Madarao Now: Sunday 15th January 2017
- Jan 15, 2017
- 3 min read
Updated: Sep 5, 2025
Independent snow and weather reporting from the Madarao region of Nagano
New snowfall at base 53cm
Snowfall at base this season 415cm
Weather overview Snow!!
Wind Moderate+
Temperature -
Visibility Poor
Posted on Sunday 15th January 2017 This is an archived report. The latest Madarao Now report can be found here.
How about another half metre of snow, everyone?!
The heavy snowfall has continued over the last 24 hours and it's almost getting difficult to keep up with it all. I heave measured in a few places and am logging 53cm (* updated) since my last report. The resort itself is reporting 50cm this morning.
And, snow continues to fall.
It's not due to let up until Tuesday!
There's a strong wind blowing at the moment and that is affecting the Number 13 lift (which is closed for the day officially due to strong winds and having to cope with all the snow) and it also looks like the Free Ride Park will be closed too.
Top conditions but visibility is low. All this new snowfall as well, extra care is needed mixed in with all the inevitable excitement.
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Oh no, it’s another general message from SnowJapan!
Apologies for taking up space on the reports again, but we have had a few people asking why our reports don’t appear much earlier in a morning. It’s a fair question and I’ll try to answer it. There are a few reasons...
First, it seems necessary to point out that we are not a ski resort and our reports are not official ski resort reports. Some people seem to think (or just presume) these things. If we owned and operated a ski resort, I’m fairly certain that we would make it a high priority to post updates as early as possible each morning - how much new snow at top and at base, snow depth, conditions. We’d also be sure to have multiple and meaningful webcams pointing out to locations around the resort. But we’re not official ski resorts/reports.
These things are what ski resorts should ideally be doing, right?
It varies, but a fair number of Japanese ski resorts only post their morning updates after 8am - and sometimes later. If we (SnowJapan) posted our reports earlier than we currently do, we would often miss important information - like news of how much fresh snow ski resorts are reporting, news of any early morning lift disruption at the start of the day, etc. We would often be missing that kind of information.
We like to think of our reports as a season-long ongoing commentary, rather than simply an early morning report for people who are going to be queuing for the first lift of the day. And after all, people who are lucky enough to already be at a ski resort and hitting the first lifts can get a good idea of weather conditions by taking a look outside of the window when they get up.
If we posted our reports just for the benefit of those people, the reports would not be as good or detailed as they are. We feel that our way makes for better all-round reports.
In addition, there’s also the people who post the reports and their circumstances to consider. They probably need some coffee and toast before posting, they may need to dig themselves out of their home, they may need to see to other complexities life throws at them. And - some of the reports in particular - take much longer than just a few minutes to put together each morning.
Madarao Now 2016-2017 season |
Data as of Sunday 15th January 2017 Total snowfall at base 415cm Number of days snowfall observed at base 29 days Most snowfall observed in 1 day 53cm (on 14th and 15th January) November 2016 snowfall 9cm reported on 4 days December 2016 snowfall 211cm reported on 14 days January 2017 snowfall 195cm reported on 11 days |
All snowfall data presented on this page is the snowfall measured and observed at base/town level by our reporter based in Madarao. The 'new snowfall' number represents the amount of snow measured since the previous report. All opinions are those of the individual reporters. Information regarding ski area operations is manually checked every morning and is believed to be correct at the time of the report.