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Australia Just Had Its Worst Season in Twenty Years. Here Is What Japan's 12-Winter Record Says About Booking It Instead.
Snow depth at Spencers Creek peaked at 94.5 cm, the third lowest since 1954, and resorts closed in August. Our own measure — snowfall, not depth — puts Australia at 50% of its 12-year average. The gap between those two numbers is the story: it was the warmth, not only the lack of snow. New Zealand, meanwhile, finished at 108% of normal.
Australia’s 2026 season ended early and badly. Snow depth at Spencers Creek in the Snowy Mountains — the measurement Australia has kept since 1954 — peaked at 94.5 cm on 13 August, the third lowest peak in 73 years, and fell to 31.2 cm by 3 September, a record low for that date. The peak-season average ran about 45% below the long-run average: the fifth-worst season on the record and the worst in two decades. Mount Baw Baw and Selwyn closed before the end of August; Mount Hotham, Falls Creek and Charlotte Pass followed (Weatherzone, SBS).
We measure something different, and the difference turns out to be the story.
Our figure is snowfall — how much fell — from ERA5 reanalysis at each ski area’s coordinates, on the same method we use for all 3,069 ski areas on earth. Spencers Creek measures snow depth — how much stayed. In a normal bad year those two move together. In 2026 they did not.
For this comparison we totalled snowfall from 1 June to 30 September in each of the last 12 years, the same window every year, so 2026 is not flattered or punished by where the calendar fell. The southern season is now complete, so these are final figures rather than a season in progress.
What fell: 50% of normal, third-lowest of the last 12 years
| Season | Australia, 10 ski areas | Share of the 12-year average |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 249 cm | 187% |
| 2022 | 185 cm | 139% |
| 2018 | 175 cm | 132% |
| 2025 | 171 cm | 128% |
| 2021 | 169 cm | 127% |
| 2019 | 159 cm | 120% |
| 2020 | 131 cm | 99% |
| 2024 | 98 cm | 73% |
| 2023 | 95 cm | 71% |
| 2026 | 66 cm | 50% |
| 2016 | 57 cm | 43% |
| 2015 | 43 cm | 32% |
Australia’s 12-year average is 133 cm across the June–September window. This year delivered 66 cm.
Resort by resort, it was worse in Victoria than in New South Wales, with one exception: Selwyn, in New South Wales, had its worst season of the twelve.
| Ski area | 2026 | Typical season | Share | Where 2026 ranks in 12 years |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mount Buller | 24 cm | 73 cm | 33% | worst of the 12 |
| Selwyn | 59 cm | 174 cm | 34% | worst of the 12 |
| Mount Hotham | 60 cm | 163 cm | 37% | 2nd worst |
| Mount Baw Baw | 18 cm | 46 cm | 39% | 3rd worst |
| Falls Creek | 80 cm | 172 cm | 47% | 3rd worst |
| Thredbo | 107 cm | 186 cm | 58% | 3rd worst |
| Charlotte Pass | 128 cm | 219 cm | 59% | 3rd worst |
| Perisher | 128 cm | 213 cm | 60% | 3rd worst |
Mount Buller and Selwyn recorded their lowest natural snowfall of the last 12 years. Nothing here accounts for snowmaking, which is how those resorts opened at all.
Why the depth record is worse than the snowfall record
By snowfall, 2026 was Australia’s third-thinnest of the last 12 years — 2015 (32% of normal) and 2016 (43%) were worse in what fell from the sky. By depth, 2026 was the worst in twenty years and the snowpack lasted a shorter time than any season on the Spencers Creek record.
That gap is the warmth. Australia’s reported causes this year were a warm winter, above-average sea surface temperatures and a shortage of cold fronts — conditions that both reduce snowfall and destroy the snow that does fall. A season can survive low snowfall if it stays cold. 2026 did not stay cold.
It is worth being precise about that, because “worst season ever” and “least snow ever” are different claims, and only one of them is true here.
New Zealand, at the same time, was fine
| 2026 | Share of 12-year average | |
|---|---|---|
| New Zealand, 26 ski areas | 172 cm | 108% |
| Mount Hutt | 221 cm | 130% |
| Invincible Snowfields | 466 cm | 119% |
| Treble Cone | 288 cm | 102% |
| Tūroa / Whakapapa | 106 cm | 90% |
Two countries in the same hemisphere, in the same winter, 2,000 km apart: one at half its normal snowfall, the other slightly above. Australia’s alpine area is small, low and marginal — its good years depend on a handful of cold fronts arriving at the right time, while New Zealand’s Southern Alps are higher and take snow from a different storm track. (New Zealand’s season was still running when we first published this; with the full June–September window it finished at 108% rather than the 106% we reported on 28 September.)
The number Australians will actually want
Japan’s ski areas, across the 12 winters we measure, average 285 cm from December to March — more than double Australia’s typical season, at 397 ski areas instead of 10.
