Good morning and it is snowing here in Niseko early on. It doesn't look like it will be very sustained, but it's really nice to get a sense of winter again of course.

Yesterday we saw some warm temperatures and sun/clouds all day and it warmed up to about 3 degrees at the base. There were quite a bit of people around the slopes enjoying the spring conditions.

The only change in backcountry advice is today may just be a bit worse visibility. There's not a lot of fresh snow out there so the south facing slopes will likely be pretty bad.

Local forecasts are calling for a warm front followed by some snow and cool temperatures. As it looks right now, Saturday should be the warm one. Hopefully after that the amount of snow the storm brings will be enough to cover the hard spots where the freeze-thaw snow is. It looks like we could see quite a bit of snow mid-month. As mentioned yesterday at the moment we are below the average for March compared to last year, so it would be nice to catch up on that.

Grand Hirafu / Hanazono:
Top - 405cm
Bottom - 200cm

Niseko Village:
Top - 450cm
Bottom - 190cm

Annupuri:
Top - 480cm
Bottom - 200cm