The other day I flew from SEA to FAI which is Fairbanks Alaska in FS2024.  The temperature in Fairbanks was -19C so pretty dang cold.  I thought for how cold it was the city and surrounding areas looked pretty frozen and white which I thought looked pretty cool even if it was not exactly accurate.  What bothered me was the airport was completely covered over in snow.  I could not see the taxiway and the runway was completely covered in snow.  It made seeing the actual runway almost impossible.  Also I feel a large airport especially one like Fairbanks would have equipment to handle it.  If it had a bare runway and taxiways with random icy patches it would look much more realistic than just completely covered over in snow.  Anyone know of a fix?   

On the other hand, dry and clean runways in the snowy landscape looks unrealistic and kills the immersion for me.

Edited February 2Feb 2 by kiki

Sounds like a bug or glitch. Surely all airports in winter climates don't suffer these visuals?

I’ve given up and learned to live with the subpar weather and season depiction in this game. Just let go. 

On 2/2/2026 at 9:57 AM, VeryBumpy said:

Sounds like a bug or glitch. Surely all airports in winter climates don't suffer these visuals?

Its interesting because I have flown into many snowy areas in the sim and the runway was not that icy in many areas.  I have had clear runways but snow covered taxiways and I have seen mostly clear runways with icy patches.  However flying into Fairbanks was the 1st time I have seen the airport completely covered in snow.  The terminal buildings were fine but the taxiways and runway were completely covered.  The only thing I can think of is the sim thinks that when its really cold the snow is just going to cover everything no matter what.  It was -19C in Fairbanks so very cold.  One of if not the coldest I have ever seen in the simulator.  

In real life I remember landing in Norway during the winter many years ago and it was -10C and since it was winter not a lot of real sun.  The runway was mostly clear with icy patches and you could feel the anti lock kick in during landing when you hit those icy patches.  Taxiways were a bit more icy but not much.  For a large airport that is prepared for the snow (like Fairbanks) this would be about the worse it would get.  Never totally covered in snow unless it was actually snowing at the time.    

Sounds like a bug to me. I've done a few flights in the last couple of weeks - think the coldest was something like -30C, and I never had snowy runways anywhere. The airport would be shut if that was the case.