The snow-forecast.com outlook for Valle Nevada, Chile for the next 6 days.

It would seem that all the hype and commotion over El Niño that's been spinning around ski sites starved for summer content is coming true in parts of South America, as 88" are expected at the Chilean ski area of Valle Nevado in a storm whose biggest burst is happening as we speak–nearly 64" is expected at the ski area today alone, with 60" predicted at El Colorado.

A stoked crowd cheers on the start to a monster dump at Valle Nevado from the hot tub. Valle Nevado photo.

This, unfortunately, tames earlier frenzied reports that El Colorado was going to get 19 feet in the next week, although predicting and accounting for snowfall in most of South America is significantly murkier than what we may be used to Stateside, where sites like OpenSnow.com use trained wizards to predict local snowfalls in specific areas of ski country down to the inch.

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The lone go-to site for storm tracking down south, snow-forecast.com, gives skiers and snowboarders hunting pow in the Andes an approximate idea of how much moisture is on the way, and, importantly for the continent's low-elevation ski areas like Bariloche, the freezing level.

Whatever the actual storm total ends up being, the good times are undoubtedly coming to the Andes this week. Valle Nevado photo.

Of course, the ceaseless winds of the Andes can turn a dusting into a bottomless feast of blower or, at the same time, render a monster dump useless as it spins all the fresh snow off the mountains. But as of dawn this morning, Valle Nevada had already gotten 20"–this storm appears to be legit!