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There's fresh snowfall in Finland's northern Lapland region a fortnight before ski areas are due to start opening for their 23-24 ski season.

The country's largest resort, Levi, posted pictures of snowfall down to resort level on Wednesday 20th September. It is still summertime, until Saturday, according to the astronomical measure of the seasons.

Levi and fellow Finnish resort Ruka are due to start their 7 month long 23-24 seasons in just a fortnight's time, on 6th October.


Both store vast volumes of snow from last season through the summer, stockpiled under cover, so most of it makes it through the summer thaw. They then spread it back on the slopes to make runs a few kilometres long. As conditions improve with natural snowfall and temperatures low enough for fresh snowmaking, they open more terrain.

There's also good news from the Alps this morning with fresh snowfall on glaciers after a fortnight of warm weather. The forecast is for cooler snowier weather up high with four glacier ski areas due to open in Austria over the next two weekends. Pitztal will be first to open on Saturday, joining already open Hintertux which posted fresh snow images on Tuesday afternoon.

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