As the calendar turned to November 2024, Japan’s iconic volcano and highest peak, Mount Fuji, still awaited the first snowfall of the season. When white did appear on its flanks on November 6, it was the latest in the year for the mountain’s first seasonal snowfall since records began 130 years ago. That beats the previous record of October 26, which occurred in both 1955 and 2016.
Ground and aerial photos from November 6 showed Mount Fuji with a fresh coating of snow on its peak. A local office of the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) officially confirmed the presence of snow on November 7, according to news reports; clouds had obstructed their view of the mountain the previous day.
By the time the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on the Landsat 8 satellite acquired this image (right) on November 9, the new snow appears to have melted. For comparison, an image from October 30, 2023 (left), acquired by the OLI-2 on Landsat 9, shows the mountain clad in white. That year, the first snow on Mount Fuji came on October 5, a more typical time for this annual milestone.
The snow’s late arrival follows periods of exceptional warmth in Japan. The average summer temperature, from June to August 2024, was 1.76 degrees Celsius (3.17 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the 1991–2020 average, according to JMA weather station observations. Those temperatures tied summer 2023 as the country’s hottest summer since comparable records began in 1898.
Above-average heat continued into the fall. Across Japan, over 120 million people experienced “unusual heat” in the first week of October 2024, reported Climate Central, when more than 70 Japanese cities recorded temperatures of 30°C (86°F) or higher. Warmth was also felt at Mount Fuji’s summit, which, according to news reports, prevented early-season precipitation from falling as snow.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Wanmei Liang, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Lindsey Doermann.
