No snow yet. Snow depth and the seven-day outlook appear once snow is on the ground or forecast.
Typical snowfall
127cm
A weather-model figure, worked out the same way for every ski area, and lower than what actually falls. Use it to compare ski areas, not against the resort’s own totals. How we measure →
Elevation
348–545 m
Across
1.5 km
We do not show a snow depth here. The weather model we use reports snow lying on the ground — it knows nothing about grooming or snowmaking, and it is not the base depth a ski area publishes. In Japan we can check our figures against 234 weather stations. Outside Japan there is nothing to check them against, so we do not print a number we have not verified.
Whaleback Mountain, in United States, runs from 348 m at the base to 545 m at the top. Its mapped area is about 1.5 km across, with 37 marked runs and 5 lifts (about 7.8 km of piste in all).
Over the last twelve winters the ERA5 weather model gives it 127 cm of snowfall a season, 2,001st (tied) of 3,069 worldwide and 291st in the United States. It swings a lot from year to year: the biggest winter, 2022/23 (173 cm), brought more than 3 times as much as the leanest, 2015/16 (52 cm). March still brings 28 cm on average, close to January, its snowiest month.
How much snow it gets
Modelled from weather data the same way at all 3,069 ski areas we cover. These are not the resort’s own published figures.
Seasonal snowfall
127cm
per season
Worst of 12 winters
52cm
The middle winter of the 12: 132 cm. The best: 173 cm.
World rank
2001
of 3,069 worldwide
Rank in country
291
of 534 in United States
Elevation rank
309
Highest to lowest, of 534 in United States. The centre point sits at 445 m, 83 m below the national median.
Compared with what is nearby
Within 50 km in a straight line. Ski areas in the same weather-model cell (about 30 km across) get the same figure.
The most snow falls in January. March brings 80% of January’s snowfall.
31cmDec
35cmJan
33cmFeb
28cmMar
Average snowfall by month, last 12 winters
Winter by winter
Across the 12 winters measured, the average is 127 cm, and 6 of them fell short of it. The leanest was 2015/16 with 52 cm; the biggest was 2022/23 with 173 cm (3.3 times as much).
Niseko is 526th in the world for snowfall. Zermatt is 554th, Jackson Hole 924th, Aspen 1,201st. Measured identically across 3,069 ski areas, the names everyone books and the places it actually snows turn out to be two different lists.