Niseko Now: Monday 10th December 2012
- Dec 10, 2012
- 3 min read
Independent snow and weather reporting from the Niseko region of Hokkaido
New snowfall at base 40cm
Snowfall at base this season 260cm
Weather overview Cloud cover and snow!
Wind
Light to moderate
Temperature -3C base / -4C top
Visibility Fair to poor
Posted at 9:23am on Monday 10th December 2012 This is an archived report. The latest Niseko Now report can be found here
It's going to be deep today.
It seems as though many mountainous regions of Japan has been on the receiving end of some decent snowfall the last few days and Niseko isn't disappointing either. There's 40cm or so of new snow to report this morning in village - more and less in places - and there will surely be half a metre fallen in places on mountain. It's not as cold as it was yesterday and around -3C at the moment, but wind is still causing some issues with lifts this morning.
At the time of writing, the King Number 3 Triple hooded lift at Hirafu and the Hanazono Number 3 Quad hooded lift at Hanazono are not operating due to wind conditions on the mountain. Hirafu now has the Miharashi course open and a total of 27 of their 30 courses open to slide down.
Over at Annupuri, the Jumbo Number 2 and 3 pair lifts and having a late start as the resort move snow. The Annupuri Gondola is also closed for mainatence.
Yesterday the Niseko Gondola was running slow in the afternoon, but seems to be moving normally this morning.
The resorts seem to be being rather conservative with their snow numbers today, even when considering that 50cm of new snowfall doesn't always mean that those numbers will jump by 50cm for a number of reasons - compacting, etc.
The weekend perhaps wasn't as busy as people were expecting, but that probably has something to do with the fact that we have so much terrain open so early in the season. Things should start getting busier each week now, especially at the weekends.
We should see the snow clouds remain with us through tomorrow with perhaps an easing up mid-week.
Bottom line though is that today should be nice and very deep with some fine conditions out there. Enjoy if you can.
Niseko Now 2012-2013 season |
Data as of Monday 10th December 2012 Total snowfall at base so far 260cm Number of days snowfall observed at base 20 days Most snowfall observed in 1 day 40cm (10th December) November 2012 snowfall 118cm reported on 11 days December 2012 snowfall 142cm reported on 9 days |
All snowfall data presented on this page is the snowfall measured and observed at base/town level by our reporter based in Kutchan/Niseko. 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.