Abstract: Based on the daily observation data of 84 national meteorological stations in Guizhou Province from 1971 to 2020, the spatial and temporal variation characteristics of snowfall in Guizhou Province were analyzed, and the climatic zoning was carried out by using the Rotated Empirical Orthogonal Function ( REOF ), and the relationship between snowfall and topography was preliminarily explored. The results show that: (1) The snowfall in Guizhou Province mainly occurs in winter. The frequency of snowfall in January is the largest, accounting for 49.5 %, followed by February, accounting for 27.9 %. The number of snowfall days is more along the east-west line in the middle, and less in the northern Chishui area and the southern edge. The distribution of maximum snow depth is also larger in the central and eastern regions, while smaller in the western region. (2) The number of snowfall days, maximum snow depth and snowfall in Guizhou Province showed a decreasing trend in recent 50 years. The decreasing trend of snowfall days was significant, with a rate of −0.72 d/10 a, especially in the central and northern regions, which may be related to the significant increase of minimum temperature. The decreasing trend of the maximum snow depth is not significant, and the rate is only −0.13 cm/10 a. The decreasing trend of snowfall is significant, with a rate of −1.07 mm/10 a. The number of snowfall days had a significant mutation from more to less around 2008, and passed the 95 % significance test. Although the maximum snow depth and snowfall had the same mutation characteristics around 2013 and 2008, respectively, they did not pass the significance test. (3) Guizhou Province can be divided into three snow climate zones with REOF method. Region I is located in the east-west line of central Guizhou, which is an area with frequent snowfall, large snowfall, deep snow cover and high terrain. Region II is located in the south of Guizhou, which is a low altitude area with less snow and snow. Region III is the northern part of Guizhou. The number of snowfall days, snow depth and altitude in this area are between Region I and Region II, and the amount of snowfall is the least. (4) Topography has an important influence on snowfall in Guizhou. The number of snowfall days and the maximum snow depth increase with the increase of altitude, but there is almost no linear relationship between snowfall and terrain height. For the northern region, the occurrence of snowfall and the thickness of snow in northern Guizhou are highly tightened to the site height, while the relationship between the central line and the height of the terrain is not obvious.