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Zao Now: Thursday 27th December 2018

  • Dec 27, 2018
  • 2 min read

Independent snow and weather reporting from the Zao region of Yamagata


New snowfall at base 2cm
Snowfall at base this season 129cm

Posted on Thursday 27th December 2018 This is an archived report. The latest Zao Now report can be found here.


Just a little snow to report this morning. Forecast? Some decent snow still there over the next 2-3 days, so hopefully we are going to be ending 2018 in a decent fashion... we're still rather low on snow and in need of a few dumps of the stuff. It helps the excitement levels too!


The Onsen Number 4 quad lift appears to be moving now, so there's just 6 lifts that are currently not open. They're all playing with what we got though and everyone will be happy to get some good numbers of fresh snow in.


Here's to some good snowy news tomorrow.


Operation info from official sources:


All lifts are scheduled to be operating apart from the following lifts


- Zao Paradise Number 3 pair

- Onsen Number 4 quad

- Zao Kokutai pair

- Ryuzan pair

- Karamatsu pair

- Oomori quad


Official snow depths (as reported by resort):


- Summit area: 55cm

- Paradise area: 50cm

- Chuo area: 60cm

- Utopia area: 50cm

- Uwanodai area: 40cm

- Oomori area: 30cm



Zao Now 2018-2019 season

Data as of Thursday 27th December 2018 Total snowfall at base 129cm Number of days snowfall observed at base 17 days Most snowfall observed in 1 day 32cm (on 20th December) November 2018 snowfall 7cm observed on 3 days December 2018 snowfall 122cm observed on 14 days




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.



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