Snow has finally fallen on Mount Fuji, as photos shared by local authorities and residents showed Wednesday morning, while Japan’s most famous mountain has never waited so long for its first flakes.
“Here are photos of Mount Fuji taken from City Hall this morning. We could see a thin layer of snow near the summit,” wrote on his account X the city of Fuji, in the central region of Shizuoka, west of Tokyo.
However, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) has not yet officially confirmed that this day marked a record, the latest date ever recorded in the fall to see snow on Mt.
The JMA explained to AFP that cloud cover was currently preventing it from making observations comparable to those in previous years. The snowpack on Mount Fuji begins to form on average on October 2, and last year, snow was officially seen for the first time by the JMA on October 5.
The appearance of snow for the year 2024 is therefore the latest since comparative data became available in 1894, beating the previous record of October 26 – seen twice, in 1955 then in 2016. A JMA official said told AFP that the sky was still too cloudy to confirm a new record, but that he hoped the sky would clear later in the day on Wednesday.
“The temperature is low today,” and the snow on the mountain should therefore remain for the moment, added this official. Global warming is one of many factors causing slow snowfall.
In October, the temperature at the summit of Mount Fuji was above average. This year’s summer in the archipelago was the hottest on record, along with 2023, as extreme heatwaves fueled by climate change battered many parts of the globe.
Mount Fuji is a volcano covered in snow most of the year, except from July to September, the hiking season when more than 220,000 hikers climb its steep, rocky slopes. Many people climb at night to watch the sunrise from the 3776 m summit.
This symmetrical crater has been immortalized in countless works of art, including Hokusai’s “Great Wave.” Its last eruption dates back around 300 years.
