The North Atlantic is unusually warm again in 2026, and for skiers in the French mountains that may be more important than it first appears. Copernicus Marine reported that global sea surface temperatures remained close to record levels during the first half of the year, with marine heatwaves continuing across large areas of the oceans. January to June 2026 was the third warmest first half of a year in its records, behind only 2024 and 2025. The concern for the Alps is not simply that a warmer Atlantic directly makes the mountains warmer. It is what can happen when winter weather systems pick up heat and moisture over an abnormally warm ocean before arriving over western Europe.
Anyone who has followed snow conditions in the French Alps over recent winters will recognise the problem. Some of the most destructive weather has not necessarily been dry or exceptionally sunny, but very wet. Atlantic depressions approaching France from the west or southwest can bring enormous quantities of precipitation, but if the air is mild the rain-snow limit can rise to 1,800, 2,000 metres or even higher. The result can be torrential rain and rapid snow loss at Nordic and lower Alpine resorts, while considerably higher up the same storm deposits a metre or more of snow. A shift of the airflow from northwest to southwest can therefore make the difference between an excellent snowfall at 1,000 metres and heavy rain at the same altitude.Feast for the big Savoie resorts, famine lower down especially in the Nordic ski areas.
There is some research to support the idea that North Atlantic sea surface temperatures are linked to winter conditions in the Alps. A study examining Atlantic SSTs and Alpine winter precipitation found significant relationships between particular patterns of Atlantic temperatures and precipitation variability in the European Alps. The mechanism is complicated, however. Warm ocean temperatures do not simply dictate the subsequent atmospheric circulation. The relationship works in both directions: winds, pressure patterns, cloud cover and ocean mixing can create sea-temperature anomalies, while those anomalies can in turn influence the heat and moisture transferred back to the atmosphere. The North Atlantic Oscillation and the position and strength of the jet stream remain crucial in determining where storms actually travel. Recent research continues to find useful relationships between sea surface temperature patterns and the winter NAO, although these connections are nonlinear and far from deterministic.
This is why an exceptionally warm Atlantic cannot be used to predict a bad ski season by itself. A persistent northerly or northwesterly circulation could still produce an excellent winter in France. Cold polar maritime air crossing the Atlantic can acquire moisture and then deliver large quantities of snow to the northern Alps. Equally, blocking over the North Atlantic or northern Europe can produce lengthy cold spells regardless of the seasonal mean temperature. What would be particularly damaging is a winter dominated by depressions passing to the northwest of France, repeatedly drawing mild maritime or subtropical air towards the Alps from the west and southwest.
The first seasonal forecasts therefore provide some grounds for caution rather than a reason to write off the winter. The current Copernicus seasonal outlook favours temperatures well above the historical average across much of Europe, while also showing wetter-than-average conditions developing in parts of central Europe towards late autumn and early winter. That combination is potentially troublesome for French ski areas: precipitation may not be lacking, but a larger proportion of it could fall as rain at lower and intermediate elevations. Seasonal forecasts should nevertheless be treated carefully. ECMWF's seasonal system is designed to identify probabilities and broad anomalies months ahead, not to forecast individual Alpine storms or snow levels, and European precipitation is particularly difficult to predict at these timescales.
For the 2026/27 ski season, the main risk may therefore be variability rather than a uniformly snowless winter. High resorts above roughly 1,800–2,000 metres could potentially receive plenty of snow, particularly during a wet Atlantic winter. The more vulnerable areas are lower Alpine resorts and especially the French Nordic domains around 900–1,400 metres, where only a small temperature difference separates heavy snowfall from heavy rain. A good 40 cm snowfall can disappear remarkably quickly if it is followed by two days of rain and temperatures of +5°C.
At this stage it would be premature to predict a poor winter. The atmospheric circulation during December, January and February will ultimately matter much more than the Atlantic temperature alone. But the background conditions are not especially reassuring. With an exceptionally warm ocean providing a large reservoir of heat and moisture, a winter characterised by repeated west or southwest flows would favour exactly the pattern that has caused problems in recent seasons: large precipitation totals, very high snow levels and an increasingly sharp divide between excellent conditions at altitude and unreliable snow lower down.