Yongpyong snow report
Korea's first ski resort, running since 1975 and still its largest, now branded Mona Yongpyong. It hosted the 2018 Olympic slalom and giant slalom; the speed events were at Jeongseon, a separate venue. The terrain is groomed and intermediate-heavy, night skiing runs to 23:00, and the cover is almost entirely machine-made.
South Korea · Asia · live from the weather model at 700–1458 m2297–4783 ft
Imperial when your device is on a US time zone, metric otherwise, until you choose.
Conditions right now
Read at summit elevation the moment you opened this page.
Hourly windows, accumulation ranges, confidence and travel flags, or the transparent 0–100 Ski Meter score.
Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), adapted for display. Elevations are approximate published figures; forecasts are model estimates, not guarantees.
The mountain right now
The live freezing level drawn on the elevation profile. Above the snow line, precipitation falls and stays as snow.
Terrain shape is schematic; elevations are the resort's approximate published figures.
Ten seasons of snow at Yongpyong
Daily snow depth at this destination's model grid cell, read as ten complete seasons to 31 August 2026. Natural snow only.
Only one of the ten seasons reached 30 cm12 in and held it for at least a fortnight, which is not enough to give a typical start date. The curve below is the whole record.
The band spans the shallowest and the deepest of the ten seasons on each day, and the line runs through the median. It reaches 40 cm16 in, the deepest single day in the record. The dashed line is the 30 cm12 in threshold, and the shaded column is the week Yongpyong traditionally opens, 21 to 27 November.
The index asks a different question of the same ten seasons: in the week this mountain traditionally opens, had 30 cm12 in arrived? All 53 destinations are scored side by side, on one rule.
How the start date is found. For each season this takes the longest unbroken run of days at 30 cm (12 in) or more, and counts it only when that run lasted at least 14 days, because a week of early snow that melts out is not a season starting.
What the model cell is. The reanalysis gives this destination one grid square of roughly 9 km5.6 mi and one elevation for it, being the average of all the terrain inside it. Here that is 1392 m4567 ft, against a resort base of 700 m2297 ft and a summit of 1458 m4783 ft. Compare the cell against those two before you read any number here as a verdict on the mountain. A reanalysis is a model, not a measurement: it can be too smooth over complex terrain, and it can miss a local storm.
Natural snow only. The model knows about weather. It does not know about snow cannons, and no snowmaking is modelled anywhere. The opening week is traditional, not contractual: it is the window this mountain has historically opened in, not a promise. Daily values run to 31 August 2026.
Take the data. Both tables are free to use and free to republish under CC BY 4.0: one row per destination, and one row per destination per season. Both are in centimetres and metres, whichever units this page shows.
Why it snows here
The Siberian High sends cold, very dry continental air over Korea, which makes excellent snowmaking weather and very little snow. Real snowfall needs a different setup: north-easterly flow crossing the East Sea, loading with moisture, then forced up the steep eastern face of the Taebaek range. That is the same family as Japan's sea-effect snow, but far weaker and far less frequent.
Reading Yongpyong like a forecaster
The number that matters most at Yongpyong is the difference between the base (700 m2297 ft) and the summit (1458 m4783 ft): when the freezing level sits between the two, the mountain is split into rain or wet snow below and dry snow above. The Ski Meter reads the model at both elevations and scores the day with every point accounted for; the full report adds hourly timing, accumulation ranges and confidence tags so you can decide when to travel, not just whether.