A camera tells you in five seconds what a snow report hides: visibility, wind, queues and whether it is actually snowing.
What a camera tells you that a report does not Snow reports are written once a day, usually at 7 am, and they round up. A camera is live. In five seconds you can see: Is it snowing right now: look at the air, not the ground. Wind: trees and lift chairs moving means holds are likely on upper lifts. Visibility: a white wall at the summit cam means you ski the trees today. Queues: base-area cameras show the lift line before you drive two hours.
Snow quality: fresh snow sits on branches and rooftops. Tracked-out crust does not. The routine locals use 1. Night before: check the summit and base cameras of two candidate resorts. 2. 06:30: check again.
Overnight accumulation on rooftops is the honest number. 3. Decide the mountain, then check the snow forecast for the rest of the week. Off-season honesty Outside a resort's operating season we mark its cameras off-season rather than pretending they are live. A green summer hillside labelled "LIVE" is useless, so we do not do it. Browse every feed on our live cameras page, or open any resort page to see its cameras beside today's snow and the 7-day forecast.