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Quick constructive suggestion: place an intermediate layer of grass between the snow and the plains surrounding Varshikar. This way the landscape looks gradual and continuous.
Looks like that part of the island is a hot climate and dry desert. In winter Varshikar looks silly - burning hot sand is right next to snow.
It's like stepping in snow with one foot "brr cold!" and stepping into sand with another "ow, hot!'
Brr cold, ow hot, brr cold, ow hot!

<3

Not every desert has to be a hot one

Yes, the sand is just hugely absorbive.

There is snow even in generally warm climates.

It's like stepping in snow with one foot "brr cold!" and stepping into sand with another "ow, hot!'
Brr cold, ow hot, brr cold, ow hot!

Maybe the sand is actually cool instead of hot. In the Sahara it can get pretty cold at night for example. Its just an assumption that because there's a desert, it needs to be flaming hot.

Just look at Gobi..it is extrem hot in the summer...but it can turn extrem cold in the winter too, up to -40C° at some days

Yes, great responses and great picture, but we seem to be missing the key point here. Look at the picture Achae posted again.
The sand is covered in snow.
Varshikar sand is not covered in snow, which surmises it is hot enough to melt it.

Either the sand has to be covered in snow, or the intermediate terrain has to be present to justify temperature lapse.

It's magic sand, which immediately melts snow falling on it. Or it is magic snow which can't endure sand.
You decide.

Perhaps it is possible that the sand texture is replaced by snow too.

That or a some grass texture never gets replaced in between? Either would look natural.

look at it this way. gobaith is an extremely small island. Everywhere on the island is in the same climactic zone. So, if anything it should be the sand gets coverred in snow, not that varshikar is warmer

it cant, i think...if you replace the sandtiles with snowtiles you will have to reset the desert per hand after the winter. Since you cant change snowtiles with sand anymore...this would cause all the former gras to be sand too.

so to change it you have to change every single tile with sand...or to reload an old map which is several ig month old

Wait, why would you have to do it by hand?
Nobody should do it that way.

Change the implementation of mapping tools to replace the whole type of tile with another type of tile automatically. You guys went so amazingly far with Java, it should be easy to modify map building algorithms?

Even easier. Introduce a second snow tile, say "snow2". I mean, how hard is that? o_O
Change grass to snow1
Change sand to snow2

Summer comes

Change snow1 to grass
Change snow2 to sand

If tiles can carry data values (which I think they can) they can just have snow 1 for desert, snow 0 for grass, then to move back just check that.

No scripting problems.

yes...but think...

sand = one type of tile
snow = 1 type of tile
gras = 1 type of tile

now you change all gras and sand with snow...and now...change snow back to sand...will you have just the desert with sandtiles be back...or also the former gras? you will have JUSt sand were once sand and gras had been

Which is why I am saying make 2 snow tiles. Read post above ^
My post is addressed to the developers.

Hadrian_Abela wrote:If tiles can carry data values (which I think they can) they can just have snow 1 for desert, snow 0 for grass, then to move back just check that.

No scripting problems.

The client does all this tile swapping, once it notices that there is a certain game date, as far as I remember.
No chance for any scripts to handle that at the moment.

A solution to this problem, for the lack of another word, will likey have to wait until the release of the re-written client.

Thats exactly the way it goes.

The client fetches the IG date and in case its in a special range (winter) every grass and roof tile is force mapped to snow. For the server the tiles still have the same ID. Even for the client the tiles have the same ID. Just a different graphic reference.

Changing this does not work without a client update. One that won't be done. But I will think about that issue before the release of the VBU to realize it in a better way then.

Nitram

So out of curiosity, how does the Irundar water-maze part work? You have unwalkable water tiles, and walkable ones. Did you use two water tile types? Or are there invisable items on them or something?

My bet:
An "invisible" item with the flag "walkable".
Think of a bridge item, just without the graphics.

We got a item you can place on a tile that is not passable. No matter why its not passable. (Watertiles, Walls, ...)
Once this item is placed on the tile it is walkable.

Nitram

Perhaps it's a salt desert and therefor no snow or rain will effect it