Niseko Now: Saturday 1st December 2012
- Dec 1, 2012
- 3 min read
Independent snow and weather reporting from the Niseko region of Hokkaido
New snowfall at base 10cm
Snowfall at base this season 128cm
Weather overview Cloud, snow
Wind
Varied
Temperature -5C base / -10C top
Visibility Poor
Posted at 9:26am on Saturday 1st December 2012 This is an archived report. The latest Niseko Now report can be found here.
Welcome to the weekend and guess what... it's snowing. It tends to do that a lot here, for which we are all very thankful! Since my last report around 10cm of fresh snowfall to report here and that's being reflected by Hirafu who now have 185cm up top and 80cm at base. So this morning it is snowing lightly and it's also very cold. Earlier on it was just under -5C and it's almost unchanged a few hours later. Going to be a cold day for sure.
Today of course sees Niseko Village open and this morning they have the Community Chair and Banzai Chair lifts operating. I have noted below which lifts are operating at the three open resort areas below.
Lifts Operating (at time of writing)
Grand Hirafu
Ace Family Pair
Ace Quad No2 (Center Four)
Ace Pair Lift No3
King Hooded Triple Life #3
Niseko Annupuri
Annupuri Gondola
Jumbo Quad No1
Jumbo Pair #3
Niseko Village
Community Chair
Banzai Chair
Good to see more of the mountain opening up.
From today until 14th December, the lift tickets are set to the normal 'off-season' prices.
Weather forecast? Cold and snowy today and then things might just clear up somewhat tomorrow and not be quite as cold. Monday night into Tuesday is looking like it might bring us warmer conditions and also rain to the region before cold and snow returns again on Wednesday.
Now that we are into December, let's take a look at the JMA (Japan Meteorological Agency) Kutchan town snowfall numbers. If you take a look back over the Niseko Now reports last season, we were comparing the snowfall month by month over recent seasons in the Kutchan town area. Here are the numbers for the month of November over the last five seasons:
November 2008: 80cm
November 2009: 102cm
November 2010: 40cm
November 2011: 82cm
November 2012: 98cm
Please note that these numbers are not the snowfall on the mountains themselves, and we are simply mentioning them out of interest. As you can see in our reports here, a fair amount more falls on the mountains (think around 1.5 times the amount is a good ballpark). We'll keep an eye on these numbers throughout the season and see how things compare. By the way take a look back at December 2011 in the Niseko Now archives - it really was an amazing month for snowfall and December 2012 has a big target!
Looking back at our own reports here, around 120cm of snow has fallen in the village area since that first snowfall.
Niseko Now 2012-2013 season |
Data as of Saturday 1st December 2012 Total snowfall at base so far 128cm Number of days snowfall observed at base 12 days Most snowfall observed in 1 day 20cm (19th, 21st, 28th November) November 2012 snowfall 118cm December 2012 snowfall 10cm |
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.