TL;DR
Australia's 2026 ski season has hit a grim milestone - Spencers Creek read zero centimetres entering July, matching the second-worst start in 72 years of records. A Japanese resort seized the moment, posting webcam shots of brown Aussie slopes to spruik its own snow. El Nino is the likely culprit, but 72 years of data says panic is premature - a storm packing up to 40cm was forecast to hit from Thursday. Here's what's actually going on, and what history says happens next.
Australia's ski season has opened to bare paddocks, and someone in Japan noticed.
Entering July, the snow depth reading at Spencers Creek - the benchmark measurement Snowy Hydro has taken since 1954 - sat at zero centimetres. That makes it only the second time in 72 years of records that the site has carried no snow at all heading into the month. Resorts across the Snowies and the Victorian high country opened on schedule in early June, but a promising early season fall largely melted before the King's Birthday long weekend, and warm, humid nights since have made snowmaking difficult across the board.
It hasn't gone unnoticed overseas. A Japanese ski media account began circulating webcam images of Australia's brown, grassy slopes in the final days of June, with tongue-in-cheek commentary aimed at Australians considering a booking for their own winter next year. The images appear to have originated from a Myoko Kogen-linked account, though the exact source has been reported inconsistently across coverage - some outlets have credited "Myoko Tourism," others "Myoko Snow Resorts" - and SnowStash has not been able to independently confirm which account or entity posted the original images.
