Madarao is open! Hurray! And doesn't it look lovely.

80cm of fresh snow since yesterday.

Tons of snow in Madarao over the last day or so. Just loads. I hesitate to put a number on it, but for the record I will.

Just 1 week to go now! This time next week, Madarao Kogen will be open.

Well, it's a much snowier Madarao this morning, the resort posting a photo of outside the base center and reporting 70cm of snow, over half of that since yesterday afternoon.

It has been snowing since yesterday and we have nice amount of snow on the ground now.

As you may have heard, on Saturday night there was a strong earthquake in northern Nagano Prefecture, with areas to the west of where we are - Hakuba in particular - being shaken the most.

Hello and welcome back to Madarao Now.

It doesn't seem that long ago when I was starting up these reports for the season... but here I am wrapping them up on the last day of the season.

3 days to go! Yes, it's Saturday morning and Madarao's last day of the season is Monday, March 31st.

Temperatures just around zero this morning but it's going to get toasty later on in the day.

The sun is out this morning which is a big change from the conditions we had yesterday - which was mid-winter like snow and wind too.

Fresh snow! Yes, we have got that fresh we were hoping for. Of course, we want more.

A bit of sun earlier on, but it's mostly grey and cloudy now, and rain will very probably be falling today... up high as well.