The Snowiest Places on Earth
In the winter of 1998–99, the Mt. Baker Ski Area in Washington caught 1,140 inches of snow — 95 feet, a world record that has stood more than 25 years. But the snowiest place anyone actually lives is in Japan, where a mountain hot spring averages about 58 feet a year. Here are the snowiest places on Earth, and the all-time snow records, each one sourced.
“Snowiest place” splits into two questions that rarely get asked separately. One is where the deepest, most relentless snow falls — and the answer is a short list of Japanese mountains and US Pacific Northwest volcanoes. The other is the all-time records: the biggest single winter, the most in a day, the deepest pile ever stacked on the ground. Travel listicles mush the two together and skip the sources entirely. Below, they are two tables, and every figure is tied to NOAA, the National Weather Service or the Japan Meteorological Agency.
The Snowiest Places People Live and Work
Ranked by average snowfall per year. These are inhabited towns, cities and staffed mountain stations — not one-off storm totals. The gap between the top of this list and an average snowy US city is enormous.
A hot-spring resort in the mountains above Aomori and the snowiest inhabited spot on Earth, averaging about 58 feet of snow a year. Its weather station logged a snow depth of 566 cm (18.6 ft) on 26 February 2013 — the deepest ever at a Japan Meteorological Agency station.
A ranger station and visitor area at 5,400 ft on Mount Rainier that averages more than 50 feet of snow a season — and once held the world seasonal record with 1,122 inches in 1971–72.
A city of roughly 270,000 people that AccuWeather ranked the snowiest large city in the world in 2016, using Japan Meteorological Agency data. No city its size anywhere clears streets of this much snow, winter after winter.
The snowiest big city in America, buried by lake-effect snow off Lake Ontario. Its NOAA normal is about 128 inches a year — a fraction of the Japanese and mountain extremes, but the most of any large US city.
The All-Time Snow Records
These are the verified extremes — the most snow ever measured over a season, a single storm, a day, and as a standing depth. The US holds most of them, and nearly all come from the high country of the West.
Why Japan and the US Pacific Northwest Bury Everyone Else
The same two mechanisms explain almost every entry on both tables — it just takes an ocean (or a lake) upwind and a mountain to lift the air:
- Sea- and lake-effect snow. Cold Siberian air sweeps across the relatively warm Sea of Japan, soaks up moisture, then slams into the mountains of Honshu — which is why Aomori and Sukayu Onsen bury themselves every winter. The same physics on a smaller scale, off Lake Ontario, is what makes Syracuse the snowiest big US city.
- Orographic lift on tall, cold volcanoes. Pacific storms ram moist air up the flanks of the Cascade volcanoes — Mt. Baker, Mt. Rainier, Mt. Shasta. The air cools as it climbs and wrings out astonishing amounts of snow at elevations cold enough to keep it. Four of the US records on the list come from this one stretch of the West.
How Snow Records Get Verified (and Why Mt. Baker Needed Auditors)
Snowfall is one of the hardest things in meteorology to measure honestly. Snow settles and compacts between readings, blows into drifts, and melts from below — so how often you clear and measure the board changes the total. Measure too often and you over-count the fluff; too rarely and you miss snow that fell and settled.
That is why Mt. Baker's 1,140-inch claim did not just get waved through. A national climate-extremes committee — with NOAA, the American Association of State Climatologists and a regional Western Regional Climate Center expert — reviewed the measurements against National Weather Service standards before accepting the record. It is the same process that keeps a sloppy reading from toppling a legitimate one, and we walk through it in full in how weather records are actually verified.
The Snowiest Places in the US
Drill into the American side of the story and the pattern holds: lake-effect cities in the Northeast, buried mountain stations in the West. We ranked them from our own NOAA station data in the snowiest cities in America, where Syracuse edges Buffalo and Rochester among big cities and Paradise on Mount Rainier tops the buried-mountain list. For the destructive side of all this snow, see the worst blizzards in US history, and for when your own town typically sees its first flakes, when it starts snowing. You can also look up the snowiest day your town ever recorded on our weather-history tool.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is the snowiest place on Earth?
The snowiest inhabited place is Sukayu Onsen above Aomori, Japan — about 696 inches (17.6 m, ~58 ft) a year. By single-season snowfall, Mt. Baker in Washington holds the world record of 1,140 inches set in 1998–99.
What is the most snow ever recorded in one winter?
1,140 inches — 95 feet — at the Mt. Baker Ski Area, Washington, in 1998–99, verified by NOAA. It broke the 1,122 inches measured at Mount Rainier (Paradise) in 1971–72.
Is Japan or the US snowier?
Japan has the snowiest inhabited places (Sukayu Onsen and Aomori), but the US holds most of the all-time records — biggest season (Mt. Baker), deepest on the ground (Tamarack, CA) and most in 24 hours (Silver Lake, CO).
What is the snowiest city in the US?
Syracuse, New York — about 128 inches a year on the NOAA normal, driven by lake-effect snow off Lake Ontario. Smaller mountain and lake-effect towns get much more.
Keep Exploring
See the US detail in the snowiest cities in America, the famous events in the worst blizzards in US history, the cold that drives it in the coldest places on Earth, or browse all our weather records.
Sources
The single-season record (Mt. Baker, 1,140 in, 1998–99) was verified by a NOAA-led national climate-extremes committee; the previous record (Mt. Rainier/Paradise, 1,122 in) is from NOAA / the National Park Service. US extremes — Silver Lake, CO (75.8 in / 24 hr, 1921), Mt. Shasta Ski Bowl (189 in single storm, 1959) and Tamarack, CA (451 in depth, 1911) — are from the National Weather Service and the Monthly Weather Review. Japanese figures (Sukayu Onsen depth 566 cm, 2013; Aomori annual snowfall) are from the Japan Meteorological Agency, with Aomori's “snowiest city” ranking from AccuWeather's 2016 analysis. US city and mountain averages are from our own NOAA-derived snowiest-cities analysis.