Mt Fuji doesn’t look right. It has no snow

It’s 1 November and there’s still no snow on Mount Fuji, a month after it should have started falling if past averages were any guide. But they aren’t, and the ritual dismay attending the baldness of Japan’s highest peak as it waits for winter is tinged with a sense of inevitability.

This has been the hottest year in Japan since records began in 1898, and this is the latest Mt Fuji has been without snow since the previous record of 26 October, set in 1955, was matched in 2016.

Mt Fuji’s summit is 3,776 metres above sea level, and doomed to lose its snow at some point every year because average summer air temperatures in Hokkaido fall below zero only above 4,000 metres.

In Japan’s northern Alps that falls to 3,000 metres, which is why the 1,700-year-old Kuranosuke snow patch on Mt Tateyama clings on all year round, for now.