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Japan's northern island: some of the deepest reliable snowfall on earth, and a brief, beautiful summer. Hokkaido has a strongly continental year. Highs swing roughly 28 °C between January (-4 °C) and August (23 °C), so the month you pick changes the trip entirely.
Measured against a snow trip, the conditions hold up December to March. January is the most consistent single month: highs near -4 °C, nights around -10 °C, and roughly 83 mm of precipitation across the month.
The binding constraint here is temperature and snow cover — that is what rules months out, not any composite judgement. April is the weakest month on these criteria.
Month by month
| Month | High °C | Low °C | Precip mm | Wet days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | -4 | -10 | 83 | 18.7 |
| February | -3 | -9 | 67 | 16.7 |
| March | 2 | -5 | 83 | 15.8 |
| April | 8 | 0 | 89 | 13.1 |
| May | 14 | 6 | 93 | 13.9 |
| June | 19 | 12 | 107 | 13.4 |
| July | 23 | 17 | 154 | 15.6 |
| August | 23 | 17 | 178 | 16.4 |
| September | 20 | 14 | 153 | 14.4 |
| October | 13 | 7 | 126 | 15.2 |
| November | 5 | -1 | 108 | 18.2 |
| December | -1 | -7 | 107 | 21.3 |
Ticked rows are months where every hard requirement for a snow trip is met across at least half the month.
Open Hokkaido on the map →Nearby regions
Figures are 30-year climatology sampled at Sapporo, Niseko, Furano, Asahikawa and Hakodate, averaged across those locations, from ERA5-Land reanalysis fitted with a harmonic seasonal cycle and a trend term, evaluated for 2026. Sampling named towns rather than averaging the whole region avoids blending valley and mountain conditions into a figure true of neither. Cells are about 0.08° wide, from ERA5-Land's 0.1° grid, which is itself driven by a 0.25° (~28 km) atmospheric reanalysis — so individual valleys, sheltered bays and single summits are not resolved. In steep terrain read these as conditions for the wider area rather than for one village. They describe typical conditions, not a forecast. Read how the climatology is built.