GALA Yuzawa Snow Report
GALA湯沢
GALA Yuzawa averages 986 cm of snowfall a season and peaks at 326 cm of settled base, measured across 26 seasons of Japan Meteorological Agency records. That works out to roughly 31 powder days a season, meaning days when at least 20 cm fell. The charts below break that down by month and by season, alongside the ENSO pattern each season fell under.
Weather Data Source
Snow depth and temperature data from the nearest JMA AMeDAS station.
Quickly judge whether this resort fits your trip. See how snowy it gets on average, how long the season runs, and whether powder days are rare or common here.
7-Day Forecast
Decide if this week is worth a trip. Check the snowfall column first: fresh snow in the next day or two is the clearest sign of good conditions.
2025-26 Season Recap
9th deepest of 12 seasons
Peak 300cm · avg 365cm
Powder Days
Find the month when powder is most likely. Higher numbers mean better odds. Each cell counts powder days, meaning days with snowfall over your chosen threshold. Turn on the quality filter to keep only the cold, dry days.
| 2025-26 | 2024-25 | 2023-24 | 2022-23 | 2021-22 | 2020-21 | 2019-20 | 2018-19 | 2017-18 | 2016-17 | 2015-16 | 2014-15 | 2013-14 | 2012-13 | 2011-12 | 2010-11 | 2009-10 | 2008-09 | 2007-08 | 2006-07 | 2005-06 | 2004-05 | 2003-04 | 2002-03 | 2001-02 | 2000-01 | 1999-00 | Avg | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | — | 0.2 |
| Dec | 6 | 13 | 4 | 8 | 9 | 11 | 2 | 7 | 8 | 6 | 4 | 11 | 7 | 7 | 8 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 13 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 4 | — | 6.2 |
| Jan | 18 | 11 | 10 | 10 | 18 | 11 | 7 | 14 | 12 | 15 | 8 | 17 | 10 | 12 | 13 | 11 | 12 | 6 | 8 | 3 | 16 | 13 | 8 | 9 | 9 | 13 | 5 | 10.8 |
| Feb | 5 | 16 | 5 | 10 | 14 | 14 | 13 | 8 | 3 | 13 | 11 | 11 | 5 | 8 | 9 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 13 | 3 | 7 | 9 | 7 | 3 | 8 | 9 | 13 | 8.5 |
| Mar | 2 | 4 | 10 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 7 | 6 | 1 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 8 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 7 | 5 | 4.2 |
| Apr | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0.4 |
Snowfall Consistency
Avoid booking during historically dry spells. Scan the grid to spot weeks that tend to go without snow, then plan your trip around the more reliable windows.
Sky conditions, winter by winter
One mark per day from December 1 to March 31, one row per winter. Read across for a season, down a column for the same date in different years.
6 clear days The share of a typical winter that is clear here, and the months the clear days fall in.
Select a day to read its date and sky.
Showing the 5 most recent winters of 27.
The typical winter
The chance of a Clear day in each half-month of the season, across every winter the archive holds.
1–15
16+
1–15
16+
1–15
16+
1–15
16+
A Clear day is most likely in Mar 16+.
Winter runs from December 1 to March 31. A day counts as Clear when modelled cloud cover is 30% or less, Partly Cloudy from 31 to 79%, and Overcast from 80% up. A day with 5 cm or more of snowfall counts as Snow, whatever the cloud cover. Cloud cover comes from the ERA5 reanalysis for the weather cell this resort sits in. It is checked against hours of sunshine measured at the nearest reporting station, lower down the valley. Checked against sunshine measured at Yuzawa. The same station validates Kandatsu Snow Resort, Maiko Snow Resort and Naeba Ski Resort. This resort reads the same weather cell as Kandatsu Snow Resort. The modelled cloud is compared with the station’s measured sunshine on the 3,243 winter days that have both. When the two agree poorly, the clear-day figure is given as a range instead of a single count. The classification describes cloud over the resort’s weather cell, but nobody measures visibility on the hill. A cell that reads clear can still leave the upper mountain in cloud all day.
Powder Quality
Know whether the snow here is worth chasing. Colder Hokkaido resorts produce lighter, drier powder that floats and turns differently than the wet, heavy snow found further south.
Colder snowfall temperatures produce larger ice crystals with more trapped air — lighter, drier powder.
Rain Risk
Avoid months when rain is likely to strip the snowpack. Even one warm rain event can destroy days of accumulated powder, so knowing the risk by month helps you book smarter.
Percentage of precipitation days where rain falls instead of snow. Warm rain events (>5mm rain, temp >0°C) can destroy the snowpack.
Snow & Weather
Track whether this season is shaping up above or below average. Browse past seasons to spot trends, useful for timing a last-minute trip or understanding a resort's range.
