Nevados de Chillán
Nevados de Chillán is a ski area in Ñuble, Chile, at about 1,700 m.
Over the last twelve winters the ERA5 weather model gives it 752 cm of snowfall a season, 3rd of 3,069 worldwide and 1st in Chile. It swings a lot from year to year: the biggest winter, 2026 (1,121 cm), brought more than 5 times as much as the leanest, 2016 (188 cm). Snowfall days average 0.3 °C at mid-mountain, close to freezing, so the snow is often heavy, and its snow-quality score ranks 9th of 11 in Chile.
Elevation of the ski area’s centre point, taken from a digital elevation model. It is not the base-to-summit range.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ❄️ 7 Oct | 5.4 | 0.4 / 4.8 | 13.2 |
| ❄️ 8 Oct | 0.5 | -1.4 / 6 | 5.6 |
| ❄️ 9 Oct | 2.2 | -1.1 / 4.7 | 8.2 |
| ☁️ 10 Oct | 0 | -0.7 / 7.7 | 7.7 |
| 🌦️ 11 Oct | 0 | 1.8 / 7.9 | 9.7 |
| 🌦️ 12 Oct | 0 | 0.4 / 6.3 | 10.7 |
| ❄️ 13 Oct | 0.4 | 0.2 / 6 | 8.6 |
Live Cameras
This ski area does not put a camera on its own slopes. What follows are nearby cameras, not the pistes themselves.
Footage remains the copyright of each operator. JAPANSNOWLINE neither stores nor redistributes it.
Some cameras here are provided by Windy.com. Footage plays in Windy’s own player; we do not store it. Windy.com
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.
When it falls, and how winters differ
Month by month
Month by month, the most snow falls in June. September brings 70% of July’s snowfall. That is in line with the median for ski areas in Chile (77%). In amount, September brings 120 cm, more than the median of 54 cm.
Winter by winter
Across the 12 winters measured, the average is 752 cm, and 5 of them fell short of it. The leanest was 2016 with 188 cm; the biggest was 2026 with 1,121 cm (6.0 times as much). For 45% of the 11 ski areas in Chile, 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
What we have measured at Nevados de Chillán
- Nevados de Chillán: South America's Snowiest Ski Area, and Why Its Snow Is Wet Nevados de Chillán gets 752 cm a season, 3rd of the 3,069 ski areas we measure and the most in South America by a distance. Its snow falls at an average of +0.3 °C, which is the catch, and its winters run from 188 cm to 1,121 cm.
- In the Andes, Height Does Not Buy You More Snow. It Buys You Snow Instead of Rain. In South America the low ski areas get more snow than the high ones — 387 cm against 307 cm in the middle of each group. Then look at the rain: 2% of winter days against 30%. Volcán Osorno sees rain on 65%. Los Penitentes sees it on 1%.
- What Is the Best Month to Ski the Andes? We counted every month of the last twelve southern winters at five Andes ski areas. The biggest month changes from year to year, and in 4 of 12 winters Valle Nevado got less than 20 cm in July. Hakuba's worst January over the same years was 97 cm.
Updated: 8 Oct 2026, 00:52