First snow of the season covers the top of Asahidake

The top of Asahidake, a mountain in Japan, turned white with snow on October 2, 2026. It was the first snow on the mountaintop this season.

The news comes from the Japan Meteorological Agency, the government office that watches the weather in Japan. The agency reports the first snow on 44 mountains across the country. On October 3, its list showed Asahidake as a mountain that had its first snow in the last four days.

The agency has also changed the way it checks for snow. Until the 2026 cold season^*1, workers looked at the mountains with their own eyes. From the 2027 cold season, the agency uses calculated snow depth^*2 to show how much snow is on each mountaintop.

Because the two ways are different, the agency says the new dates cannot simply be compared with the dates from earlier years.

1. *1 cold season: the part of the year when the weather is cold and snow falls
2. *2 calculated snow depth: how deep the snow is, worked out by a computer from weather information