Snow Depth
Source: resort report · GALA Yuzawa
Daily Snowfall
Source: JMA AMeDAS
Temperature
Source: ERA5 reanalysis at 770m (resort level)
Wind Speed
Source: JMA AMeDAS
Snow by ENSO Phase
Across Chubu, one unit of ONI moves seasonal snowfall by about −8.6% and winter temperature by about +0.5 °C. GALA Yuzawa shares that regional line; the figures below are sized to its own station.
| What moves | At the slider | Per ONI unit | Signal strength |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seasonal snowfall (Nov–Apr) | −12%, ≈ −117 cm | −8.6% | explains 11% |
| Snow depth at Yuzawa, 340 m | −21%, ≈ −21 cm | −14.8% | explains 8% |
| Winter temperature (Dec–Feb) | +0.7 °C | +0.5 °C | explains 28% |
| Snow consistency (days with snow, Dec–Feb) | −11%, ≈ −6 days | −7.5% | explains 18% |
| Longest dry spell (Dec–Feb) | +19%, ≈ +2 days | +13.5% | explains 8% |
| Japow-grade snow at Yuzawa, 340 m | −32%, ≈ −2 pp | −23.1% | explains 9% |
How this was measured
Season Depth
Depth is a share of each station’s own typical peak, so a valley station’s timing counts alongside an alpine one’s.
El Niño, 9 winters Tolerable or better: Jan 1 – Feb 28 across all winters, Jan 1 – Mar 15
This phase has too few winters to chart on their own, so the band covers every winter.
- the region, middle half of winters
- all winters, for reference
- Yuzawa, this resort’s station
- peak
- tolerable
- marginal
- dangerous
A shoulder half-month can rest on as few as nine winters, so trust the band more than any one percentage point.
| Half-month | Median depth | Band |
|---|---|---|
| Nov 1 | 0% | dangerous |
| Nov 16 | 0% | dangerous |
| Dec 1 | 1% | dangerous |
| Dec 16 | 13% | dangerous |
| Jan 1 | 53% | tolerable |
| Jan 16 | 70% | tolerable |
| Feb 1 | 86% | tolerable |
| Feb 16 | 65% | tolerable |
| Mar 1 | 45% | marginal |
| Mar 16 | 15% | dangerous |
| Apr 1 | 0% | dangerous |
| Apr 16 | 0% | dangerous |
Strongest winters on record
Yuzawa’s own record in the six strongest winters since 2000-01, against its normal.
| Winter | ONI | Snowfall | Depth | Temperature | Snow days | Dry spell | Japow-grade snow |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-16 | +2.63 | −48% | −81% | +0.9 °C | −20% | +27% | −3% |
| 2023-24 | +1.92 | −36% | −76% | +1.3 °C | −43% | +27% | −100% |
| 2009-10 | +1.50 | −5% | +4% | +0.4 °C | −12% | +3% | +66% |
| Winter | ONI | Snowfall | Depth | Temperature | Snow days | Dry spell | Japow-grade snow |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007-08 | −1.64 | +24% | −12% | −0.6 °C | +22% | −21% | −20% |
| 2010-11 | −1.31 | +2% | +9% | 0.0 °C | −17% | +35% | +31% |
| 2020-21 | −0.91 | −4% | +30% | +0.1 °C | −16% | +3% | +1% |
Snowfall in each phase
- driest to snowiest winter
- average
- the driest quarter of its winters
- only an El Niño winter has reached
At GALA Yuzawa, El Niño lowers the worst case and leaves the ceiling where it is. A quarter of its El Niño winters came in below 614 cm, against 888 cm in La Niña, which is the 274 cm marked under the chart. At the extreme, the driest El Niño winter on record fell to 414 cm, and no La Niña winter dropped below 697 cm.
Powder Reliability Leaderboard
The score measures how reliably this resort delivers powder, season after season. It combines four factors from the historical record: how often powder days happen, how consistently the snowpack builds and holds depth, how dry and light the snow tends to be, and how often wind ruins a powder day.
How scores are calculated
Powder Days (45%): the average number of powder days per season. A powder day has ≥ 20 cm of new snow, read from either the weather station OR the resort's own day-over-day depth gain, whichever catches it. The count is normalised to a per-window ceiling (20 days in peak season, 30 over the whole season).
Base Reliability (28%): how consistently the resort holds a deep base. For each season, the share of reported days (Dec 15 – Mar 31) with ≥ 150 cm of resort-reported on-mountain depth is scored on a smooth scale, from 0 at ≤ 40% of days deep to full credit at ≥ 55%, and the seasons are then averaged. Adapted from Witmer 1986 / Abegg 1996. It uses the resort's on-mountain depth and does not use the valley station.
Snow Quality (22%): the fraction of snowfall days where ERA5 daily mean temperature is ≤ −5°C at resort elevation, a proxy for dry, high snow-to-liquid-ratio powder (Kuchera & Ely 2004). ERA5 temperature is lapse-rate corrected to each resort's mid-point elevation. Surface temperature is an approximation of the full vertical profile.
Conditions (5%, advisory): the fraction of powder days calmer than the resort's own typical winter wind (below its 75th-percentile ERA5 wind). The anchor is relative because absolute ERA5 grid wind reflects the model's 9 km terrain cell and misses on-slope sheltering. The weight is low, so treat it as a hint.