Invincible Snowfields
Invincible Snowfields is a ski area in New Zealand, on slopes between roughly 1,927 and 1,927 m. Its mapped area is about 5.8 km across.
Over the last twelve winters the ERA5 weather model gives it 392 cm of snowfall a season, 190th (tied) of 3,069 worldwide and 1st in New Zealand. It swings a lot from year to year: the biggest winter, 2024 (515 cm), brought more than twice as much as the leanest, 2016 (234 cm). Snowfall days average −5.0 °C at mid-mountain, and its snow-quality score ranks 1st of 25 in New Zealand.
Elevation range is estimated by sampling points across the ski area.
We do not show a snow depth here. The weather model we use reports snow lying on the ground — it knows nothing about grooming or snowmaking, and it is not the base depth a ski area publishes. In Japan we can check our figures against 234 weather stations. Outside Japan there is nothing to check them against, so we do not print a number we have not verified.
Score breakdown
Powder Score v1.0.0
7-day outlook
| Date | Snow | Temp | Wind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🌦️ 8 Oct | 0 | -1.6 / 3.2 | 3.9 |
| 🌤️ 9 Oct | 0 | -2.8 / 3 | 5.5 |
| 🌦️ 10 Oct | 0 | -4.7 / 2.7 | 7 |
| 🌦️ 11 Oct | 0 | -2.5 / 2.5 | 5.3 |
| ☁️ 12 Oct | 0 | -8.2 / 4.6 | 7.6 |
| 🌧️ 13 Oct | 0 | -2 / 0.9 | 7.4 |
| 🌨️ 14 Oct | 5.9 | -4.2 / 1 | 7.5 |
Runs and lifts
Counted from the marked runs and lifts on the map, within 3.4 km of the centre of the ski area. These are not the resort’s own published figures.
Lift types
- Rope tow1
Source: OpenStreetMap (ODbL 1.0). How finely ski areas are drawn varies by region, so treat the counts as indicative. Difficulty uses the European grades, which do not map onto North American green / blue / black.
How much snow it gets
Measured by us across 3,069 ski areas by one identical method. These are not the resort’s own published figures.
The tick marks the median across every Japanese ski area we measure. All four bars run the same way — longer is better.
The quality score deliberately excludes how much snow falls — it uses temperature, frequency, rain and wind. Snowing a lot and snowing well are different things.
Compared with what is nearby
Within 50 km straight line. Measured the same way, so the ranks compare directly. Ski areas a few kilometres apart share a weather grid cell and can return the same figure.
| Ski area | Distance | Seasonal snowfall | World rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Treble Cone | 29 km | 282 cm | 561 |
| Coronet Peak Ski Area | 29 km | 116 cm | 2148 |
| Cardrona Alpine Resort | 37 km | 154 cm | 1612 |
| The Remarkables Ski Area | 45 km | 142 cm | 1775 |
| Snow Farm | 48 km | 116 cm | 2148 |
When it falls, and how winters differ
Month by month
Month by month, the most snow falls in September. September brings as much as July, or more. In amount, September brings 121 cm, more than the median of 32 cm.
Winter by winter
Across the 12 winters measured, the average is 392 cm, and 6 of them fell short of it. The leanest was 2016 with 234 cm; the biggest was 2024 with 515 cm (2.2 times as much). For 54% of the 26 ski areas in New Zealand, the leanest winter was the same 2016: bad winters tend to hit a whole region at once.
Snowfall each winter (June–September total). The dashed line is the average; the numbers mark the leanest and the biggest winter.
Map
Where it sits relative to nearby resorts. For a piste map, see the official site.
More places to look
Guides covering New Zealand
- Where to Ski in July and August: Argentina Has the Deepest Snow of Any Country on Earth, and Everyone Books New Zealand Argentina's median ski area gets 348 cm a season — more than Japan's 249 cm, and the highest median of any country we measure with ten or more ski areas. New Zealand's median is 144 cm. The English-language northern-summer ski trip points at the wrong hemisphere's end.
- Where Is the Driest Snow in the Southern Hemisphere? We extended our snow-quality measurement to all 59 ski areas below the equator. The high Andes are drier than most of Japan. New Zealand and Australia get rain on a third of winter days. And the southern hemisphere's snowiest resorts are mostly not its best ones.
Updated: 8 Oct 2026, 00:52