But the honest comparison for the coming winter is not the average. It is the risk:
- NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center gave a very strong El Niño better than a 90% chance for the Northern Hemisphere winter, in its 10 September advisory
- In the 12 winters we measured, Japan’s El Niño winters came in at 88% of normal, its La Niña winters at 108%
- The strongest El Niño winter of the twelve, 2015/16, took Japan to 63% of normal — in other words, a season not unlike the one Australia just had
- Within that bad winter, Hokkaido held 80%, Hakuba Happo-One 92% and the Hakuba valley as a whole 71%, while Niseko fell to 57%
So: Japan is not immune, and this is a winter to pay attention to the floor rather than the average. Every resort page on this site shows the worst of that resort’s last 12 winters, which is the number that tells you what a bad year actually looks like there.
Japan’s bad years against Australia’s normal ones
Here are the worst and best of the last 12 winters at Australia’s six biggest-snow resorts and at the Japanese names Australians book most.
| Ski area | Typical winter | Worst of 12 | Best of 12 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Charlotte Pass 🇦🇺 | 219 cm | 67 cm (2015) | 369 cm (2017) |
| Perisher 🇦🇺 | 213 cm | 41 cm (2015) | 369 cm (2017) |
| Thredbo 🇦🇺 | 186 cm | 67 cm (2015) | 295 cm (2017) |
| Selwyn 🇦🇺 | 174 cm | 59 cm (2026) | 380 cm (2017) |
| Falls Creek 🇦🇺 | 172 cm | 29 cm (2015) | 332 cm (2017) |
| Mt Hotham 🇦🇺 | 163 cm | 54 cm (2015) | 354 cm (2017) |
| Rusutsu 🇯🇵 | 212 cm | 155 cm (2015/16) | 291 cm (2021/22) |
| Furano 🇯🇵 | 220 cm | 181 cm (2019/20) | 266 cm (2014/15) |
| Niseko Grand Hirafu 🇯🇵 | 289 cm | 166 cm (2015/16) | 384 cm (2021/22) |
| Myoko Suginohara 🇯🇵 | 357 cm | 230 cm (2015/16) | 435 cm (2021/22) |
| Hakuba Happo-One 🇯🇵 | 414 cm | 301 cm (2019/20) | 609 cm (2024/25) |
| Nozawa Onsen 🇯🇵 | 450 cm | 301 cm (2015/16) | 635 cm (2024/25) |
| Hakuba 47 🇯🇵 | 668 cm | 380 cm (2015/16) | 860 cm (2021/22) |
Perisher and Charlotte Pass share one cell of the model’s grid, so their best winters are the same figure.
A great Australian winter is a genuinely big one. In 2017 every Australian resort in the table had more than 290 cm, which is more than Niseko gets in a typical winter.
The difference is the floor. Hakuba 47’s worst winter (380 cm) was deeper than Perisher’s best (369 cm), and 10 Japanese ski areas can say the same. Hakuba Happo-One’s worst winter (301 cm) beat the average season at every Australian resort.
Counting only ski areas that average at least 100 cm a season (376 in Japan):
- 83 Japanese ski areas average more in a normal winter than any Australian resort got in its best (Selwyn’s 380 cm in 2017).
- 144 never fell below 180 cm in any of the twelve winters. 180 cm is a typical winter at the middle one of the six Australian resorts above.
- 107 had a worst winter deeper than Perisher’s average (213 cm).
The Hokkaido names Australians know best are not where Japan’s floor is highest. Niseko’s worst winter (166 cm) and Rusutsu’s (155 cm) were both below Perisher’s average. Hokkaido’s case is cold, dry snow. The deep floors are on Honshu: the Hakuba valley, Nozawa, Myoko and the Niigata snowbelt. If your dates cannot move, that is where to look; we went through where Japan’s snow holds up in a bad year resort by resort.
Practicalities for this winter
- Japan’s season opens 20 November (Sapporo Kokusai), 21 November (Sapporo Teine), 28 November (Niseko, Rusutsu, Kiroro, Furano) and 1 December (Hakuba Happo-One) — full list of 2026/27 opening dates
- Adult day tickets run from about ¥5,000 (Okutadami Maruyama) to ¥16,700 (Rusutsu, at the window) — what we have checked at each resort
- Live cameras at 128 Japanese ski areas, grouped by valley on our area pages
How this was measured
Snowfall is the total of daily snowfall at each ski area’s coordinates from ERA5 reanalysis, via the Open-Meteo Historical Weather API. For the Southern Hemisphere we summed 1 June to 30 September for each year from 2015 to 2026; for Japan, 1 December to 31 March for each winter from 2014/15 to 2025/26. This is natural snowfall from a weather model at a 10–30 km grid, not resort-reported snow depth, and it does not include machine-made snow, which is a material difference in Australia in particular. The method is identical for all 3,069 ski areas on this site, which is what makes the comparison possible at all.
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