At the end of last week the number of visitors to Mount Buller had almost doubled from the same time last year and Mount Hotham was up 15 per cent.

Falls Creek was up 5 per cent, or about 1300 visitors so far this season.

Last week more than 10,000 people visited the resort, while Mount Hotham had 11,499 visitors.

Mount Buller had more than 22,000 visitors in the seven days to Sunday, July 8.

But Glenn Docking, from the Falls Creek Hotel, said they were on track to break all records.

“Roughly speaking we have only one of the 24 rooms available every week until September,” he said.

“Some weeks were booked out since January.

“At the moment we are doing better than 1997 and that was our best year on record.”

Mr Docking said snowmaking had given people confidence to book at Falls Creek.

“The resort is less prone to the vagaries of poor snow years and further protected by the snowmaking system,” he said.

“It means we don’t get the wild variation in visitor numbers as other resorts.

“I think people got a lot of confidence out of last year.

“Without snowmaking it would have been a five-week season.”

Continuing natural snowfalls have helped to top up snow-depths to more than a metre at Falls Creek and more than 125cm in snowmaking areas at Mount Hotham.

Almost 200cm of snow has fallen at Hotham since the start of the season.

Both resorts have already eclipsed snowfall totals from last year.

This week about 20cm has fallen and more is forecast for the next week.

Blizzards are expected to develop on Tuesday.

Yesterday the mercury peaked at a chilly -3C at Mount Hotham.

At Falls Creek the top temperature of the day was -2C.

Earlier in the day a southerly breeze had created a wind chill factor of closer to -17C.