Yuzawa Now: Sunday 18th January 2026
- Jan 18
- 3 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
Independent snow and weather reporting from the Yuzawa & Minamiuonuma region of Niigata
New snowfall at base 1cm
Snowfall at base this seas 413cm
Posted on Sunday 18th January 2026 This is an archived report. The latest Yuzawa Now report can be found here.
Yesterday started off with some fine weather, that low sea of cloud over Minamiuonuma, and a bit of drama over at GALA Yuzawa.
There was some mechanical problem with the gondola at that ski area and while it did eventually open at 10:15am, by then some people had been shipped off to alternative ski areas. I don't know what the problem was, but it was good to see that it only lasted a relatively short while. GALA Yuzawa is one of the newest ski areas in the region, but is itself celebrating 35 years this season. It is a reminder that there are a lot of ski lifts across the region - and indeed Japan - that are at least that old...
So, yesterday we had some fine weather in the morning, though from what I hear from various locations the snow was rather icy and challenging to the knees in the morning only softening up later on as it warmed up. I was at Maiko and that is what I experienced.
From around lunchtime clouds quickly gathered and then it rained.
We were told that there might be some fresh snow overnight. It is trying to snow at the moment but of the wet variety and a bit of a weak showing. There's a dusting on the top of my car; I can just about justify the 1cm added to this report. No specific news from ski areas this morning about how many cm there might have been on the mountains. Not much, though.
Webcams from ski areas show poor visibility higher up at the start of the day.
Hmmmm. It's not a particularly genki sounding report this morning, is it. Sorry!
Looking ahead to the coming week in the hope of improvement, temps are set to drop on Tuesday and what looks like good snowfall across several days. Please may it be so.
Yuzawa Now2025-2026 season |
Data as of Sunday 18th January 2026 Total snowfall at base so far 413cm Number of days snowfall observed at base 21 days Most snowfall observed in 1 day 58cm (on 12th January) November 2025 snowfall 12cm reported on 1 day December 2025 snowfall 144cm reported on 9 days January 2026 snowfall 257cm 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 Yuzawa. 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.