Snow is not triggered by season but by the snow prediction map from MeteoBlue.
As the Name says, it is a prediction and not an accurate value.
I have no idea if the Sim is accessing this data in Realtime or is getting them on a regular Basis but as you live in Innsbruck you perfectly know that weather and temperature changes dramatically within the last few days and there is still more than enough snow on the mountains north and south of the Inn Valley.
When you go to the meteoblue website and check the snow prediction map you will see that it comes with several LODs .
And depending on what LOD is used in sim, it is probably not going detailed enough to catch the difference between the Valley and the mountains.
Or as said earlier, it is simply not getting the accurate data live and what we have in the sim is a snapshot a few says old…
Snow coverage needs improvement, no doubt, but it is not triggered by season but online data instead.
And having snow at temperatures of 10 or 15 degrees is not unusual at all in the alps.
Greetings from a bit further east in Austria, where we have snow on the mountains at 10 degrees right now but in Sim no snow at all even though it is winter…
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Thanks for the info. I didn’t know that.
I was just wondering that we have had meters of snow in Tyrol for weeks even in the valleys (only in the simulator of course).
Of course I know that the weather in the Alps can change very quickly and that we still have enough snow on the mountains.
But that the roads, rivers and lakes are no longer visible in the simulator because of all the snow is a bit exaggerated.
Hopefully this will be fixed in one of the next updates.
Greetings to the east of Austria
here in LOWI we have about 15°C during the day, for at least 4 weeks now. mostly sunny days. no precipitation for 4 weeks. about -2C° at nighttime. there is still snow everywhere in the sim.
in real life there is only snow on the mountains. in the valley the last snow we got there was around beginning of february (about 4cm which melted away the same day)
The problem seems to be the coarseness of the data coming from meteoblue. In areas with high peaks and low valleys you will notice the peaks are covered snow but so are the corners of the valleys. For instance we have some ridges above 9000 feet that were covered with snow, but because the data points for the snow cover are so coarse and imprecise, there was snow all the way down into the valleys at 2000 feet even though it was 70 degrees. MSFS does not take into account elevation, only the snow cover overlay data.
I think you are right. Hope they find a solution for that because it’s killing immerson. Specially when you’re flying in countries like Switzerland. Dear Asobo-Team, I love skiing, but the season is over…
Yes, this seems to be the main problem, or rather, the coarseness of the data the sim is using. Meteoblue’s snow coverage map is actually quite detailed and accurate when you zoom in but the sim doesn‘t make use of the highest level of detail available. The snow coverage in the sim seems to match the snow map when zoomed out. If that‘s the problem it shouldn‘t be that hard zo fix.
But it seems very low on their priority list. This has been going on the second winter now and they still haven’t come around to fix it.
True. My guess (or should I say hope) is that they wait for the seasons update.
but why are the data points so imprecise. from where are they getting the data points? thought it would be METAR stations around the world (and some other weather stations). and for the example of LOWI, their weather station is at the airport down in the valley. so why are the not putting the +18°C on the mountains instead of vice versa?
look, i am sitting here in LOWI on my balcony in a T-Shirt. Today is +18°C and live METAR inside MSFS shows the same temp as real life METAR. there is still snow cover all all over and around LOWI.
PS: altough i really enjoyed my flights today when i checked out the WU8 (iberia) and was so impressed and blown away. so dont get me wrong. but the issue in LOWI (and mybe somewhere else) really frustrates me.
No. If you try to get Snow Coverage is only partly dependant on temperature. Accumulation is also important. 2 Meters of Snow will not simply vanish as soon as you hit 10°C.
It is totally bugged and devs simply ignore it since release…
winter is coming back the coming weekend. today temperatures are getting colder. right now (evening) we have +12°C and voila… suddenly LOWI is snow free today in the sim 
From Meteoblue’s snow coverage data. But as has been pointed out before, at a much to coarse resolution.
Zendesk says its solved - is it really?
i am curious
issue still persists.
today’s situation in the sim (ORBX LOWI):
realworld METAR and Webcam
situation is still unsatisfying!
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No it is not solved. This problem persists around the world, between metarstations. Yesterday i was flying in Yosemite US. Starting on snow covered ground. From one to the other second, the snow recovered into beautiful summerfeelings, back a few minutes later into strong winter. A shame. I don’t like REX weather force a lot, but at the moment the best way to go until this is solved, and i am happy to have it. And thats why Asobo should open the SDK to 3th part developers. They can do it better, simple. After to years, we are still betatesters. A half finished simulation. Weather is essential in aviation.
At the end, the harsh transition between metarstations is not solved or/and sometimes totaly wrong. I am afraid it never will…
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With SU9, same. LOWI and other airports with no snow reported has snow. Why Asobo doen’t fix this?
As LOWI is one of the “hand crafted” starred airports, you would think they would get this fixed. 20 Celsius and snow on the ground Asobo, it’s pathetic.
I am no computer programmer but you’d think a simple formula such as “if temp >=5c then remove snow” would sort it.
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The problem with that approach is that there can very much still snow on the ground at 5c. It’s not that it instantly completely vanishes within minutes. If enough accumulated it can take days until everything is gone.
They already use the right approach, drawing from Meteoblue’s coverage data. They just need to finally implement a fix to use that at higher resolution.
