Snow and snow and some wind and a bit more snow. And cold—the news says the coldest day in the entire Heisei era (the past 30 years).

Not as much snow as the forecasts predicted, but not as strong winds, either.

Seems like everybody got snow except Myoko again; people traveling to Nagano got 20cm; even Tokyo got its heaviest snow since 2014.

The snow has started; not a whole lot of new stuff here at base, but the first bit of what we hope will be a lot more snow.

Snow again! Not the greatest kind of white stuff; we saw little pellets of soft hail, the kind of snow that, if you get a whole to of it, you don’t go forward except on steep slopes.

I was complaining about the snow falling elsewhere and not here. No more complaining. We got hit by 62cm of fairly dense powder.

Another day of a lot of places around us getting crazy heavy snow, and us getting not all that much.

Soft on freezing slush. It’s getting a little nicer on the snow surface; some people were reporting great powder on top of the icy remains of the rain, especially around Suginohara, and not too high up.

Dust on crust today. The Niigata prefecture forecast (one of the most accurate in getting snowfall right) predicted 15cm; we got 4.

A little light snow for what should be a very busy day at the ski areas (second day of a three-day weekend).

The snowfall has finally stopped; the official total on the storm board was 119cm (with some considerable settling in there, too).

The round soft hail of yesterday has turned to nicer, flakier snow — and a lot of it. Nearly 60cm so far, and it’s still really coming down.

A stormy night, with lightning and one big thunderclap - a sure sign that we’re going to get heavy snow, and that it likely will be graupel, or soft hail.

A nice fall of snow for the second day of 2018, a day I know means the first day of skiing for many in the new year (after the fun of New Year’s Eve!).