page, and what is open today is on Open now.
How we calculated
As in our October forecast: 51 runs of the ECMWF ensemble, for every resort at the same height of 3,000 metres so that the resorts can be compared. We calculate the snow ourselves from precipitation and wet-bulb temperature, because the model’s snowfall field applies to the average height of a cell of about 25 kilometres, closer to 2,000 than to 3,000 metres. Orographic lift on the mountain is not in the cell; the figures are more likely too low than too high. Beyond ten days no weather model reliably hits a single day, which is why we show ranges and shares instead of one number.
Read on: When will the ski resorts really open? · A cold snap for the season start · World Cup in Sölden · What will the winter be like?
Sources
- Weather data: ECMWF ensemble (IFS 0.25°, 51 runs) and GFS ensemble (0.5°, 31 runs) via Open-Meteo, retrieved on 11 October 2026 at 20:07, calculated at 3,000 metres; 1991 to 2020 reference from the ERA5 reanalysis. Script: scripts/oktober-prognose.mjs.
- Dates and operations: soelden.com (ski area news), stubaier-gletscher.com, kitzsteinhorn.at (operating hours), kaunertaler-gletscher.at, corvatsch-diavolezza.ch (operating hours), moelltaler-gletscher.at (“Geöffnet ab 23.10.2026”), cervinia.it (“Winter season from the 24th October 2026”), matterhornparadise.ch (ski passes), all retrieved on 11 October 2026; titlis.ch (glacier opening on 24 October, read on 7 October), panda-snowpark.ch, dastrainingszentrum.ch (season start on 24 October) and adelboden-lenk-kandersteg.ch (public on Sat/Sun afternoons).
