Yesterday saw some amazing skies in the morning - things did haze over a bit as the day went on but it stayed bright and sunny. This morning we are experiencing calm sunny weather once again and this should trend towards cloud cover that may bring in a bit of precipitation during the night.

The temperature in the valley was -7.5 C this morning and will likely rist to about +6C during the day today - so really quite mild. We could do with it not warming up that much.

Up on the slopes we will see a range between -1 C and +2 C with warm pockets of air. Wind will be light and breezy at 2m/s from the S and SSE. Once again, solar radiation will affect the piste within its rays and the freezing level is rising to 1200m by this afternoon.

In the end there was no new snow recorded overnight due to the mostly clear skies we have been experiencing, but clouds are still projected to roll in and drop some precipitation on and off over the next few days, thought doesn't look like anything major. We are expecting similar temperature fluctuations until Sunday and the new week will see freezing levels drop down to normal wintery conditions.

Hopefully that will bring with it the snow we are all waiting for - let us politely ask those snow gods to bring us copious amounts of fresh snow soon! In the meantime, enjoy the clear conditions out on the slopes.

Official snow depths and operations @ Thursday 19th January 2012 AM:

Hakuba Goryu:
No new snow today. All weekday lifts (all except No2/No4 pairs) operating.
Official snow depths:
Alps daira - 235cm;
Toomi - 105cm;
Iimori - 105cm.

Hakuba 47:
No new snow to report today. All courses open, Line D lift not operating.
Official snow depth:
Upper - 185cm
Lower - 90cm

Happo-one:
Ski lifts/courses:
All lifts apart from Grad quad, Usagidaira pair and Central pairoperating early this morning.
Official snow depth:
Usagidaira/Kurobishi - 140cm;
Sakka - 90cm;
Nakiyama - 90cm.

Tsugaike Kogen:
Official snow depth:
Upper slopes - 220cm
Champion - 150cm

Hakuba Cortina:
No new snowfall reported. No7 pair lift not operating but all courses open.
Official snow depth:
Upper - 235cm
Lower - 155cm

Hakuba Norikura:
Official snow depth:
180cm

Hakuba Iwatake:
Official snow depth:
Upper - 120cm
Lower - 65cm

Hakuba Sanosaka:
100cm

Hakuba Minekata:
70cm