Australia Just Had Its Worst Snow Season on Record. Japan's Worst Winter in Twelve Years Looked Like a Normal Australian One.
Spencers Creek was down to 31.2 cm on 3 September and half of Australia's resorts closed early. Across twelve winters of snowfall measured the same way in both countries, Japan's leanest season (2015/16, 171 cm at the middle ski area) is about what a typical Australian winter delivers (180 cm), and 83 Japanese ski areas average more than any Australian resort got in its best year.
Australia’s 2026 season is ending the way nobody wanted it to. Snowy Hydro’s snow course at Spencers Creek read 31.2 cm on 3 September. SBS reports that this is the worst end to a season since records began in 1954, after a peak of 94.5 cm that was the third lowest on record. Mount Baw Baw and Selwyn shut before August was out, and Mt Hotham, Falls Creek and Charlotte Pass followed on the first weekend of September. The ABC’s summary of the winter was record-low snow and unprecedented warmth across the Alps.
If you ski in Australia and are wondering whether to book Japan instead, how good Japan’s good years are is the wrong question. The useful question is how bad its bad years get.
One ruler for both countries
We measure snowfall the same way at all 3,112 ski areas on this site: every day’s snowfall added up over each winter, twelve winters per resort. For Australia that means June to September, 2014 to 2025. For Japan it means December to March, 2014/15 to 2025/26.
Our record does not include Australia’s 2026 season yet. Everything below compares Japan with Australia’s previous twelve winters, and that includes Australia’s best one.
| Australia 🇦🇺 (6 resorts) | Japan 🇯🇵 (377 ski areas) | |
|---|---|---|
| A typical winter | 180 cm | 252 cm |
| A resort’s worst winter | 60 cm | 154 cm |
| The leanest season | 60 cm (2015) | 171 cm (2015/16) |
| The biggest season | 362 cm (2017) | 321 cm (2024/25) |
Each figure is the value at the middle resort. “Typical” is the middle resort’s twelve-winter average. Both columns cover ski areas that average at least 100 cm a season: 6 of Australia’s 10 and 377 of Japan’s 395.
Start with the last row. In its best season of the twelve, 2017, Australia’s middle resort got more snow than Japan’s middle ski area did in Japan’s best. A great Australian winter is a genuinely big winter, and nothing here says otherwise.
The difference between the two countries is the floor. Japan’s leanest season (171 cm) came within 10 cm of what Australia gets in an ordinary one (180 cm). Five of Australia’s twelve seasons were leaner than Japan’s worst: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2023 and 2024.
| Australia | Middle resort | Japan | Middle ski area |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 64 cm | 2014/15 | 257 cm |
| 2015 | 60 cm | 2015/16 | 171 cm |
| 2016 | 84 cm | 2016/17 | 273 cm |
| 2017 | 362 cm | 2017/18 | 299 cm |
| 2018 | 248 cm | 2018/19 | 239 cm |
| 2019 | 202 cm | 2019/20 | 215 cm |
| 2020 | 182 cm | 2020/21 | 254 cm |
| 2021 | 248 cm | 2021/22 | 297 cm |
| 2022 | 282 cm | 2022/23 | 252 cm |
| 2023 | 140 cm | 2023/24 | 262 cm |
| 2024 | 124 cm | 2024/25 | 321 cm |
| 2025 | 248 cm | 2025/26 | 249 cm |
The rows are not the same months. Australia’s winter is June to September; Japan’s runs December to March.
Australia’s column swings between about 60 cm and 360 cm. Japan’s stays between 171 cm and 321 cm.
