PowderCow
Snow alerts
We save your number for exactly one purpose: texting you when it dumps. No marketing, no sharing, nada else. Two texts a week at the very most. Every alert has an unsubscribe link - one tap and you're gone.
About
I built this for me and my friends. With jobs and children we no longer have the time to check every resort by hand. Maybe once in a season we even have the time to go. But whatever. We like to dream.
Anyhow: people seemed to like it. Try it.
Book your flights wherever you want. But if you use my links (Skyscanner for flights, Booking for beds), I might get a small kickback — much appreciated, and it keeps this thing running.
No ads, no tracking, no nonsense. Just snow. ❄️
The Weights
We'll try to be as open as we can. This is our input so far. Any thoughts, let me know.
What this thing is
One page that reads live mountain weather for every ski resort we track, in both hemispheres, and ranks them by how good the skiing is about to be. Each gets a Powder-o-Meter score from 1 to 11. Best first.
Weather comes from Open-Meteo, read at each resort's mid-mountain elevation. Flight prices come from Travelpayouts. Texts go out through 46elks.
How a score is built
Two hard floors first, before anything else is counted.
- 0 — bare ground. Under 10 cm underfoot including everything still coming, and under 10 cm in the last 48 hours. Not a bad day: no day.
- 1 — rocks & regret. There is snow, but under 30 cm of it, under 5 cm fell all week and nothing is coming. Sun and terrain get no vote.
Otherwise the score starts at 1 and things are added: snow × dryness × calm, plus bluebird, plus terrain. Then it is capped and rounded.
- Snow — up to 6 points, the biggest single thing. A centimetre is worth different amounts depending on when it falls: a quarter for 7–3 days ago, full value for the last 48 hours, double for the next 48. Beyond that it is drawn on the chart and scores nothing, because a five-day forecast is not something to book a flight on. It is a curve, not a line — 5 weighted cm earns 1.3, 20 cm earns 3.4, 45 cm maxes it out — because real days are mostly small and a straight line would waste the top half of the scale.
- Dryness — a multiplier, not an addition, and the only term that can push above full value. Measured across the days that actually got 5 cm or more. Snow at 0.5 °C or warmer keeps 55% of its value; at −5 °C it keeps all of it; between −10 and −18 °C it earns a quarter more. Colder than −26 and the crystals stop sliding, so the curve eases back down.
- Calm — a multiplier from 0.55 to 1. Strongest wind on any snowing day: 30 km/h or less builds powder, 70 or more builds slab.
- Bluebird — a flat bonus, awarded whole or not at all. A day with 15 cm or more, immediately followed by a day with 2 cm or less and at least five hours of sun. Averages lie; timing matters.
- Terrain — a fixed editorial number per resort, worth up to 2 points. It never changes with the weather.
- Base depth only matters when it is thin. Under 30 cm the score cannot pass 4; under 60 cm it cannot pass 6. Above that it is shown on the card, not weighed — 60 cm packed under new snow skis like five metres. Fifty fresh centimetres on rocks is rocks.
- The 11 is a verdict, not a sum. 30 cm or more across the storm, at −5 °C or colder, in calm wind, on a base of 80 cm, with sun on the way. Hit every one and it is an 11 outright. It happens a dozen times a season — somewhere on Earth. When it does: sell your house.
The numbers you might want to turn
Read straight out of the running code, so nothing here can be out of date.
Terrain — the editorial part
One to ten. Steeps, trees, off-piste. A judgement call, not data — the part where a human decides that Las Leñas earns things Perisher can't.
Worth knowing how it is arrived at, because it is uneven. The southern resorts were scored by hand. The northern ones started from measured vertical drop within a few kilometres of the village, which is a poor stand-in for what this number means and wrong in both directions: Jackson Hole came out at 2 of 10 because the measuring box never reached the summit, while resorts with long lift-served vertical over groomed pistes came out at 9.
So around forty well-known mountains now carry a hand-written score instead, and everything else keeps the measured one. That leaves a long tail still judged by vertical drop. Terrain is worth 2 points of 11, so the damage is bounded — but if you think one of these is wrong, you are probably right, and we would like to hear it.
The Powder-o-Meter™
One number, 1–11, for how good it will be. Weighing seven things:
Snow amount. Fresh from the last 48 hours, at full value. What fell three to seven days ago still counts, but only a quarter of it — by now it's been tracked out and carved up.
Snow coming. The next 48 hours, worth half again as much as snow already on the ground. Snow you can still fly to beats snow you missed. Further out than that it's drawn on the chart but left out of the number: a five-day forecast isn't good enough to bank a trip on.
Snow temperature. We want −5 °C or colder.
Wind during snow. Calm storms build powder; gales build slab.
Bluebird. The perfect sequence — a big fall one day, sun and no snow the next — earns the biggest bonus on the board, worth two points on its own. Averages lie; timing matters. Twenty-five centimetres under cloud is a 7; the same snow with sun on it is a 10.
Base depth. Fifty fresh centimeters on rocks is rocks.
Terrain. A fixed editorial score per resort — steeps, trees, off-piste. Las Leñas earns things Perisher can't.
The 10. "Drop everything" has to be earned with snow, so it needs at least 20 cm of real new snow behind it — fresh plus forecast. Without that floor, a resort with maxed terrain and a sunny forecast could reach 10 on about 11 cm.
The 0. No base and nothing falling isn't a 1, it's grass. Bare ground scores zero however blue the sky is and however good the terrain.
The 11. 30+ cm across the storm — what fell and what's still coming — at −5 °C or colder, in calm wind, on a base of 80 cm, with sun on the way. It happens a dozen times a season — somewhere on Earth. When it does: sell your house.