Snow forecast for Mount Fuji next week finally – Asia Pacific

Japan’s Mount Fuji, snowless for the longest time since records began 130 years ago, is expected to finally regain its famous white cap next week, a local weather forecaster said on Thursday.

On average, snow on Japan’s highest mountain begins to form on October 2, and the last time it fell before this year was in 1955 and 2016, when it fell on October 26.

“The Mount Fuji area is likely to experience temporary rain on November 6,” forecast website tenki.jp, run by the Japan Meteorological Association, said on Thursday.

“Cold air will rise and change rain to snow near the summit,” the report said. “The weather will gradually clear up, and the first snow on the mountain will be observed on the morning of the 7th.”

Another Weather News company also said Wednesday that “the first snowfall will likely be pushed back to November.”

At Lake Kawaguchi, a favorite spot for viewing the volcano, French visitor Hugo Koidet told AFP it was “quite shocking that there is no snow at this time of year.”

The 25-year-old, who visited the area in the fall as a child, said he remembers Fuji “always being covered in snow.”

“I wear a T-shirt and shorts. It’s a completely different feeling,” said Australian traveler Jason Le.

“I think around the world it affects everyone. We are from Australia and you see that in the summer months it gets hotter and earlier it gets colder,” he told AFP.

Last year, snow was first detected on Fuji on October 5th.

Yutaka Katsuta, a forecaster at the Kofu City Meteorological Service, told AFP on Monday that climate change could play a role in delaying snowfall, with this year being the last since comparative data became available in 1894.

“Temperatures were high this summer, and these high temperatures continued into September, holding back the cold air (bringing snow),” Katsuta told AFP.

Japan’s summer this year was its hottest on record (matching 2023 levels) as intense heat waves caused by climate change gripped many parts of the globe.

Warm weather has impacted other snow-covered regions around the world, and many ski resorts are increasingly forced to face the realities of a warming climate.

In Japan, the city of Sapporo on the usually cool northern island of Hokkaido has begun discussing scaling back its famous snow festival due to a shortage.