Snow has finally fallen on the 3,776-meter-high Mount Fuji, images showed Wednesday, after warm weather led to the Japanese mountain's longest-ever stint with bare slopes.
The volcano's famous snowcap begins forming on October 2 on average, and last year snow was first observed by government meteorologists on October 5.
The first snowfall on Mt. Fuji, a UNESCO World Heritage site, could be seen from the southwestern side of the mountain early Wednesday, according to the Shizuoka branch of the Japan Meteorological Agency.
Japan's weather agency -- which compares conditions from exactly the same location, Kofu City, each year -- has not yet announced a new record for the slowest start to the snowcap, due to cloud cover at its monitoring station.
This year marks the latest arrival of snow since comparative data became available in 1894, beating the previous record of October 26 -- seen twice, in 1955 and 2016.
Japan's summer this year was the joint hottest on record -- along with 2023 -- as extreme heatwaves fuelled by climate change engulfed many parts of the globe.
A symbol of Japan, the mountain called “Fujisan” used to be a place of pilgrimage. The mountain with its snowy top and near symmetrical slopes have been the subject of numerous forms of art, including Japanese ukiyoe artist Katsushika Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.
Today, it attracts hikers who climb to the summit to see the sunrise. But tons of trash left behind and overcrowding have triggered concern and calls for environmental protection and measures to control overtourism.