Resort by resort
| Ski area | Typical winter | Worst of 12 | Best of 12 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Perisher 🇦🇺 | 205 cm | 32 cm (2014) | 369 cm (2017) |
| Charlotte Pass 🇦🇺 | 214 cm | 66 cm (2014) | 369 cm (2017) |
| Thredbo 🇦🇺 | 182 cm | 66 cm (2014) | 295 cm (2017) |
| Selwyn 🇦🇺 | 178 cm | 77 cm (2015) | 380 cm (2017) |
| Falls Creek 🇦🇺 | 168 cm | 29 cm (2015) | 332 cm (2017) |
| Mt Hotham 🇦🇺 | 163 cm | 54 cm (2015) | 354 cm (2017) |
| Rusutsu 🇯🇵 | 212 cm | 155 cm (2015/16) | 291 cm (2021/22) |
| Furano 🇯🇵 | 220 cm | 181 cm (2019/20) | 266 cm (2014/15) |
| Niseko Grand Hirafu 🇯🇵 | 289 cm | 166 cm (2015/16) | 384 cm (2021/22) |
| Myoko Suginohara 🇯🇵 | 356 cm | 230 cm (2015/16) | 435 cm (2021/22) |
| Hakuba Happo-One 🇯🇵 | 414 cm | 301 cm (2019/20) | 609 cm (2024/25) |
| Nozawa Onsen 🇯🇵 | 450 cm | 301 cm (2015/16) | 635 cm (2024/25) |
| Hakuba 47 🇯🇵 | 668 cm | 380 cm (2015/16) | 860 cm (2021/22) |
Hakuba 47’s worst winter was deeper than Perisher’s best. It is not alone: 10 of Japan’s 377 ski areas had a worst winter at least as deep as Perisher’s 369 cm.
Across the whole country:
- 83 Japanese ski areas average more in a normal winter than any Australian resort got in its best. The Australian best was Selwyn in 2017, with 380 cm.
- 144 of 377 (38%) never fell below Australia’s typical winter (180 cm) in any of the twelve seasons.
- 112 had a worst winter deeper than Perisher’s average (205 cm).
The Hokkaido names Australians know best are not where Japan’s floor is highest. Niseko’s worst winter (166 cm) was below Perisher’s average, and so was Rusutsu’s (155 cm). Furano almost never has a bad year, but its best is modest (266 cm). What Hokkaido offers is cold, dry snow rather than depth. The deep floors are on Honshu: the Hakuba valley, Nozawa, Myoko and the Niigata snowbelt. We wrote more about where Japan’s snow holds up in a bad year.
Is Japan safe from what is happening in Australia?
No, and it would be dishonest to say so.
Japan’s bad winters come to the whole country at once. 240 of the 377 ski areas had their leanest season in the same winter, 2015/16. You cannot dodge a bad Japanese winter by picking a different region.
Japan’s deepest snow is also its most exposed to warming. It falls at low elevation, close to freezing, as cold air crosses the Sea of Japan. A study published this August found that only 7 of Japan’s 349 ski areas would keep a stable natural-snow season at 4 °C of warming, and the snowiest ones are not among the seven. We went through what that means, resort by resort.
What the record does show is how big the margin is today. In this record, a bad Japanese winter left the middle ski area with about the snow of an ordinary Australian season. Australia’s bad winters (2014 and 2015) left its middle resort with about 60 cm.
If you are booking from Australia
If your dates cannot move, pick a high floor. Hakuba Happo-One and Nozawa Onsen each kept at least 301 cm in their worst winter, and Myoko Suginohara kept 230 cm.
Go to Hokkaido for the lightest snow, but know that its bad years are thin. Niseko’s leanest winter was 166 cm.
The timing works. Japan’s season runs December to March, so a trip for this coming Japanese winter is being planned right about now. Our guide to skiing Japan from Australia and New Zealand covers flights and timing, and Niseko vs Perisher puts the two home favourites side by side.
How this was measured
Snowfall is the sum of daily snowfall over each winter, from Open-Meteo’s historical data on the ERA5 reanalysis. We calculate it the same way for all 3,112 ski areas on the site, with days counted on the same calendar boundary the rest of the site uses. Each resort has twelve winters: June to September 2014–2025 in Australia, and December to March 2014/15–2025/26 in Japan.
Both countries are compared on ski areas that average at least 100 cm a season: 6 of Australia’s 10 and 377 of Japan’s 395. Mount Buller, Mount Baw Baw, Mount Mawson and Ben Lomond fall below that line and are still being measured over twelve winters. Leaving out the thinnest ski areas lifts the middle value on both sides, so each country’s true national figures would be a little lower.
Neighbouring resorts can share one cell of the model’s grid, which is 10 to 30 km across. That is why Perisher and Charlotte Pass have the same best winter, and why Hakuba 47 shares its figures with Hakuba Iwatake and Tsugaike Kogen.
The model understates mountain snowfall. Checked against 63 Japanese weather stations, it returns roughly six-tenths of what they record, and less than that in Hokkaido (details). We have no equivalent ground check for Australia. The centimetres on both sides are therefore on the low side. What the tables compare is places measured the same way.
The Spencers Creek figures in the news are snow depth on the ground at one site. That is a different measurement from our season snowfall totals, so the two should not be set against each other directly.
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