Niseko Now: Monday 4th February 2013
- Feb 4, 2013
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 16, 2025
Independent snow and weather reporting from the Niseko region of Hokkaido
New snowfall at base 5cm
Snowfall at base this season 991cm
Weather overview Cloud, light snow
Wind
Varied
Temperature -4C base / -14C top
Visibility Varied
Posted at 8:55am on Monday 4th February 2013 This is an archived report. The latest Niseko Now report can be found here
5cm of fresh snow to report from Niseko this morning.
The strong winds that we experienced yesterday and prevented the top parts of the mountain opening are thankfully not blowing us around this morning and it is much calmer. (If there's one thing about Niseko I'd change, it would be the wind!). This morning we're all back to normal and all lift should be moving as planned.
It's about -4C out there with Hirafu reporting a temp of -14C on the top area of the resort.
Snow is currently falling and fingers crossed we'll have snow coming down all day. Visibility seems decent on the mountain considering. Perhaps a break in the snow tomorrow, but back to consistent snowfall from mid week through into the weekend.
I promised to bring you those Kutchan town Japan Meteorological Agency snowfall numbers for January 2013. And here they are. 268cm, say the JMA. That's compared with 290cm in January 2012 and 420cm in January 2011. In fact, the number was lower than any year since 2008. Which is kind of surprising. The longer-than-usual dry spell in the latter part of January meant that the numbers didn't do much increasing towards the end. Remember of course, these are numbers for Kutchan town and not for the ski resorts themselves. You can probably add at least another 50% onto that for an idea of mountain snowfall, and you can see the numbers we report every day in these reports as well to get an idea of how much is falling at the base of the resort area. Just mentioning these purely as a point of interest! And just for the record, the number for February last season was 216cm.
Niseko Now 2012-2013 season |
Data as of Monday 4th February 2013 Total snowfall at base so far 991cm Number of days snowfall observed at base 66 days Most snowfall observed in 1 day 45cm (27th January) November 2012 snowfall 118cm reported on 11 days December 2012 snowfall 418cm reported on 27 days January 2013 snowfall 443cm reported on 26 days February 2013 snowfall 12cm reported on 2 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.