For the first month of the 2026 Southern Hemisphere ski season, Chile's Andes resorts were in trouble. Bare ridgelines, delayed openings, and only small fractions of terrain accessible were the story through most of June and early July. Then, starting on 16 July, an atmospheric river of extraordinary intensity locked onto the central Andes and didn't let go for close to two weeks, delivering what may be the region's biggest snowstorm in over half a century.
How much snow actually fell
Ski Portillo, the historic resort about three hours from Santiago, became the epicentre of the storm. In the first week alone, from 16 to 23 July, Portillo recorded 183 inches, about 4.65 metres, of snow, close to its entire typical seasonal average in a single week. The storm kept going. By 30 July, Portillo's running total for the event had reached 213 inches, roughly 5.4 metres, over just 14 days, with the most intense single 72-hour window delivering around 370cm on its own.
Portillo wasn't alone. Valle Nevado, Chile's highest-elevation resort, received around 1.7 metres from the storm, with a further 62 inches (1.6 metres) reported in a single week as the event continued. La Parva, El Colorado, Ski Arpa, Chapa Verde and Nevados de Chillán all reported exceptional totals of their own, generally between two and almost four metres. Across the border, Argentine resorts including Las Leñas and Los Puquios were also affected, though generally with lower totals than the Chilean side of the range.
What drove it
The storm was fed by what meteorologists described as one of the most intense atmospheric rivers seen in the region in recent memory, at points reaching Category 4 to 5 intensity on the scale used to classify these systems. An atmospheric river is a long, narrow corridor of concentrated water vapour, and when one of this strength runs directly into the steep terrain of the Andes, the same orographic lift that produces heavy snow anywhere in mountainous terrain gets supercharged by an unusually deep and persistent supply of moisture. Rather than a single frontal passage lasting a day or two, this event effectively kept refuelling itself for nine to ten consecutive days.
Why it mattered
For the ski industry in the region, the significance was immediate and dramatic: a season that had been on track for one of its worst starts in years was transformed almost overnight into one being talked about alongside the biggest storms the Andes have ever produced. By sheer volume, meteorologists covering the event noted that nothing of this scale had hit the region since 1965, when roughly 20 feet of snow fell on Portillo and its surroundings over an eight-day spell in August of that year. Individual storms in 2015 and 2020 had each delivered over 100 inches to the Andes, but neither came close to matching this event's final total.
The story away from the ski slopes was considerably more serious. The same atmospheric river that buried the high mountains in snow brought torrential rain to lower elevations, triggering widespread flooding and mudslides across central Chile. At least 13 people were killed and several more reported missing, according to Chile's national disaster response service, with more than 100,000 residents left isolated by damaged roads and severed communication links. Chile's president declared a state of emergency across several affected regions, and the same access roads that skiers were waiting to reopen were, for much of the event, a genuine lifeline for isolated communities rather than a route to fresh powder.
By early August, resorts across the region had begun reopening as roads were cleared and avalanche risk was brought under control, with several, including Valle Nevado, running close to full terrain within a couple of weeks of the storm's end. For an industry that had spent the first month of the season worrying whether it would have a season worth speaking of at all, the storm reset the entire winter, even as it left a serious and tragic mark on the communities living below the snowline.