I just don’t see any snow on the ground after flying through a blizzard into Albany NY. It’s snowing but just Autumn textures below. Am I right to assume LR hasn’t created winter textures yet? Maybe in the future?

6 hours ago, Patco Lch said:

Am I right to assume LR hasn’t created winter textures yet? Maybe in the future?

That is right.

The way it works now is that snow "accumulates" - so if it snows, the ground will gradually turn white. 

You can force that by changing the weather to manual and then setting the runway state to "snowy" - and then everything will be a winter-wonderland.

But if you use "real weather", X-Plane has no means to guess at the "snow already on the ground", so it assumes it just started snowing. But if you let it sit for an hour, the snow will stick and turn everything white.

Laminar is experimenting with certain solutions to adding snow, but it is not as easy as one would think initially - especially since there is virtually no real-time data for snow coverage (and the skiing resorts are lying about it! 😂)

 

@Litjan thanks for the reply. 

XA Snow plugin helps

 

@Litjan is correct that there is no credible aviation source of measuring snow on the ground.  Real pilots could care less, only if it remains on the runway.  The only obvious concern for a pilot is the immediate atmosphere immediately around the aircraft and along the intended flight path to the destination.  So the sim must decide if there is more or less "permanent" snow such as would be expected at extreme norther and southern latitudes and include that in the weather display.  Then where do you draw the "snow" line with constantly changing ambient temperatures and irregular weather patterns?  And how do you know if snow remains after a snowfall, and for how long before it melts or evaporates?  These are scenery considerations far outside of the concern of pilots sitting in the cockpit.

32 minutes ago, mldavis2 said:

Then where do you draw the "snow" line with constantly changing ambient temperatures and irregular weather patterns?  And how do you know if snow remains after a snowfall, and for how long before it melts or evaporates?

Totally right - Laminar experimented with some files that portrayed "historic" snowfall (i.e. they took data from 2020 and then applied that according to date and location) and immediately the testers cried "BUG!!!! I flew in XYZ today and there is no snow outside but there is in X-Plane!".

Yes, it was "better than nothing", but it sometimes seems that people can deal better with no implementation instead of a bad implementation 😉

 

1 hour ago, Litjan said:

Totally right - Laminar experimented with some files that portrayed "historic" snowfall (i.e. they took data from 2020 and then applied that according to date and location) and immediately the testers cried "BUG!!!! I flew in XYZ today and there is no snow outside but there is in X-Plane!".

Yes, it was "better than nothing", but it sometimes seems that people can deal better with no implementation instead of a bad implementation 😉

 

Simple solution: A popup at the start of each flight for initializing snow levels, asking "How much snow do you see outside your window?" and buttons labelled "None", "A little", "Some", "A lot", "Planet Hoth", "What is snow?" (the latter immediately applies a desert filter to all textures).

Edited December 14, 2025Dec 14 by Bjoern

I know it’s just eye candy but living in the south where a pretty snow is about as rare as three legged chickens I like to fly to the northern states this time of year where they’ve been clobbered recently. I know it is just textures and not realistic in FSX/P3D but imaginative. Oh well, that’s sim life.😊

You might try this plugin:

https://github.com/hotbso/xa-snow/releases/latest

1 hour ago, flch777 said:

You might try this plugin:

https://github.com/hotbso/xa-snow/releases/latest

Thank you, I’ll have a look.

xEnviro does a far better job with snow display than default.  I've used it for years.

made this for ya....

 

 

Nice post, thanks.  However you're deviating from real weather.  Good work-around if you don't care.

real weather won't give you this unless it is reporting slippery  runways... and real weather has a 10 NM HAZE BUG since about 1998 ... if I recall.

You can save yourself the trip through the weather menu with this: https://github.com/g-hill/CustomConditions

I don't know if it still works in 12.3 though.