The Christmas Snow Score: which Alpine resorts are most snow-sure at Christmas

The score is arithmetic, not opinion. Each input is scaled to 0–100 against the real Alpine range, multiplied by its weight, and the weighted results are added up. The weights reflect how much each factor predicts cover in the last week of December:

• Village altitude — 33%. Scaled from 800m (scores nothing) to 2,300m (full marks, Val Thorens). It is where you sleep and where the nursery slopes are, and the first snow to go in a thin December.
• Top of the lift-served ski area — 27%. Scaled from 2,000m to 3,900m, about the height of the Klein Matterhorn. High ground holds natural snow in December when the valley does not.
• Snowmaking coverage — 20%. The share of pistes covered by snowmaking. Early-season cover in a dry December is often mostly made snow.
• December opening record — 12%. How often the main ski area opened on schedule in recent Decembers — only ever from a verified series.
• Glacier access — 8%. Year-round glacier skiing, which is a safety net rather than a holiday on its own.

A missing figure is missing, not zero

When an input has not been verified, it is left out and the weights of the inputs we do hold are rescaled to fill the gap. Scoring an unknown as zero would punish a resort for not having been researched yet. Below 60% of the weight, no score is published at all.

What today’s scores rest on

At present no resort we cover has a verified snowmaking figure or December opening record, so every published score rests on its two altitude inputs, which carry 60% of the weight between them. That is the limit of the score today, and each resort page lists the inputs still to verify. As sourced snowmaking and December records are added the scores will move, and the ranking with them.

Resorts made of several villages

A resort’s published village altitude is usually its lowest village. La Plagne, Les Arcs and Courchevel each have villages hundreds of metres apart, so the figure is stored as published and the village it describes is named in the table. For a snow score the lowest village is the cautious reading: it answers whether the lowest beds could be short of snow.

Why vertical drop is not scored

A long vertical drop predicts good terrain, not December snow. Scoring it put Val Thorens, the highest resort village in Europe, below lower resorts with a longer drop — so it is shown on each resort page as context and carries no weight.