South America Daily Snow
By Luke Stone, Forecaster Posted 1 month ago May 10, 2025
Decent Snow Totals the Last Few Days, Quiet Stretch Ahead
Summary
A storm moved through the Andes over the last few days, bringing snow to many of the resorts in Chile and Argentina, with some solid accumulations, especially at Las Lenas. The storm track is shifting back to the south, keeping most of the moisture away from the resorts outside the southern zone. The next chance for a storm will be later next week, but it doesn't look big at the moment.
Short Term Forecast
Snow totals are often hard to find in Chile and Argentina, and it's even worse before resorts open for the season. At this time of year, the best approximations of snow totals are from pictures, videos, and some webcams. It looks like Las Lenas had some decent accumulations, perhaps in the 15 to 30 cm range, with around 3 to 10 cm elsewhere farther north and south.
I couldn't find any pictures or videos from Nevados de Chillan or Chapa Verde, but I expect they also received a decent amount of snow.
A ridge is moving into the region on Friday, pushing the storm track farther south for the weekend. This ridge won't stick around for long, but it will be replaced by another next week. This high pressure doesn't look as strong or far south, but impacts should be limited to the far southern resorts like La Hoya and El Fraile through Monday.
This southern storm will push a bit farther north later on Monday into Tuesday, bringing primarily rain showers into the central zone, especially the southern half. This storm track, though, will keep any cold air too far south until around Tuesday night/Wednesday, but even then, it looks to be restricted to the southern zone. El Fraile could see some decent accumulations Tuesday night through Wednesday as the cold front arrives.
Below is the precipitation forecast through Wednesday evening from the European model.
A stronger storm with a more impressive cold front is possible later next week in the Thursday through Saturday timeframe, but confidence is low at this time. It doesn't look like a big snow event at this point.
Extended Forecast
I do not see any signs of a significant storm in the long-range models either. Generally, the ensembles keep the storm track south of the resorts. There are some very minor signals of a more favorable pattern starting around the 23rd of May. However, this is two weeks out, and confidence is generally beyond seven days, so there's certainly time for the long-range forecast to change.
My next post will be on Monday.
Thanks for reading the South America Daily Snow!
Luke Stone
Forecaster, OpenSnow
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