Powder Reliability Leaderboard

Historical powder reliability ranked across all resorts

Rank	Resort	Overall	Powder Days	Base	Snow Quality	Conditions
1	Myoko Suginohara Ski Resort	66	58	89	78	36
2	Ikenotaira Onsen Alpen Blick	64	58	89	67	37
3	Nozawa Onsen Snow Resort	61	56	93	57	26
4	Niseko United	60	30	100	95	24
5	Kiroro Snow World	55	23	100	95	15
6	Joetsu Kokusai Ski Resort	52	58	78	29	21
7	Kandatsu Snow Resort	51	58	74	33	17
8	Sapporo Kokusai Ski Resort	51	15	100	96	6
9	Rusutsu Resort	51	14	100	91	12
10	Madarao Mountain Resort	50	28	81	64	37
11	Hoshino Resorts Tomamu	47	6	96	96	9
12	Sapporo Teine	46	12	81	93	14
13	Tazawako Ski Resort	44	17	81	80	8
14	Furano Ski Resort	44	4	93	94	5
15	Hakuba Happo-One Snow Resort	42	19	59	69	41
16	Takasu Snow Park	36	25	48	58	16
17	Zao Onsen Ski Resort	34	7	44	94	8
18	Hoshino Resorts Nekoma	32	14	56	60	3
19	Appi Kogen	30	4	44	85	5

How scores are calculated

Powder Days 40%

avg powder days per season with ≥ 20 cm new snowfall, normalised to a ceiling of 20 days/season. Ceiling chosen empirically from top Hokkaido resort data.

Base 25%

fraction of seasons with ≥ 30 cm snow depth for ≥ 83 days (proportionally scaled from Witmer 1986 / Abegg 1996's 100-day rule to our 151-day season window, preserving the original ~55% coverage standard across all resort types).

Snow Quality 20%

fraction of snowfall days where ERA5 daily mean temperature ≤ −5°C at resort elevation, used as a proxy for high snow-to-liquid ratio / dry powder (Kuchera & Ely 2004). ERA5 temperature is lapse-rate corrected to each resort's mid-point elevation for comparability. Full vertical profiles are not available; surface temperature is an approximation.

Conditions 15%

fraction of powder days (≥ 20 cm) with calm ERA5 wind (< 25 km/h) at resort grid point. Temperature excluded to avoid double-counting with Snow Quality. If no powder days are observed, this score is omitted and remaining weights are renormalised.