Weather
Snow continues through Friday and tapers early Saturday, then BC/Alberta shifts to a quieter stretch before lower-confidence waves return next week. Near-term confidence is highest for this first pulse, with the best refresh in the Banff-Lake Louise corridor and lighter results in southern BC, while exposed terrain at Big White stays windy enough at times to impact comfort and some upper-mountain skiing quality.
Guidance is converging well on storm timing from Friday morning through early Saturday, but it still diverges on how hard it snows at each mountain. Snow levels generally hold around 0 to 4,300 feet during the core of this wave, keeping most terrain in snow, though southern BC carries the highest snow levels and the densest snow. Snow quality should run from denser at RED Mountain with SLRs near 6-10, to moderate at Revelstoke and Big White near 10-14, to lighter snow in the Alberta resorts near 14-18. Winds are mostly manageable outside exposed terrain, but Big White is the outlier with ridge gusts often in the 45-60 mph range Friday, which can make upper lifts and visibility more challenging at times.
From Saturday afternoon through Tuesday, the models are strongly converged on a mostly dry pattern with only isolated flurries. Temperatures stay seasonable to mild in BC/Alberta, with colder overnight readings in the Alberta mountains and milder daytime temperatures in southern BC, so expect better chalk and packed powder preservation on shaded and higher terrain while lower elevations trend firmer between refreshes. Wind impacts ease for most areas in this stretch, though Big White can still see periodic breezy to windy ridge-top conditions. With no meaningful new snowfall signal in this period, ski quality should depend more on existing base depth, aspect, and how much grooming and skier traffic each mountain sees after the Friday storm.
Confidence drops again from Wednesday onward as guidance diverges on wave timing, snowfall intensity, snow levels, and wind strength. The broad signal still supports snow returning Wednesday into Thursday, then another round of unsettled weather from Friday into Sunday or Monday, but the spread is wide enough that this part of the forecast stays speculative. A conservative read is about 3″-8″ possible at many resorts in the midweek wave, followed by roughly 2″-6″ in drier outcomes or up to about 4″-12″ in wetter outcomes late in the period, with favored mountains locally higher. Snow levels in those later waves most often run around 3,000 to 4,500 feet, and snow quality looks mostly dense to moderate in BC with periods of lighter snow in Alberta.
Resort Forecast Totals (Fri Feb 27 – Sat Feb 28)
- Banff Sunshine – 5″-6″
- Lake Louise – 4″-5″
- Revelstoke – 4″-5″
- Mount Norquay – 2″-3″
- Big White – 1″
- RED Mountain – 0″
