Weather
The ongoing storm keeps light snow going in BC and delivers the best late-season refresh in Alberta through Friday morning. Confidence is strongest from Wednesday night, April 15 through Friday morning, April 17, when timing is well aligned and snow levels stay low enough for all snow at ski elevations. After that, the weekend into early next week looks mostly dry before a less certain reload tries to return around the middle to end of next week.
The current storm should add 13-16 cm at Banff Sunshine and around 4-5 cm at Lake Louise by Friday morning, while most BC areas finish with only light top-ups. Guidance is well converged on the timing, keeping snow going through Thursday and tapering Friday, with the deepest moisture focused on Alberta. Snow levels stay near valley floors to roughly 700 meters in Alberta and mostly below 1,100 meters in BC, so precipitation falls as snow at ski elevations. Snow quality looks good to very good in Alberta with SLRs mostly 12-20, while lower BC elevations can run denser at times, especially around RED where ratios dip closer to 7-10. Winds stay manageable in Alberta, but exposed BC ridgelines can still see gusts pushing 50-80 km/h on Thursday.
From Friday afternoon through Tuesday, April 21, the region settles into a mostly dry stretch with only stray flurries and no meaningful new snow signal. The models are tightly clustered on that broader lull, so confidence is solid in better visibility, a daily freeze-thaw cycle, and increasingly springlike snow surfaces away from the early-morning refreeze. Lower-elevation daytime readings eventually climb into roughly 8-18 °C, while higher terrain stays cooler. Banff Sunshine and Lake Louise remain the focus for lift-served skiing, while most BC resorts are already closed or temporarily closed.
A broader reload is possible from Wednesday night, April 22 into Saturday, April 25, with Alberta favored for roughly 10-20 cm and BC more likely to see a few centimeters to around 10 cm if the wetter solutions verify. That part of the forecast is much less settled: guidance diverges on arrival time by roughly half a day to a day, varies widely on intensity, and lifts snow levels toward about 1,000-2,100 meters at times, especially in BC. That points to heavier, denser snow than the current storm, with SLRs often dropping into the 5-10 range before improving late. Wind signals are also broader in that period, with another round of gusty exposed terrain possible in BC while Alberta looks less prone to major wind disruption.
Resort Forecast Totals (Wed Apr 15 – Fri Apr 17)
- Banff Sunshine – 13-16 cm
- Mount Norquay – 6-7 cm
- Kicking Horse – 4-5 cm
- Lake Louise – 4-5 cm
- RED Mountain – 4-5 cm
- Big White – 3 cm
- Revelstoke – 1-2 cm
