top of page

Zao Now: Monday 1st February 2016

  • Feb 1, 2016
  • 2 min read

Independent snow and weather reporting from the Zao region of Yamagata


New snowfall at base 1cm
Snowfall at base this season 330cm

Posted on Monday 1st February 2016 This is an archived report. The latest Zao Now report can be found here.


Good morning from Zao.


More limited visibility on the mountain again this morning but it's not snowing - more like a cloudy and foggy situation.


There has been a bit of snow since yesterday but it's rather wet and heavy. I had fun out there yesterday but my knees and thighs definitely took a good workout and we could really be doing with a new decent delivery of snow to liven things up and freshen things up.


Which brings me to...


I am finding myself disagreeing with the snow quality code that the resort is publishing at the moment. The available codes are as below:


S - powder snow

A - very good

B - fairly good

C - normal/average

D - fairly poor

E - poor


The resort today is claiming 'S' as the mountain-wide quality of snow this morning.


If today is 'S', then how do we compare that with when there's 40cm of fresh light dry powder out there? Today is not 'S'.


Anyway, enough of that hopefully we should get a bit of snowfall tomorrow and then after that it's probably going to be the end of the week before we get much more.



Zao Now 2015-2016 season

Data as of Monday 1st February 2016 Total snowfall at base 330cm Number of days snowfall observed at base 40 days Most snowfall observed in 1 day 46cm (on 19th January) November 2015 snowfall 22cm observed on 2 days December 2015 snowfall 96cm observed on 12 days January 2016 snowfall 211cm observed on 25 days February 2016 snowfall 1cm observed on 1 day




All snowfall data presented on this page is the snowfall measured and observed at base/town level by our reporter based in Zao Onsen. 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.


SnowJapan is an entirely independent operation. Our daily reports are not posted on behalf of ski areas or any other business or organisation. Since first going online in 1999, the integrity of this website has always been our top priority, and it is something we are not prepared to compromise. All content is carefully created and written by humans who share a passion for the subject and what SnowJapan stands for.



bottom of page