Tahoe snow report today
Most snow on the ground: Mt. Rose, 1 inch at the Mt Rose Ski Area gauge (8,810 ft). No gauge is deeper than it was 24 hours ago. Gauges read Oct 28, 1:59 AM PDT.
Snow on the ground at each resort’s USDA SNOTEL gauge, read every hour. The table compares all ten.
Snow at every Reno–Tahoe resort
| Resort | Gauge | On the ground | 24 hours | 48 hours | 7 days | Gauge hour | Resort’s own report |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heavenly | Heavenly Valley, 8,540 ft | none | no change | no change | no change | 1 AM PDT | skiheavenly.com |
| Palisades Tahoe | Palisades Tahoe, 8,010 ft | none | no change | no change | no change | 1 AM PDT | palisadestahoe.com |
| Northstar | Truckee #2, 6,500 ft | none | no change | no change | no change | 1 AM PDT | northstarcalifornia.com |
| Mt. Rose | Mt Rose Ski Area, 8,810 ft | 1 inch | no change | down 1 in | up 1 in | 12 AM PDT | not today’s |
| Kirkwood | Carson Pass, 8,360 ft | none | no change | no change | no change | 1 AM PDT | kirkwood.com |
| Sugar Bowl | Central Sierra Snow Lab, 6,890 ft | none | no change | down 1 in | down 1 in | 1 AM PDT | not today’s |
| Boreal | Central Sierra Snow Lab, 6,890 ft | none | no change | down 1 in | down 1 in | 1 AM PDT | rideboreal.com |
| Diamond Peak | Little Valley, 6,500 ft | none | no change | no change | no change | 1 AM PDT | not today’s |
| Sierra-at-Tahoe | Echo Peak, 7,650 ft | none | no change | no change | no change | 1 AM PDT | sierraattahoe.com |
| Homewood | Ward Creek #3, 6,750 ft | none | no change | no change | no change | 1 AM PDT | skihomewood.com |
Opening-day alerts
A notification on this device on opening day, early in the morning, with a link to the resort’s own report. Pick your resorts:
For Mt. Rose, Sugar Bowl and Diamond Peak it comes the morning their lift page first shows a lift running; for the others, the morning of the opening day they announced, whether or not it holds. It is a heads-up, not the resort’s report: check the resort’s own site for hours and terrain before you go. One alert per resort; no account, no email, and you can turn them off here any time (what we keep).
A Tahoe snow report usually means the resorts’ own: base depth, new snow, lifts and trails open. Those are posted each morning in season, and outside it most resort pages keep last spring’s numbers under a recent date. So this page starts from measurements nobody edits: the federal SNOTEL gauges on or beside each mountain, which report every hour all year. Then, for Mt. Rose, Sugar Bowl and Diamond Peak, whose sites may be read by a program, it adds the resort’s own figures whenever its season is running.
One page per resort
Each has the gauge reading hour by hour, the resort’s own report or a link to it, the chain control on the drive up, the 72-hour snow forecast and the highway cameras nearby.
- Heavenly snow report
- Palisades Tahoe snow report
- Northstar snow report
- Mt. Rose snow report
- Kirkwood snow report
- Sugar Bowl snow report
- Boreal snow report
- Diamond Peak snow report
- Sierra-at-Tahoe snow report
- Homewood snow report
The Reno–Tahoe ski resorts, each linked to its snow report.
The resorts’ own reports
Read every hour by this site: Mt. Rose, Sugar Bowl, Diamond Peak. Linked only, because their terms do not allow a program to read them: Heavenly, Palisades Tahoe, Northstar, Kirkwood, Boreal, Sierra-at-Tahoe, Homewood. Lifts, trails, grooming and surface conditions for those are on each resort’s page, updated every morning in season.
Snow on the mountain, snow on the road
A good snow report usually means a hard drive. The chain control on each pass is read every five minutes from Caltrans and NDOT:
- Do I need chains on Donner Pass right now?
- Do I need chains on the Mt Rose Highway right now?
- Do I need chains on Echo Summit right now?
- Do I need chains on Carson Pass right now?
- Do I need chains on Kingsbury Grade right now?
- Every pass camera, with its chain control
- How much snow is coming: the 72-hour forecast for every pass and resort
- Tahoe ski resort opening dates
How the gauges measure
SNOTEL stations are run by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service to forecast water supply. Each has a sonic sensor that measures the depth of snow under it and a pillow that weighs the water in the snow, and reports every hour. The figures are provisional until the agency reviews them. A gauge stands in one clearing, not on a groomed run, so it reads differently from a resort’s base depth: lower after wind and settling, higher where a resort has not yet made or packed snow. What it does well is change: when the gauge is deeper than yesterday, it snowed there. Each resort page says how far its gauge is from the lifts and at what height.
Snow on the ground: USDA NRCS SNOTEL (wcc.sc.egov.usda.gov), public domain, read hourly. Resort reports: Mt. Rose (skirose.com), Sugar Bowl (sugarbowl.com) and Diamond Peak (diamondpeak.com), read hourly; the others linked. Nevada Explorer is not affiliated with any resort.