🇯🇵 Japan · Shimane

Osa Ski Resort

芸北高原大佐スキー場

Osa Ski Resort is a ski area in Shimane, Japan, on slopes between roughly 706 and 1,025 m. Its mapped area is about 1.8 km across, with 9 marked runs and 5 lifts (about 3.6 km of piste in all).

Over the last twelve winters the ERA5 weather model gives it 125 cm of snowfall a season, 351st of the 397 ski areas we measure in Japan. It swings a lot from year to year: the biggest winter, 2024/25 (195 cm), brought more than 3 times as much as the leanest, 2015/16 (63 cm). January is usually the snowiest month, with about 45 cm. Weather models read low in the mountains: a Japan Meteorological Agency station 5.5 km away measured 442 cm a winter over the last three seasons, against 139 cm from the model. Snowfall days average −2.0 °C at mid-mountain, close to freezing, so the snow is often heavy, and its snow-quality score ranks 370th of 397 in Japan.

Below are links to 2 official live cameras.

Snow depth and the seven-day outlook appear here once snow starts to fall. Until then, the long-run record comes first.

Temperature

15℃

Max wind

8.1km/h

Elevation (est.)

706–1025m

Across

1.8km

Elevation range is estimated by sampling points across the ski area.

How much snow it gets

Measured by us across 3,069 ski areas by one identical method. These are not the resort’s own published figures.

Seasonal snowfall

125 cm

per season

Worst of 12 winters

63 cm

A typical winter: 111 cm. The best: 195 cm.

World rank

2029

of 3,069 worldwide

Rank in country

351

of 397 in Japan

Elevation rank

168

Highest to lowest, of 397 in Japan. The centre point sits at 845 m, 79 m above the national median.

Quality rank

370

of 397 in Japan

Temp when snowing

-2.0°C

Japanese median: -3.5°C

Rain days

29%

Japanese median: 16%

Days over 5 cm

Japanese median: 15%

Wind when snowing

26 km/h

Dryness 0.29

Frequency 0.18

Freedom from rain 0.35

Calm when snowing 0.87

The tick marks the median across every Japanese ski area we measure. All four bars run the same way — longer is better.

The quality score deliberately excludes how much snow falls — it uses temperature, frequency, rain and wind. Snowing a lot and snowing well are different things.

Compared with what is nearby

Within 50 km straight line. Measured the same way, so the ranks compare directly. Ski areas a few kilometres apart share a weather grid cell and can return the same figure.

Ski area	Distance	Seasonal snowfall	World rank
Geihoku Kokusai	4.4 km	125 cm	2029
Yawata Highland 191 Resort	7.8 km	125 cm	2029
Utopia Saioto	11 km	124 cm	2044
Mizuho Highland	17 km	102 cm	2346
Osorakan Snow Park	18 km	116 cm	2148

When it falls, and how winters differ

Month by month

Month by month, the most snow falls in January. March brings 36% of January’s snowfall. That is a steeper fall than the median for ski areas in Japan (52%): the snow here is concentrated early in the season. In amount, March brings 16 cm, less than the median of 46 cm.

30cm

Dec

45cm

Jan

34cm

Feb

16cm

Mar

Average snowfall by month, last 12 winters

Winter by winter

Across the 12 winters measured, the average is 125 cm, and 8 of them fell short of it. The leanest was 2015/16 with 63 cm; the biggest was 2024/25 with 195 cm (3.1 times as much). For 63% of the 397 ski areas in Japan, the leanest winter was the same 2015/16: bad winters tend to hit a whole region at once.

195

14/1515/1616/1717/1818/1919/2020/2121/2222/2323/2424/2525/26

Snowfall each winter (December–March total). The dashed line is the average; the numbers mark the leanest and the biggest winter.

Runs and lifts

Counted from the runs and lifts drawn on OpenStreetMap, within the boundary of the ski area. These are not the resort’s own published figures.

Marked runs

Run length

3.6km

Lifts

Vertical

229m

Top 934 m · base 705 m

Run map

NoviceEasyIntermediateAdvanced Lift

North is up. Runs are coloured by difficulty; black lines are lifts.

The shape of the mountain

Longest run on the map0.6 km

Steepest pitch25°measured over at least 30 m

Average gradient of the runs11.6°

Which way the slopes face

North 8%

East 84%

South 6%

West 2%

92% of the vertical on the runs descends to the north or east. Those slopes get the least sun, so the snow lasts longer.

By difficulty

Novice 2

Easy 1

Intermediate 3

Advanced 2

Other 1

Lift types

Chairlift5

See past trail maps on Skimap.org ↗

Source: OpenSkiMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0). How finely ski areas are drawn varies by region, so treat the counts as indicative. Vertical is the difference between the highest and lowest points of the mapped runs and lifts.

Live Cameras

On the mountainSlope and road cameras ↗Operated by: 芸北高原大佐スキー場 Roads nearby国道9号 ↗From the resort: 19.3 kmOperated by: 中国地方整備局浜田河川国道事務所

Road conditions decide whether you can get there at all. Check before you leave.

Footage remains the copyright of each operator. JAPANSNOWLINE neither stores nor redistributes it.

Geihoku (Hiroshima) webcams & snow report — all 5 ski areas →

Official YouTube channel

More than we show here.

What was actually measured nearby

Total snowfall from December to March recorded at the 八幡 weather station — 5.5 km from this ski area, 91 m below its mid-slope.

Three-season average	442 cm
2023/24	367 cm
2024/25	691 cm
2025/26	267 cm

The figure calculated on this page is 139 cm.

A weather station is not a ski slope. We picked one at a similar elevation, but it stands in a valley or a village. More snow falls on the mountain above it. We have not tried to guess how much more.

Source: Japan Meteorological Agency historical records

Worth seeing nearby

Places within 20 km of this ski area, for a day off the slopes or an evening. Chosen from those most read about on Wikipedia, favouring places with an English Wikipedia article, and listed nearest first.

Place	Type	Distance
Sandan Falls三段滝	Nature	13 km
Nukui Dam温井ダム	Nature	14.8 km
Sandan-kyō三段峡	Nature	16.3 km
美又温泉	Hot spring town	16.6 km
Mount Osorakan恐羅漢山	Mountain	18.4 km
Hamada Children's Museum of Art浜田市世界こども美術館	Museum	20 km

Based on the Japanese Wikipedia lists of sights in each prefecture, as compiled in travel-log-data (CC BY-SA 4.0). English names from Wikidata (CC0). The content of this section is available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Map

Where it sits relative to nearby resorts. For a piste map, see the official site.

Official piste map ↗

Nearby resorts

Get directions ↗ Open in Google Maps ↗

Places to stay nearby

1 properties on Rakuten Travel lie within 3 km of this ski area, listed cheapest first.

Property	From	Rating	Distance	Getting there
コテージ・レオン	¥4,300	5.00 17 reviews	5.9 km	戸河内IC（中国自動車道）より車で約３０分　浜田駅から車で約４５分

Contains advertising · Property data by Rakuten Travel (Supported by Rakuten Developers)

More places to look

Booking.com ↗Agoda ↗Rakuten Travelad ↗

Guides covering Shimane

Is Western Japan Snowier Than It Looks? Our Model Against the Weather Stations Western Japan's ski areas look thin in our data — a median of 125 cm against a national 249 cm. Against 16 Japan Meteorological Agency stations, the model we use returns 44% of what the ground records there. The region is far snowier than our own numbers say.